Long before Rick Caruso started dumping a million dollars a week into his campaign to run for mayor of Los Angeles it looked like it was going to be a battle between Mike Feuer and Joe Buscaino. Feuer, the twice elected City Attorney and Buscaino the former LAPD officer turned councilman from the 15th district. Clearly this was an opportunity for both to lead this city but with very divergent approaches. One with a well thought out set of policies and programs and the other with his anti-homeless no camping ordinances. Buscaino’s gambit was to lean into the outrage of conservatives and let the more liberal factions battle for the majority of the democratic leftwing voters ostensibly splitting the primary vote to get him into the runoff. Now I’m not so sure.
This was before Congresswoman Karen Bass and then billionaire Rick Caruso entered the race. Now you can’t pick up your cell phone or open your computer without viewing “Caruso Can” ads. He even dropped his first campaign mailer earlier than what some political strategists would consider prudent, but hey he’s got the money, so why not? The only question that lingers is What Caruso CAN do?
It would seem like this newly minted “Democrat,” who only changed his registration about a month before announcing, has borrowed extensively from policy initiatives that were well formulated by City Attorney Feuer and a growing consensus of liberal democrats on housing, mental health and drug treatment programs. So what makes him so different?
Yet, I have a hard time believing that a guy who just bought an $18.6 million, 7 bedroom, 8.5 bath mansion in NewPort Beach, right next door to the one he already owns on Balboa Peninsula has much concern for those living in a tent on skid row or Beacon Street in San Pedro. His massive Brentwood estate could probably house many of our current unsheltered neighbors, but that would really rock the boat up in that tawny area. What would the neighbors say if Caruso actually started housing the homeless instead of buying an election or palatial estates for the wealthiest people who will never be homeless? Clearly Los Angeles doesn’t have a shortage of mansions for the wealthy.
You can’t accuse Caruso of not being a real billionaire, unlike the wannbe dictator-grifter who should be indicted for trying to subvert the 2020 election results. Caruso’s wealth is real and can be calculated by his extensive property holdings, his Fortune 500 listing and his all-American luxury yacht which sold for $100 million. And after four years of corruption both at City Hall and in the White House, is anyone really willing to elect another rich guy who has never been elected to office before?
On the other hand we have Karen Bass, perhaps one of the most overly qualified contenders for mayor in the entire history of this office.
Upon Bass’ entering the race, the polls immediately showed her approval ratings in the double digits while Buscaino, Feuer and (did I forget to mention Kevin de León?) all with single digits. I have not seen a poll with Caruso listed yet, perhaps he can buy one.
Karen Bass comes with a very long public service resume that includes six terms in the US Congress, many years in the California State Assembly where she became the first black woman speaker and before that, a social worker and community organizer in South Los Angeles. She grew up in Mid City Los Angeles, which is the same area she represents today in Congress. She is a graduate of Cal State Dominguez Hills, the University of Southern California’s School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program, and the USC Masters Program in Social Work. She worked as a Physician Assistant and as a clinical instructor at the USC Keck School of Medicine Physician Assistant Program.
I had the opportunity to do a short interview with her at her recent fundraising event in San Pedro and found her engaging, smart and earnest in her aspiration to come back to LA and fix it. I have no doubt that she, Feuer and de León would make a sincere effort at fixing all that ills Los Angeles. I’m just not convinced that L.A., such as it is, can be fixed!
What I mean by this is that the bureaucracies, the overlapping jurisdictions and the top-down management of the city breeds a long established distrust between city departments and the citizens they serve. It operates in both directions ― from the City Clerk’s office, to the LAPD, to the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (which is a misnomer if I’ve ever heard one). People don’t tend to trust the city, and the city tends not to trust the people, unless you are a “part of the city family.”
And yet, there’s a kind of complacency that is born from this distrust that allows the common people of Los Angeles to abide the benign neglect that blankets their being disempowered up until the day there’s a drive-by shooting in their rather quiet neighborhood, their trash day is missed or the homeless camp expands to Echo Park Lake where they walk their Golden Retriever. Then watch out!
The only one of the top tier candidates that seems to understand this is Mike Feuer, and he may not make it past the primary. But if he does not get elected, whoever does should hire him to implement his plan to untangle LA’s fundamental dysfunction.
At this point, I’m waiting to interview de León to see if he’s the real deal. All I can say at this point is that we don’t need another billionaire wanting to come in and run the city “like a business.” Such candidates aren’t to be trusted with the keys to the city.
I don’t even know what Caruso’s CAN might look like but I can only imagine that it’s a gold plated toilet and something the city can’t afford even if he only gets paid a dollar a year.