In some ways, it was just another campaign coffee: Los Angeles mayoral candidate Austin Beutner in a roomful of voters talking about his career and life accomplishments.
But this was no ordinary meet-and-greet. Beutner was standing inside a partially rebuilt house — with no doors, no windows and no drywall — in an area leveled by the Palisades fire. In the living room, about a dozen people spoke about what they had been through, from the frantic evacuation to the sight of smoldering ruins to the battle to get rebuilding permits.
Allison Holdorff Polhill, who owns the home, introduced Beutner — a former L.A. school superintendent — as the civic leader she would turn to first in a crisis.
“We were in the worst disaster that L.A. has ever experienced,” she told the group. “And we needed a leader that has experience with disasters and emergencies.”
The catastrophic Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead, has redefined the L.A. mayor’s race, expanding the field of candidates and creating a political minefield for Karen Bass as she seeks a second four-year term.
When the fire broke out on Jan. 7, 2025, Bass drew criticism for being in Ghana on a diplomatic mission. Once she returned, she was at odds with her fire chief and unsteady in her public appearances.
More recently, she has faced scrutiny over her handling of the recovery, as well as fire officials’ watering down of an after-action report that was supposed to identify mistakes in the firefighting effort.
The Times found that LAFD officials failed to fully pre-deploy engines to the Palisades amid forecasts of dangerously high winds and that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to leave the scene of a Jan. 1 blaze, even though it wasn’t fully extinguished. That fire rekindled a week later to become the Palisades fire.
Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said he expects the disaster will be the No. 1 issue in the June 2 mayoral primary, resonating with voters well beyond Pacific Palisades.
To wage a competitive campaign, each of Bass’ challengers will need to make the fire and its aftermath “a reflection of what’s wrong with city government,” he said.
“It really does reflect on the readiness of the city, the responsiveness of the city, how is government working at the most basic level,” said Guerra, who also runs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles.
So far, Bass’ major challengers are embracing that strategy.
Beutner, who ran the L.A. Unified School District early in the pandemic, has accused Bass of failing to take responsibility for the city’s failures before and after the fire. On Monday, appearing with fire victims in Pacific Palisades, he called on the mayor to form a citizens commission to examine what went wrong.
Rae Huang, a community organizer who is challenging the mayor from the left, has expressed disappointment in what she called Bass’ “finger-pointing” — a reference to the mayor’s criticism, and ouster, of Fire Chief Kristin Crowley last year.
Then there’s reality TV star Spencer Pratt, an outspoken Bass critic, who launched a campaign rooted in his fury over the city’s handling of the fire — and the loss of his family’s home in the flames.
“I’ve waited a whole year for someone to step up and challenge Karen Bass, but I saw no fighters,” Pratt said in a social media post Wednesday. “Guess I’m gonna have to do this myself.”
Still unclear is whether two formidable public figures will jump in — L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and real estate developer Rick Caruso, who lost to Bass in 2022. On Wednesday, Caruso said he will decide in the next couple of weeks whether he will run for mayor or governor.
Asked whether he might stay out of both races, Caruso responded: “I think that option is pretty much off the table now.”
As the city marked the one-year anniversary of the fires this week, Bass mostly kept a low profile, addressing the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club over the weekend and joining a private vigil at the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine.
While Pratt and hundreds of demonstrators were staging a “They Let Us Burn” rally in the Palisades, Bass stood solemnly outside City Hall as police officers lowered flags to half-staff. Bass spoke about grief and loss, but also the fact that more than 400 homes are being rebuilt.
“You see signs of hope everywhere,” she told the crowd.
Bass’ political team has taken a tougher approach, accusing her most outspoken critics — including Pratt, who is releasing a book later this month — of exploiting the disaster for political or even financial gain.
“For the first time ever we saw a major wildfire politicized by MAGA leaders and monetized by social influencers making tens of thousands of dollars per month and hawking books on the backs of a devastated community,” Bass campaign strategist Doug Herman said in a statement.
