mayors

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was having a really bad week.

But then it turned into a pretty good week, and she must have breathed a sigh of relief.

Until the Saturday morning surprise.

I had to set fire to my scorecard, and to the column I had just drafted, which touched on all the expected big-name challengers who had bowed out of the mayoral race in the past several days: L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, billionaire businessman Rick Caruso (who forced a runoff with Bass the last time around), and former L.A. Unified schools chief Austin Beutner.

It was looking as though we wouldn’t get a badly needed, monthslong, toe-to-toe face-off about all that’s right and wrong in the sprawling metropolis of high hopes and low expectations. In a conversation I had with Loyola Marymount University’s Fernando Guerra, a decades-long observer of the local political scene, he made this observation about the dull political season that was shaping up:

“What is interesting to me is that no one from the establishment political class is running against [Bass] when she is clearly vulnerable.”

Vulnerable because of her handling of the Palisades fire and its aftermath.

Vulnerable because of limited progress on core issues such as homelessness, housing affordability and the shameful condition of streets, sidewalks and parks.

But then came Saturday morning, when, in an unexpected move, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman decided to step up, injecting a new element of drama into the race.

It was a surprise because Raman and Bass are not political enemies. In fact, they’ve largely been allies and have endorsed each other’s reelection bids.

So what was Raman thinking in signing up for a challenge in which she is clearly the underdog?

“I have deep respect for Mayor Bass. We’ve worked closely together on my biggest priorities and her biggest priorities, and there’s significant alignment there,” Raman told The Times. “But over the last few months in particular, I’ve really begun to feel like unless we have some big changes in how we do things in Los Angeles, that the things we count on are not going to function anymore.”

There’s more to it than that, in political terms. Raman is to the left of Bass and the traditional left in Los Angeles. She and three other council members supported by the Democratic Socialists of America have changed the conversation at City Hall, with more emphasis on social service, housing and labor issues, and less on traditional law enforcement.

Among their supporters are renters, immigrants, young adults, the underserved, and the frontline workers in the minimum-wage economy.

Raman’s candidacy — along with DSA candidates for other city offices — makes the election something of a referendum on the evolving center of political clout in L.A. It raises the question of whether the city is ready to blow things up and move further in the direction of New York City, which just elected as mayor the ultra-progressive Zohran Mamdani.

And for all of that, it also raises the question of whether progressives can both deliver on their promises and also balance a budget. No easy task, there.

As for Bass, you don’t get as far in politics as she has — from the state Legislature to Congress to City Hall — without sharp survival skills and without collecting friends you can count on, even when the road to reelection is filled with potholes.

And even when an ally comes after you.

“Wow, what a surprise,” Guerra said upon Raman’s entry into the race.

He considers her a formidable foe who was the first to prove “that the DSA can win in Los Angeles” and who brings several advantages to a campaign against Bass.

For one, she has a record of some success on homelessness in her district and was involved in that cause in the Silver Lake area before she was in public office, when she identified a startling lack of coordination and continuity. And by virtue of her age, 44, she’s aligned with younger voters hungry for change in political leadership.

It’s possible that with Raman in the race, and the nuts-and-bolts issues of governance now center stage, there will be slightly less emphasis on Bass’s handling and mishandling of the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of properties, wiped out a vibrant community and killed 12 people.

When I said at the top of this column that Bass was having a really bad week, I was referring to the Palisades fire and the latest story from Times investigative reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle. They had already established that the Los Angeles Fire Department had failed to pre-deploy adequately for the fire, and that it had failed to extinguish an earlier fire that later triggered the epic disaster.

The reporters had also established that the so-called “after-action” report on the fire had been altered to downplay failures by the department and the city, all of which was scandalous enough.

But on Wednesday, Tchekmedyian and Pringle reported that Bass was involved in the revisions despite her earlier denials. The mayor “wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened before the report was made public,” according to sources.

