Finally, a challenger to Karen Bass emerges

With an election year just around the corner, many have wondered who might mount a challenge to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

Bass, elected in 2022 over businessman Rick Caruso, has come under considerable scrutiny since the wildfires earlier this year.

Her decision to go to Ghana ahead of the fires, as well as her public spat with and ultimate firing of the city’s fire chief, have been seared in public consciousness. Meanwhile, the city’s slow permitting all these months later underscores a sense that City Hall isn’t functioning as well as it should.

On the city’s business front, Bass has largely sided against business interests, perhaps most notably represented by her signing off on a $30 minimum wage for hotel workers and airport workers.

On homelessness, while city officials have celebrated reductions in homelessness counts, a recent Rand Corporation report found significant undercounting of the city’s homeless population. According to LAist, “LAHSA’s official count in those Los Angeles neighborhoods previously had aligned with RAND’s own estimates, but a 26% undercount emerged in 2024 and widened to 32% this year, RAND found.”

It’s in this context that businessman and civic leader Austin Beutner has announced his challenge to Bass. “It seems every day Los Angeles is becoming less affordable, less safe and a more difficult place to live. We’re adrift,” Beutner told this newspaper. “When people live in Los Angeles, they know the problems are there. What we need are elected officials to get on and solve them, and so we need to quit talking about problems and start solving them.”

Beutner has been a longtime figure in Los Angeles politics, having once served as publisher of the Los Angeles Times, deputy mayor of Los Angeles and superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. A decade ago, he also briefly ran for mayor before withdrawing.

Beutner’s time at Los Angeles Unified no doubt gave him some idea of what it will be like to be mayor of Los Angeles. While at L.A. Unified, he butted heads most especially with the teachers union as he sought to put the district on a sustainable fiscal trajectory. But in one of his worst political moves, he championed Measure EE in 2019, a parcel tax that was overwhelmingly rejected by 54% of LAUSD voters.

It remains to be seen if Beutner will be the most significant challenger to Bass, or if he truly has the ideas to turn the city around. But with the litany of failures on Bass’ part and the number of challenges facing the city, there is certainly an opportunity for someone like Beutner to mount a real challenge.