Nithya Raman, a democratic socialist mounting a formidable bid to unseat Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass next month, faced a particularly hostile crowd on Tuesday night at a Jewish community candidate forum, where the city councilwoman fielded several tough questions about Israel.

Her answers drew audible groans from the audience members at the Skirball Center as she reiterated her view that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza and defended her decision to sit for an interview with the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who regularly espouses antisemitic rhetoric.

The event illustrated how Raman has continued to gain momentum in the final stretch of the race even as she has doubled down on her anti-Israel stances while courting voters in a city that is home to the second-largest Jewish population in the country. Her harsh positions on Israel — coupled with recent efforts to distance herself from some former allies in the Jewish community — suggest Raman has made a strategic calculation she can win without meaningful Jewish support.

Her ascendant campaign follows a broader national trend that has seen a growing number of democratic socialists with anti-Israel platforms claim victories in municipal as well federal races in metropolitan areas this cycle, including New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Seattle and Providence, R.I.

Raman, 45, an Indian-born Democratic Socialists of America endorsee who picked off an incumbent when she rose to the Los Angeles City Council in 2020, has garnered some comparisons to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a fellow DSA member whose record of anti-Israel activism has been central to his political rise.

But Raman’s recent evolution on Israel has been surprising to some Jewish leaders with whom she had previously built relationships during her tenure on the City Council. When she ran for reelection in 2024, for instance, Raman gained an endorsement from a local pro-Israel group, Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, which resulted in subsequent censure from the DSA’s city chapter that continued to back her campaign — underscoring a unique coalition at the time.

Now, however, Raman stresses she will not seek the DFI-LA endorsement again, as she confirmed in her May interview with Piker. Michelle Elmer, DFI-LA’s vice president of politics and candidate outreach, said on Wednesday that her organization “has not been in contact with” Raman’s campaign during the mayoral race. “One of our board members sent her campaign our questionnaire, but she did not return it,” she told Jewish Insider.

“We had no idea two years later she would be running for mayor and publicly pivot like this,” Elmer said, calling Raman’s forum comments “inaccurate and inflammatory” on a politically sensitive subject. “I found her responses to be disappointing and they will alienate most Jewish voters,” she added, arguing that the candidate “did not do a good job communicating with the audience at Skirball.”

DFI-LA has endorsed Bass for reelection — as the embattled first-term mayor faces ongoing backlash from Los Angeles voters over her initial response to last year’s devastating wildfires that tore through the city while she was out of the country. A poll last week showed Bass trailing Raman by 11 points, winning just 28% of the vote — though a third of respondents were still undecided in the final weeks of the election.

During her appearance at the forum, Bass said she did not believe Israel committed genocide in its war with Hamas in Gaza while confirming her opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting the Jewish state.

Raman, who advanced to the November general after placing second in the June jungle primary, has for the most part avoided publicly addressing Israel, which bears no mention on her campaign site, even as her forum appearance has elevated a hot-button issue shaping other races in which democratic socialist insurgents have risen to prominence.

In contrast to the DSA, whose opposition to Israel has grown increasingly radical in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Raman has affirmed Israel’s right to exist while saying that BDS is not a part of her platform, even as she reiterated Tuesday that the movement is a “legitimate form of peaceful protest.” The sentiment was received with collective groans from the audience.

Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation Los Angeles, which hosted the candidate forum, said Raman’s genocide claim “feeds a dangerous prejudice and stereotype that endangers Jewish lives,” even as she also acknowledged it was a “deeply painful word” for the Jewish community.

“The Jewish Federation Los Angeles will work with whichever candidate is elected to make Los Angeles a more safe, connected and flourishing city,” Farkas told JI in a statement on Wednesday, “but continued use of this kind of language makes it difficult to have the kind of relationship the Jewish community hopes to have with our mayor.”

Those sentiments were echoed by several Jewish leaders who are backing Bass and felt that Raman’s remarks were insensitive amid rising concerns about Jewish safety.

Sam Yebri, a Bass supporter and the board president of Thrive LA, a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to countering the DSA in local elections, told JI that “Raman’s extreme and dangerous views were on full display” at the forum on Tuesday, arguing her “voting record and rhetoric have made Jewish Angelenos less safe.”

Gregg Solkovits, DFI-LA’s president, accused Raman of “cynically playing semantic games” on Israel’s war in Gaza, claiming she had “changed her attitudes and beliefs to keep her DSA base solid.” He called Bass, a former member of Congress, “a longtime friend of the Jewish community,” and said she had shown “strong leadership for all the many communities” in the city.

Andrew Lachman, a past president of DFI-LA, said “there is no trust whatsoever of Raman” within the Jewish community “as a whole,” adding that she had “demolished” any bridges that she had built when she went on Piker’s show. “Between the two candidates there’s a greater level of comfort with Bass,” he told JI.

Leading nonpartisan Jewish organizations also strongly condemned Raman’s recent comments. “Words carry consequences in a city with one of the nation’s largest Jewish populations,” said Kimberley Plotnik, the regional director of the American Jewish Committee’s Los Angeles branch.

“This kind of divisive rhetoric deepens divisions, demonizes Israel and has led to violence against the Jewish community,” she told JI in a statement shared on Wednesday.

David Englin, the Anti-Defamation League’s senior regional director in Los Angeles, told JI that Raman’s genocide rhetoric “not only serves to vilify the Jewish State but also threatens the safety of Jews and Jewish institutions.”

“We encourage all candidates to focus on actions that ensure the safety of Jewish Angelenos,” he added.

Richard Hirschhaut, a longtime Jewish community activist in Los Angeles, also shared that view. “Our Jewish community needs to feel safe in L.A,” he told JI on Wednesday. “Adding an indelible stigma of the genocide tag does nothing to serve this essential civic obligation. In fact, it can only make us feel less safe.”

Raman’s campaign did not return a request for comment.

Dan Schnur, a veteran political analyst who teaches at the University of Southern California and Pepperdine University, said the back-to-back forum interviews on Tuesday “summed up the race pretty well.”

“Raman obviously starts out at a disadvantage, given her past statements on Gaza,” Schnur explained to JI. “There are a lot more progressives in Los Angeles than there are Jews, and not every Jew is necessarily a strong supporter of Israel. But her answers on BDS and Hasan Piker were more damaging.”

Bass, meanwhile, “had the right idea with her ‘Israel in L.A.’ messaging as a way of standing up against antisemitism, but it didn’t come out well,” he added of the mayor’s approach. “It was hard to tell whether that was characteristic Bass caution or characteristic Bass muddled messaging. She reminded Jews that she is a longtime but low-key ally.”

“All in all, Bass probably wins the Jewish vote by a comfortable margin but without a lot of enthusiasm,” Schnur said.