Bass vehemently denied the allegations and blasted The Times. But even before the latest story, Bass’s Palisades report card was one that a prudent person might have fed to the dog. She had left the country just before the fire despite warnings of potentially cataclysmic conditions. And multiple other missteps followed, including the botched hiring and early departure of a rebuilding czar.

Raman has not targeted Bass’ handling of the fire, and we’ll see if that changes. I don’t consider the response to the ICE raids to be a point of contention between Raman and Bass. One of the mayor’s strengths in office has been her defense of the city’s immigrants and her pushback against President Trump.

“Bass gets high marks resisting ICE,” Guerra said of polling and public opinion surveys he has either conducted or reviewed. “But on other issues, including homelessness, she does not do well.”

Two-thirds of voters in one poll said they would not back Bass in the June primary, Guerra said. But that poll did not offer an alternative to Bass, and now there is one.

Actually, several. The others include Brentwood tech entrepreneur Adam Miller, who’s got money to spend; reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, a Republican who lost his Palisades home and has been hammering the mayor; and minister/community organizer Rae Huang, a Democratic socialist.

Do they matter, given the odds against them and the entry of Raman into the race?

Yes, they might. Bass needs more than 50% of the June primary vote to win outright. But with Raman and the others grabbing varying percentages of the vote, a two-person November runoff is likely and the candidates will almost surely be Bass and Raman.

After a crazy week in L.A., allies are now foes.

And the race for mayor just got interesting.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Former Los Angeles schools Supt. Austin Beutner said Thursday that he is dropping out of the race for mayor, citing the recent death of his 22-year-old daughter.

Beutner, one of several candidates seeking to oust Mayor Karen Bass in the June 2 primary, made his announcement a month after the death of Emily Beutner, the youngest of his four children.

“My family has experienced the unimaginable loss of our beloved daughter Emily. She was a magical person, the light of our lives. We are still in mourning,” Beutner said in a statement. “A successful campaign, and more importantly the job of Mayor, requires someone who is committed 24/7 to the job. Family has always come first for me. That is where I need to be at this time.”

Beutner’s daughter died Jan. 6 at a hospital, according to officials with the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office, which has not yet determined a cause.

The announcement comes as the lineup of candidates is still in flux, with Saturday’s filing deadline fast approaching.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath has been weighing a run, as has Maryam Zar, founder of the Palisades Recovery Coalition. Real estate developer Rick Caruso, who lost to Bass in 2022, is once again considering a mayoral bid — even though he publicly ruled that out last month — after The Times reported Wednesday that Bass was involved in watering down an after-action report on the Palisades fire.

Bass’ team said the mayor did not make changes to the report, saying “there is absolutely no reason why she would request those details be altered or erased when she herself has been critical of the response to the fire.”

Bass, who is seeking a second four-year term, already faces challenges from reality television star Spencer Pratt, a Republican who lost his home in the Palisades fire; Rae Huang, a community organizer who is also a democratic socialist; and Adam Miller, a tech entrepreneur and nonprofit executive.

If Bass secures more than 50% of the vote, she will win outright, avoiding a November runoff.

Beutner, who entered the contest in October, spent much of his campaign denouncing Bass’ handling of the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead. The fire severely damaged Beutner’s home in Pacific Palisades and completely destroyed the residence of Beutner’s mother-in-law.

During the early months of his campaign, Beutner also criticized the mayor for hiking the fees that the city charges for trash pickup, sewer maintenance and other basic services.

In his statement withdrawing from the race, Beutner continued to highlight some of the problems he discussed during his campaign.

“Los Angeles is a special place, but every day it’s becoming less affordable, less safe and a more difficult place to live,” he said. “To solve these problems, new ideas are needed along with leadership capable of implementing them.”

Beutner’s daughter, a student at Loyola Marymount University, was found last month by the side of a highway in Palmdale in a “state of medical distress,” according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. She later died at a hospital.