For much of the past year, Bass has faced criticism over the Fire Department’s deployment decisions and its failure to put out the Jan. 1 fire. She also has taken hits over the recovery, with residents saying she has not delivered on promises to waive permit fees for rebuilding homes lost in the fire.
Now, the focus has turned to a new and unsettling question: Did the city undermine its own effort to assess the Fire Department’s mistakes?
The Times reported last month that LAFD officials made changes to the after-action report that were so significant that its author, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, declined to endorse it.
“The fact that [Cook] is not willing to sponsor, or support, or endorse the report says a hell of a lot about the fact that there is no trust and clear leadership,” Huang said.
Bass told The Times on Wednesday that she did not work with the Fire Department on changes to the report, nor did the agency consult her about any changes.
Horvath, who is running for a second four-year term as county supervisor, has also ripped the city over the report, saying wildfire victims feel “gaslit” — and deserve answers.
The supervisor, whose sprawling district includes the Palisades burn area, said she has been hearing from people asking her to run for mayor. She said she would prefer to continue in county office. But she voiced concern about the city’s future — not just its handling of the wildfire, but also the budget, the homelessness crisis and the delivery of basic services.
“I think people are hungry for a different kind of leadership,” she told The Times.
Pacific Palisades has not been a political stronghold for Bass. Although she won her 2022 race against Caruso by a 10-point margin, she trailed him by double digits in the Palisades.
Like many people across the region, the major mayoral candidates were directly impacted by the January fires or have family who lost homes — or both.
Beutner’s home was severely damaged in the Palisades fire, forcing him to live elsewhere for the past year. His mother-in-law’s home, also in the Palisades, was completely destroyed.
Bass has spoken repeatedly about her brother, whose Malibu home was destroyed in the Palisades fire. Huang’s 53-year-old cousin lost her Altadena home in the Eaton fire. Pratt, who is suing the city over the Palisades fire, said on social media that the flames consumed not just his home but also one owned by his parents.
Caruso, still a candidate-in-waiting, managed to save Palisades Village, the shopping center he opened in 2018, in part by securing his own private firefighting crew. But the inferno nevertheless destroyed the homes of his son and daughter, who are 26 and 29.
On the night the fire broke out, Caruso voiced his fury on live television about empty fire hydrants and the overall lack of water to douse the flames. Since then, he has offered a steady stream of criticism about the rebuilding process, including the mayor’s decision not to select a replacement for Steve Soboroff, who served 90 days as her recovery czar.
Caruso has spoken favorably in recent weeks about a few aspects of the recovery, including the reopening of classrooms and the quick removal of fire debris. He credited L.A. Unified and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, respectively, for those accomplishments — not the city.
“Frankly, the bright spots are under the leadership of other people,” he told The Times.
Beutner has been equally blunt. At last month’s campaign coffee, he said the city needs to convene a citizen panel similar to the Christopher Commission, which was formed weeks after the 1991 police beating of Rodney King. The panel assessed the LAPD’s handling of discipline, misconduct complaints, excessive force by officers and other issues.
“If you have a tragedy, you have public hearings, you have leaders who are empaneled with the money they need to ask tough questions of everybody — the mayor, her staff, the acting mayor, police, fire” and the Department of Water and Power, Beutner told the group. “What did you do, and what would you have done differently?”
Clara Karger, a spokesperson for Bass, said the city is already participating in a state investigation, which is being overseen by the Fire Safety Research Institute, into the Palisades and Eaton fires.
On top of that, she said, the fire department is commissioning an independent investigation into its response to the Jan. 1 fire that reignited into the Palisades fire. That blaze, known as the Lachman fire, was mentioned only briefly in the department’s after-action report.
“Mayor Bass wants all the information to ensure accountability and to continue implementing needed reforms, many of which are already underway from LAFD,” Karger said.
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