LOS ANGELES — Karen Bass probably has second thoughts about that trip to Ghana.
The Los Angeles mayor’s ill-timed international travel — which coincided with historically destructive wildfires sweeping through her city — threatens to spiral into a political crisis for an elected official who has so far enjoyed a remarkably durable honeymoon in the nation’s second-largest city.
She left the West African nation on Tuesday, where she was attending the inauguration of its new president. She arrived Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles, where hurricane-force winds and dry weather created the conditions for catastrophic fires that have killed at least five people.
Bass’ absence — as local and state officials made public appearances as the crisis escalated Tuesday evening — was glaring, making her an easy target for political foes and frustrated Angelenos and tarnishing her image as an assiduous, in-the-weeds leader who prioritizes local issues.
“Of course, you don’t go,” Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer who ran against Bass in 2022, said of her overseas expedition. “That’s not leadership, that’s abandoning your post.”
With Bass missing in action, critics such as Caruso have stepped eagerly into the public relations void, lacerating the mayor’s leadership.
“Is it as bad as Ted Cruz going to Cancun? No. But it could be an indelible dent in her image,” said one veteran Democratic consultant in Los Angeles, who was granted anonymity to speak frankly about the political dynamics.
On Wednesday evening, at her first news conference after returning from Ghana, Bass appealed for unity and sought to emphasize her involvement with fire response from afar.
“This is going to be an effort of all of us coming together, and we have to resist any effort to pull us apart,” she said, noting that she was on the phone coordinating with officials “every hour” of her flights on both military and commercial aircraft.
“So although I was not physically here, I was in contact with many of the individuals that are standing here throughout the entire time,” she added. “When my flight landed, I immediately went to the fire zone and saw what happened in Pacific Palisades.”
“I have been in constant contact with our fire commanders, with county, state and federal officials,” she said. “I took the fastest route back, which included being on a military plane, which facilitated our communications. So I was able to be on the phone the entire time of the flight.”
Bass, who has enjoyed enduring popularity and has built a vast network of allies, has taken most of her hits from players outside the city’s political establishment, including online provocations from conservatives such as Elon Musk.
Her supporters say those attacks are often incorrect or disingenuous, cynically conflating the optics of her absence with more substantive critiques of her governance.
“Aside from getting the photo op in front of the fire, doing all the work — contacting the first responders, working with [city] council, working with everyone — is something that you can do remotely,” said Los Angeles Councilmember Bob Blumenfield.
“It’s a luxury for folks to sit on the sidelines and cast aspersions and be politically divisive at a time when our sole focus at this moment should be health and safety,” he added.
But the salvos against Bass are not simply coming from former political opponents or far-right provocateurs, but at times, the quintessential mainstream of the Democratic party.
“Inexplicable decision to not come back earlier,” Tommy Vietor, a former Obama staffer and Pod Save America host, wrote on X.
Bass also took heat from far-left activists online, who accused the mayor of cutting the fire department’s budget in order to pay for a costly new contract with the city’s police. Also weighing in against her was Patrick Soon-Shiong, the politically idiosyncratic owner of the Los Angeles Times, who echoed the attack, posting on X that “the Mayor cut LA Fire Department’s budget by $23M.”
That assertion is wrong. The city was in the process of negotiating a new contract with the fire department at the time the budget was being crafted, so additional funding for the department was set aside in a separate fund until that deal was finalized in November. In fact, the city’s fire budget increased more than $50 million year-over-year compared to the last budget cycle, according to Blumenfield’s office, although overall concerns about the department’s staffing level have persisted for a number of years.
But the mayor’s team did not push back on the record to inquiries about Soon-Shiong’s post, allowing the incorrect information to circulate widely online for most of Wednesday. Bass briefly noted in the news conference that LAFD’s budget was higher than what was allocated on July 1.
Bass’ critics have also seized upon reports that water tanks in the besieged Pacific Palisades neighborhood had not been full, causing fire hydrants to run dry and crippling first responders’ ability to stop the vast property damage.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in a Wednesday press conference refuted those claims. The three tanks in the area had been filled to capacity with around 1 million gallons of water each, department officials said, but those supplies were tapped out by early Wednesday morning. High winds made it impossible for firefighters to use aerial means to combat the flames, putting inordinate pressure on the fire hydrant system.
“We saw four times the demands of water that we’ve ever seen in the system,” said Janisse Quiñones, the department’s CEO. “We opened every valve available to push as much water into the Palisades area. This fire was different and unprecedented because they didn’t have air resources to fight it.”
Bass said the incorrect information has taken hold in part because of the heightened emotions during the crisis.
“Our families, our friends have been affected and it’s easy to get caught up in information that is not accurate,” Bass said at the Wednesday news conference. “I think most of us know that the internet is not always the best place to get accurate information.”
Wildfire experts said there was only so much that officials could do in the face of the perfect-storm circumstances that aligned to batter Los Angeles.
“It was a 70-mile-an-hour wind, it’s like trying to fight a 200-foot-tall dragon with a tiny little sword. You’re not going to win. Once it gets established and once it starts burning, it’s going to go until the wind stops or you bump into the Pacific Ocean, and then it’s just going to go sideways,” said Mark Whaling, a retired Los Angeles County Fire Department battalion chief.
Bass has proven herself an adept political navigator when it comes to Los Angeles’ most vexing problems, particularly homelessness. She has projected a laser-like focus on the issue, which has kept her favorability relatively high among residents.
And so far, her superpower has been liberal Los Angeles voters’ natural inclinations to back her.
The Democratic political consultant recalled being struck by her innate popularity while watching one focus group during the mayor’s race that was unaffiliated with any campaign..
“They liked her. They wanted to vote for her,” the consultant said, “They liked the cut of her jib, they liked the way she talked.”
But, the consultant added, the current crisis could imperil that goodwill.
The question, the consultant said, is whether the fires will “be perceived as a management problem or purely a natural disaster. … If it’s perceived as the former, then the price could be very steep.”
Blake Jones contributed to this report.