After that, Beutner largely disappeared from the public eye, canceling more than a dozen campaign events and asking the public for privacy.

A tech executive who made a fortune developing education software, then waded into the fight against homelessness, is now entering the race for Los Angeles mayor.

Adam Miller, co-founder of Better Angels, a nonprofit focused on preventing homelessness and building affordable housing, filed paperwork on Wednesday to run against Mayor Karen Bass in the June 2 primary election.

Miller, in an interview, said the city is on a downward trajectory and beset with problems — and needs someone with strong leadership skills at City Hall.

“A lot of the issues we face in the city are management problems, and I know how to manage,” he said. “I’ve managed effectively teams that are big and small. I’ve managed teams that are domestic and international. And I’ve managed programs at every stage, so I know how to scale things up and make them operate at scale for a big system.”

The 56-year-old entrepreneur and nonprofit executive is making his move at a moment when the candidate lineup remains unsettled. Even with Saturday’s deadline for filing candidate paperwork fast approaching, some are still undecided on whether to run.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath has spent several days hinting that she may jump into the race, while also taking shots at Bass on CNN and elsewhere.

Maryam Zar, who founded the Palisades Recovery Coalition in the wake of the Palisades fire, is also weighing a run. Even real estate developer Rick Caruso, who publicly ruled out a mayoral bid last month, told KNX on Wednesday that he may reconsider.

Former L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner, who launched his campaign in October, has been out of the public eye since the death of his 22-year-old daughter on Jan. 6. Reality TV star Spencer Pratt has spent the last several weeks promoting his book “The Guy You Loved to Hate,” and emerged earlier this week to file his candidate paperwork.

Community organizer Rae Huang has been courting the city’s left-leaning voters, appearing with podcaster Hasan Piker in a conversation about housing policy.

Meanwhile, Bass has been using the trappings of her office to promote her work, scheduling two State of the City speeches in a three-month span. The first of those, delivered Monday, sounded in many ways like a campaign stump speech, except longer.

After Miller filed his paperwork, Bass spokesperson Douglas Herman immediately derided him, describing Miller as a “wealthy venture capitalist” who sold software that helped large companies “systematically lay off workers.”

“The last thing Los Angeles needs now is another self-funder who doesn’t understand the crisis of affordability in our city,” Herman said. “Mayor Karen Bass will continue working to solve the biggest problems facing our city with groundbreaking efforts on housing affordability, reductions in street homelessness and public safety stats sitting at 60-year lows.”

Miller pushed back on the mayor’s statement, saying his company’s software was used for training and helping employees build their skills. He said that, although he will provide a loan to his campaign to get things started, he will be raising money like any other campaign.

Miller is the former chief executive of Cornerstone OnDemand, the global training and development company that he built over more than two decades, growing it to more than 3,000 employees. The publicly traded company was sold in 2021 to a private equity firm for $5.2 billion, he said.

The Brentwood resident has been heavily focused on philanthropy, serving as chair of the nonprofit 1P.org, which is a charitable foundation that provides funding to other nonprofit groups.

Miller said he and his wife, Staci, while mapping out their philanthropic work, chose to focus on intractable problems at the local, state, national and global level. Locally, he said, homelessness was the issue they identified as the most intractable.

1P.org has been providing funding to Better Angels, which has been working to build affordable housing while also distributing micro-loans to families facing eviction. In addition, the nonprofit has developed an app to help homeless outreach workers stay connected.

Sara Reyes, executive director of SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition, said its 700 volunteers use Better Angels’ outreach app to maintain relationships with one another and their clients in neighborhoods stretching from Hollywood to Atwater Village.

The app is not integrated with the homeless database maintained by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county partnership, and would be more effective if it was, Reyes said.

Miller said the city needs help with issues that go well beyond homelessness. For example, he said, city leaders have made L.A. “one of the least developer friendly cities in the country,” hindering the construction of new homes.

