Ramit Varma Reflects On His Campaign                                          ...back>
May 23, 2022 - With about two weeks to go until Election Day, independent candidate Ramit Varma ended his campaign and endorsed Rick Caruso at The Grove.  Varma, an entrepreneur from Encino, entered the race in Oct. 2021 and ran as an outsider.  In an interview with Democracy in Action after the announcement, he reflected on his campaign:

QUESTION:  Take us back to the beginning.  What motivated you to get in this campaign?

VARMA:  My children, you know.  Honestly, like it sounds—again, I talked about things sounding quaint, but I was walking around the city and I'm driving around the city and my kids are asking me why there are people living on the street corner? 

And I believe this is the greatest city in the history of the world.  And I said, somebody's got to do something about this.  And at that moment, I didn't see anyone who was going to drive change in the race.  It was all a one party system. 

And I think one party is actually—it doesn't matter whether it's on the left or it's on the right—if you've got one party in charge, you don't get the kind of creative tension you need to come up with good solutions. And so that was the initial impetus behind it. 

I said I want to come in and I want to be able to provide a new perspective. It's a nonpartisan perspective, right?  I'm running as an independent; that was very important to me.  And say, look, I'm going to lead with practicality, with accountability and with empathy, with some business skills.  I think we can do a lot in the city in a short period of time.


QUESTION:  So, first time candidate.  How did you go from the thought "I'm going to run."  You hired a campaign manager who is an actress [Raquel Bolleau].  How did you build your campaign?

VARMA:  Yeah, so you know, actually, the way I thought through it was, first thing I did is I talked to the people around me, I saw...were people actually into the idea, were people opposing the idea?  And everyone I talked to was like this makes a ton of sense.  You're a business guy.  We need that.  We need somebody independent.  We need somebody younger, right?  From a new generation.  And, and so we have friends in common; that's how I got to know Raquel.

And when we were talking, we were just sort of talking about what lined up, and we ran an outsider's campaign, and a narrative-driven campaign, and a social media driven campaign.  And so, for us, the idea that we're coming from outside of politics was actually a really positive thing, right?

If you watch the quality of our videos, if you watch the quality of our narrative experience, I think it's better than anybody's.  And that's what reaches people these days; that's what reaches young people. It's all narrative driven. And so that was a really great partnership that developed over over that period of time. And once Raquel was in, we started bringing some other folks from her orbit in, and that's how we found ourselves here.


QUESTION:  And as a first time candidate, what are some of the lessons you learned? If you were to restart this over again? Yeah, maybe we should have done that a bit differently or...?

VARMA:  I would not have hired political consultants.  So I did hire some political consultants.  They cost a lot of money, and I don't think their advice was very good.  And so I would, I would not do that again. 

Now that said, I would find somebody who was more of an insider to be a part of the team.  So we had nobody on the team that was an insider of any kind, and I think it would have been very valuable to find somebody who, who just knew who to talk to, at what time, you know, which people we should be meeting.  I think that was something that being such outsiders we lost out on some opportunities, because we weren't quick enough to talk to the debate organizers or to talk to certain members of the press, or so and so forth.  So I think that was a little bit of a learning experience for us.


QUESTION:  Did you come close to getting in any of the debates, and what was your experience with the forums?  Were there organizers who were were good and others who were just blowing you off?
 
VARMA:  You know for the televised debates, I didn't know about the first one until three days before the debate.  I actually then went and had lunch with the debate organizer afterwards, and he said, I wish I would have known you because I think he would have been great to have on my debate.  I then found out two weeks before the last debate [May 1], and I went and had lunch with that debate organizer.  And he was like, wow, I'm super impressed by you.  I wish I would have known sooner.  We could have maybe included you in the debate.  So this is what I'm talking about.  Like had I had an opportunity to get people to understand that I'm not a fringe candidate, that I have a real message, that I have real financial backing, that I have real support, I think that that might have played out a little bit differently over time.


QUESTION:  So we were talking earlier about billboards.  How much do you spend, and where did the money go?

VARMA:  I mean, we spent a lot of billboards, and I spent a lot on radio.  And then we spent on events, right?  So and I would say if I had it all to do again— So there's something, when we talked to our political consultants, they said, "You're crazy.  You shouldn't do billboards; billboards don't work.  Nobody does billboards." 

And what I said, ultimately when we talked it about afterward, I said so what's on the billboard?  That really makes a big difference, right?  And I think that in our case, visually, I look very different than any of the other candidates or anyone that you would expect to be a candidate for public office, right?

When I first got started, people said, "Ramit, I have one question for you: when you get elected are you really gonna keep wearing those earrings?"  First question.  Everyone wants to know about the earrings,  Like are you gonna shave your beard?  I'm like, "No, I'm not going to shave my beard.  I'm not going to take out my earrings because this is who I look like and this is what I this is what I am."

And I think that as we start seeing a shift in the demographics of people who actually participate in elections—as it gets easier with mail-in balloting and we start seeing younger people getting more involved—I think they're going to want to see people that look like them.

And for me, that was a big part of this campaign also was to inspire people to say look, there's a guy who you know, what is he?  He's a person of color.  Can't necessarily tell what nationality or ethnicity he is maybe from the billboard. But he looks young.  He looks like he's interesting.  He's got a beard.  I've never seen a politician with a beard before.  We're looking for a new kind of Mayor, somebody who's going to be able to actually understand us.

And I think that's something that I'd really like to bring to Rick's campaign is a relatability—that people across the city across this entire town will be able to understand that there are relatable people that are in this to win, and that we can actually make the change that we've been talking about.


QUESTION:  You had some interactions with Rick [Caruso] leading up to this.  Any interactions with other candidates that kind of struck a chord with you?

VARMA:  Honestly, every single one of the other ones just struck me as the same old same old.  It was just somebody I feel like I've seen you know, droning on on TV a million times and not getting anything done.  Like it was almost like a caricature of a career politician.  Every one of them to be honest with you.

And so had Rick not entered the race, I think we'd potentially be a very different place because I was so different  than those other candidates, you know.  But he's done really well in business; I've done very well in business, right? We want to focus on crime and public safety and homelessness, right?  Like we have real solutions to tackle those problems, and I think solutions that need to be implemented by people who understand business.

 
QUESTION:  Could you repeat how did you come to endorse Rick Caruso?

VARMA:  Sure. So we have some friends in common.  And I was talking to some friends of mine.  They said, you know, you might want to just talk to Rick and see what you think of him as a person and decide if it would make better sense for you to join up with him than to continue to compete with him.

The thing that really got me, they said, you may be in a position where if you stay in the race, you might take votes from Rick and give the race to Karen [Bass].  And that was something that I just, I deep in my heart believe is the wrong thing for the city.  I just don't think that she has the executive skills or experience to lead a city. 

You've got to say no to a lot of people when you're an executive, okay?  When you're a politician, a career politician, we say yes to everybody. And we need people who are going to be able to go in there and say the no's. 

And so for me, it was like I am very nervous about that, and so to me, for the best of the city, I figured I'd call Rick and see what kind of person he was.  And he turned out to be more than I'd expected, and so we decided very quickly to do this endorsement.


QUESTION:  Thanks so much; it was real neat to talk with you.

VARMA:  Yeah, you too.  Really appreciate it.  Thanks so much for your time.
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