The race for Los Angeles mayor looks Thursday like it might take a dramatic new turn, one day after Rick Caruso said he’s reconsidering another bid for City Hall.
The billionaire real-estate developer — who lost the 2022 election to Karen Bass, and who said recently he would not make another run — switched gears Wednesday, leaving open the possibility he will, in fact, contend in the June mayoral primary.
It comes in the wake of a bombshell story published Wednesday saying Bass directed the watering-down of an after-action report critical of the L.A. fire department’s handling of the deadly Palisades Fire.
Caruso told KNX radio Wednesday evening that he’ll need time to process the day’s news before he makes a decision on another possible mayoral run. But he did not rule out entering the 2026 race after all.
“I need to spend some time thinking about this,” Caruso said. “It’s very fresh news. I’ve gotten a lot of calls today, as you can imagine, and there’s been a lot of posts on X and other places asking me to jump back in. I’m honored by that, but let’s give me some time.”
Caruso does not have much time to make such a decision — the deadline to file a declaration of intention for the June primary election is noon Saturday.
What’s more, Caruso’s possible return to the political ring is just one new plot twist that might alter the landscape of the June primary — with L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath also, maybe, entering the fray, as has been widely rumored.
In the KNX interview, Caruso said he was outraged after reading Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times story detailing Bass’ alleged intervention in softening the Palisades Fire after-action report — a story Bass decried as “absolutely false, 100%.”
The Times, quoting “two sources with knowledge of Bass’ office,” reported that after receiving an early draft of the after-action report, the mayor told then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva the report could result in legal liabilities for those failures.
The paper said Bass held onto the original draft until after changes were made. It was unclear whether Villanueva or other LAFD officials, or anyone in the mayor’s office, made “line-by-line edits” at Bass’ specific instructions or if they imposed changes after receiving a general direction from the mayor.
Caruso said that any edits or efforts to water down the after-action report put residents at risk again and “violates the sacred duty that an elected official has to the residents.”
“For months, we’ve been talking about what has been labeled `Firegate,”’ Caruso said. “Now the city has attempted to cover up their failures in responding to the fire, and now we clearly know that this failure goes directly to Mayor Bass, which is, you know, beyond unacceptable, because you take an oath in office as a mayor to protect.
“The intent of this report is to learn from the mistakes, understand the mistakes that were made, be honest about the mistakes that were made, just so it doesn’t happen again.”
However, Bass’s office, in a statement Wednesday responding to the Times story, said neither the mayor nor her staff made changes to earlier report drafts — and that Bass reviewed an early draft and asked only that the LAFD make sure it was accurate on issues such as weather and budget.
“The mayor has been clear about her concerns regarding pre-deployment and the LAFD’s response to the fire, which is why she called for an independent review of the Lachman Fire mop-up. There is absolutely no reason why she would request these details be altered or erased when she herself has been critical of the response to the fire — full stop,” according to the statement from the mayor’s office.
“This is muckraking journalism at its lowest form. It is dangerous and irresponsible for Los Angeles Times reporters to rely on third-hand unsourced information to make unsubstantiated character attacks to advance a narrative that is false,” the statement continued.
Bass later spoke on KNX to again vehemently deny she directed edits to the after-action report.
“Absolutely false, 100%,” Bass said, referring to the Times story. “Just think about it for a minute. I’m the one who ordered the after-action report when the fire chief would not do it. I fired her. Why would I water down a report that essentially presented the information for why I fired her? That makes no sense.”
Horvath, meanwhile, become a vocal critic of the city’s response to the Palisades Fire. The supervisor called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to fully investigate the true cause of the disaster.
“The city’s diluted report has lost all credibility,” Horvath wrote on a social media.
Horvath wrote in a letter to Newsom that questions about the indicated cause of the fire still exist and deserve answers.
The supervisor previously told reporters she was seriously weighing a run, and was having conversations with friends and family.
Bass already faces challengers in Spencer Pratt, a reality television star and Palisades fire survivor; Austin Beutner, former LAUSD superintendent; and Rae Huang, a community organizer, among others.