“We have a major housing shortage,” he said. “We have an unacceptable number of people who are unhoused. We have affordability issues. I’d say city cleanliness is on the decline. We are not well prepared for disasters, as was clearly seen last year.”

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass did something this week that would have been unthinkable three years ago — she took an unprompted swipe at her counterparts in L.A. County.

Bass, while weighing in on L.A.’s so-called “mansion tax,” dinged the county for creating what she called a “bureaucratic” homelessness agency, saying it threatened to undermine the city’s progress on the crisis.

County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath hit back hard, telling Bass on X that the county created the new agency because the existing one — which is partly overseen by Bass appointees — was incapable of tracking its spending.

“The County is fixing the problems you’ve ignored,” Horvath said.

Things have been bad between Bass and Horvath for more than a year, with the two Democrats taking veiled, and sometimes not-so-veiled, swipes at each other. But could they become adversaries in the truest sense of the word — as head-to-head rivals in this year’s mayoral election?

Horvath, who has spent months lining up endorsements for her own reelection campaign, has until Saturday to decide whether to enter the mayor’s race, challenging Bass’ bid for a second term. She told The Times she is seriously weighing a run — and “spending the weekend in deep reflection” with friends and family.

“From a young age, my faith has guided me through the most important moments of my life,” said Horvath, who is Catholic. “This is one of those moments.”

Bass, who is running in the June 2 primary for a second term, is already facing challenges from reality television star Spencer Pratt, former school superintendent Austin Beutner and community organizer Rae Huang, who has focused heavily on housing issues. Still, a Horvath bid would reshape the contest dramatically.

Beutner has not campaigned publicly since Jan. 5, one day before his 22-year-old daughter died of undetermined causes. Real estate developer Rick Caruso opted on Jan. 16 to stay out of the race, after sharply criticizing Bass for more than a year.

On paper, a Horvath mayoral bid looks somewhat risky. If she takes the plunge, she would no longer be permitted to seek reelection to her supervisorial seat, representing about 2 million people on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley. Bass has been raising money for more than a year and has locked up key endorsements, including the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

If she runs, Horvath would face questions about the county’s difficulties, including a $4-billion legal payout over sexual abuse that has been marred by fraud allegations and a screwup surrounding Measure G, the 2024 ballot measure that will expand the number of county supervisors but also is on track to inadvertently repeal a criminal justice reform measure.

On top of that, there’s the secret $2-million payout to the county’s top executive.

Horvath said she’s seen recent polling that makes clear that “there’s an appetite for change” among Angelenos. Community leaders, residents of her supervisorial district and “those longing for a better Los Angeles” have been asking her to run, she said.

“I am listening carefully and seriously both to those who are urging me to enter this race, and to those who are eager to continue the work we have begun together at the County,” she said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Bass campaign said he does not comment on prospective candidates. Pratt, for his part, said he’s rooting for Horvath to jump in so that “voters can see two career politicians calling each other out for the failed policies they both promoted.”

“Lindsey Horvath and Karen Bass are both responsible for the decline of our city, and the more they talk about each other, the more the public will see why we need a complete reset,” he said in a statement.

Even if Horvath doesn’t run, it looks like her relationship with the mayor will be rocky for the foreseeable future. The first-term supervisor has emerged as one of Bass’ most outspoken critics, highlighting an array of issues at City Hall.

Earlier this month, Horvath told The Times that she hears regularly from Angelenos who complain that they’re not getting basic services. She said that support within City Hall for Inside Safe, the mayor’s program to combat homelessness, is eroding.

Horvath has also taken aim at the city’s response to the Palisades fire, pointing out in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom that the Fire Department’s after-action report was watered down and then disavowed by its author. A day later, she told CBS2 that Bass was not being truthful about the county’s new homelessness agency.

Bass also has her own bully pulpit. On Friday, she stood outside federal court and railed against the indictment of independent journalist Don Lemon, calling it an “assault on our democracy.” Prosecutors have accused Lemon of violating federal law while reporting on a protest inside a Minnesota church.

