Los Angeles mayoral race: Karen Bass and Rick Caruso will face off in the general election

Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) and billionaire local developer Rick Caruso are running in the second round of the Los Angeles mayoral election in November. Associated press He announced the race on Tuesday night. Voters in the open primaries will face off in November’s general election.

His candidacy, which divided Hollywood’s allegiance during the open primaries, promised solutions for a city struggling with deep anxiety over homelessness, access to housing and crime.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garsett has been fired. His candidacy to become US ambassador to India came months after allegations in the Senate that he knew about (and did not adequately address) sexual misconduct by his top adviser. Bass will be the first woman and second black mayor in the city’s history. The victory of Caruso, the elected political outsider known for creating an idealized urban setting (he cites Walt Disney as one of his main influences), will be a rare rejection of the city’s liberal democratic political establishment.

Los Angeles councilor Kevin De León, former president of the state of California, is the star, trailing in third place. He has been a lightning rod for local progressive activists to eliminate homeless displacements and tent camps in his area of ​​downtown Los Angeles, as well as a source of constant disagreement over the performances he receives in that area.

Caruso, son of the founder of Dollar Rent a Car, is a mall mogul known for The Grove and other upscale regional malls. He has been a member or chairman of several city commissions and is a longtime candidate for mayor. Bass, who began his career as a local community organizer, has spent decades in Democratic politics, most recently serving six terms in Congress, representing West Side and South Los Angeles Vice President Joe Biden.

Caruso, with a gross display of modern plutocratic power, quickly gained support largely through self-financing, spending $34 million on pre-election airtime, 11 times more than Bass has dispersed so far. During your own campaign. “I’m fighting someone with unlimited funds,” he said.

Bass will have to revitalize the contingent that voted for León’s now-defeated career colleague and moderate. This might be the easy part. It will be much harder to target independents and not alienate their left wing, which is already thwarting their political plans to do away with homeless encampments and hire more LAPD officers.

In the two-candidate camp, Caruso is likely to focus more on Los Angeles in the history of his conservative politics. The legitimate candidate, registered Republican through 2019, backed John Cassic’s bid to run against Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, changing his party affiliation to Democrat a month before he ran for mayor in February. While his ethos is clearly Rockefeller Republican and not MAGA, he still holds a seat on the Ronald Reagan Foundation Board of Trustees with right-wing bodies like Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Ryan and Elaine Chao.

Both candidates won with the bold support of Hollywood. Bass supporters include Steven Spielberg, Jay Abrams, Norman Lear, Ariana Grande, Ari Emanuel of Endeavor, David Nevins of Showtime, Chris Silbermann of ICM and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who sponsored the attack announcements through the Independent Expenditure Committee of Caruso. . (In response, Katsenberg scoffed at him as “too skinny and temperamental to become our mayor.”) THR He was fascinated by the youth and vagrants created by bass work.

For his part, Caruso received rave reviews from fellow billionaire Elon Musk (“Executive power is priceless in politics, we need to worry about it more!”) and Kim Kardashian (“I truly believe in what it stands for”) as AMC. CEO Aaron (The Grove contains one of their multiplexes) and Gwyneth Paltrow (it’s a Goop Sundries store in Rosewood Miramar Beach, Caruso Montecito). Her other stated fans are CAA Brian Laurent, Jay Sures from UTA, Walden from Disney, Brian Grazer, Scooter Brown, Snoop Dogg, Irena Medavoy, Snap founder Evan Spiegel, Katy Perry, Maria Shriver.

The X factor in the general election arc is the polarized voting potential of progressive Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon. With the Los Angeles County Sheriff Slugfest (Fox News favorite and Gascon’s main nemesis Alex Vilanueva trying to avoid his rival, Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna), a DA’s referendum could overshadow the mayoral race. and turn it into a domain. The main focus is housing and the homeless in relation to crime and punishment.

Gascón’s opponents are conducting aggressive mailing operations to collect the signatures needed to bring the challenge to a vote by July 6. Caruso, like Villanueva, supported recruitment efforts led by prosecutors and police, including the Los Angeles Police Defenders League, which also funded a multi-million advertising campaign attacking Bass. They deride Gascón, elected in 2020, as a crime, accusing his judicial reform policies of increasing illegality, including a spike in murders like the December 2021 murder of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant with music executive Clarence Avantor’s wife and mother-in-law. Netflix A wife who has since been so supportive of Caruso. (Gascón and his supporters deny the attacks, arguing that he is simply campaigning.)

Surrey told the co-chair of the UTA THR – As the first results were cold -says Caruso-, I think the campaign is lively because it started with 6% and is now with 40% in the north. There’s a way to go [in the general election]. I think the difference is that Rick has a very clear message. It’s crystalline. “The second candidate’s message is not clear enough.”

Businessman John Wayne, who along with his wife, manager and producer Ellen Goldsmith-Wayne, is a prominent Bass supporter, predicted the success of his preferred candidate in November and asked Caruso to call it a negative campaign.

“I think Rick threw a negative attack, he did all the damage he could do and he’s still standing, so I think when we go to the general there will be real, real money. “I think a detailed study of his history will be as close to swimming as possible,” says Wen. THR. “My impression is that your chances of winning were now 50% guaranteed. And so they went senseless, aggressively negatively. I’m sure this is exactly the advice given by those around me. … I think it will be much easier for him to raise money now. People were beside him. ”

For his part, Raz has a different view of the Caruso campaign: “I think at the end of the day, people are looking for a clear message, a message that they can understand, that they can understand. In his opinion, it is doable. And I think people are drawn to Rick because of his clarity of message.”