The strained relations between Bass and Horvath are noteworthy given the mayor’s heavy focus on collaboration early on in her administration, when she triumphantly declared she was “locking arms” with a wide array of elected officials — including county supervisors — in the fight against homelessness.

Bass has attempted to stay above the fray, mostly avoiding direct conflict with other politicians — at least in public. But the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead, showed things weren’t always amiable behind the scenes.

Two weeks after the fires, Horvath and Bass were at odds over their joint public appearances, with Horvath complaining via text message that the mayor’s approach didn’t feel “very ‘locked arms.’”

Months later, Horvath and her colleagues on the Board of Supervisors voted to pull hundreds of millions of dollars from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, moving the money to the new county homelessness agency.

Horvath said the change was urgently needed in the wake of highly damaging reports about LAHSA’s financial oversight. Bass, in turn, warned the move would create a “monumental disruption” for the city’s effort to bring unhoused residents indoors.

Last month, Bass published an opinion piece in the Daily News criticizing the county, pointing out that its new homelessness agency was already proposing cuts to programs that have served the city’s unhoused population.

Bass echoed that criticism in a recent interview, saying the cuts were proposed a year after voters approved a half-cent sales tax to fund homeless services.

Those reductions, if enacted, would scale back the operations of A Pathway Home, the county’s counterpart to Inside Safe.

“We are going to do the best we can without a full partner in the county,” Bass said.

Horvath, for her part, said she wants to scale back A Pathway Home because it is too costly — and is not achieving the success that county officials want.

State of play

— BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD: City Councilmember Nithya Raman fell short in her attempt to send voters a ballot proposal rewriting Measure ULA, the tax on property sales of $5.3 million and up. Councilmembers said they did not even want to discuss the idea until it had been vetted by her committee.

— PIT BULL PAYOUT: The city paid more than $3 million last year to a woman who adopted a dog from the South L.A. animal shelter, only to have it attack her two days later. She later found out the dog had bitten a grandmother’s face. The case is raising questions about the way some shelter dogs are promoted on Instagram and other platforms.

— HEADING TO TRIAL: After a weeklong hearing, a judge ruled on Wednesday that the criminal case against Councilmember Curren Price can proceed to trial. Price, who has been charged with embezzlement, perjury and violations of conflict-of-interest laws, is slated to leave office in December. His lawyer said he did not act with “wrongful intent.”

— CLEARING CASES: Los Angeles police solved more than two thirds of homicides citywide in 2025, in a year that ended with the fewest number of slayings in six decades, according to figures released Thursday.

— GIVING TO GIBSON DUNN: The council signed off on a $1.8-million increase to its legal contract with Gibson Dunn, which is representing the city in the seemingly endless L.A. Alliance case. The increase, which passed on a 9-4 vote, brings the contract to nearly $7.5 million.

— PAYOUT PAUSE: Los Angeles County will halt some payments from its $4-billion sex-abuse settlement, as prosecutors ramp up their probe into allegations of fraud.

— LAPD VS. PROTESTER: A tense exchange between an LAPD captain and one of the Police Department’s most outspoken critics has gone viral.

— BATTLING TRUMP, PART 1: President Trump signed an executive order to allow victims of the Los Angeles wildfires to rebuild without obtaining “unnecessary, duplicative, or obstructive” permits. The order, which is likely to be challenged by the city and state, was immediately derided by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said Trump should provide FEMA relief.

— BATTLING TRUMP, PART 2: Trump also vowed to fight the construction of new low-income housing in the Pacific Palisades burn area. L.A. officials say no projects are planned.

Quick hits

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to fight homelessness went to the area around Gage Avenue at St. Andrews Place, located in the South L.A. district represented by Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
• On the docket next week: Bass delivers the first of her two State of the City speeches, which has been billed as a “unifying celebration of Los Angeles.”

Stay in touch

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