Billionaire Rick Caruso is sticking together with his resolution to remain out of the race for Los Angeles mayor, regardless of elevating the prospect he would rethink following a information report that Mayor Karen Bass requested to melt an after-action investigation into final 12 months’s lethal wildfires.
“Rick is extremely moved by the outpouring of assist however reached an earlier resolution in a considerate course of and it stands,” a spokesperson stated in emailed message Thursday, a day after Caruso stated he was contemplating getting into the race. “He won’t be a candidate for mayor.”
Bass’s re-election bid has confronted renewed scrutiny following the publication of a Los Angeles Instances report that she requested the town’s then-interim hearth chief to take away key findings from an after-action report on the fires. The mayor has denied doing so.
The information has shaken up the mayoral marketing campaign to guide the second-largest U.S. metropolis.
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Tech entrepreneur Adam Miller filed Wednesday to run towards Bass, the LA Instances reported, whereas Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath has publicly mulled getting into the race as effectively. Candidates have till Feb. 7 to file a declaration of candidacy for mayor.
Different contenders within the LA mayor election embrace actuality TV star Spencer Pratt, whose Pacific Palisades home burned within the fires, and Rae Huang, a progressive housing activist.
On Thursday, one other potential LA mayor candidate, former funding banker and ex-LA college district superintendent Austin Beutner, introduced he was dropping out of the mayoral race, citing the demise final month of his 22-year-old daughter.
“My household has skilled the unimaginable lack of our beloved daughter Emily,” Beutner stated in an announcement. “She was a magical individual, the sunshine of our lives. We’re nonetheless in mourning.”
Caruso, an actual property developer value an estimated $5.8 billion and who spent greater than $100 million in a dropping effort towards Bass within the final mayoral election, had introduced final month he wouldn’t search a rematch. Although he stated Wednesday he was reconsidering that call within the wake of the Instances report, he in the end determined to remain out of the race.
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Bass, who’s pursuing re-election, kicked off her marketing campaign earlier this week, in a bid that underscored the town’s restoration from the wildfires and its upcoming position internet hosting sports activities occasions together with this 12 months’s World Cup soccer video games and the 2028 Olympics.
But questions on her stewardship of the fires, and the town’s restoration, have weighed on her marketing campaign.
A minimum of 12 folks died within the Palisades Hearth, that rampaged by means of western Los Angeles County, and 19 have been killed within the Eaton Hearth in Altadena, an unincorporated space east of the town.
Practically, half of Angelenos gave Bass an unfavorable ranking final 12 months, in keeping with a survey by the UCLA Luskin College of Public Affairs — outcomes sharply decrease than from the identical ballot the 12 months earlier than the fires.
These considerations rekindled Wednesday when the LA Instances, citing folks acquainted, stated the ultimate report watered down accounts of the town’s failure to pre-deploy sources earlier than the January 2025 Palisades Hearth, fearing it may expose the town to authorized liabilities.
Bass denied that she or her workers ordered modifications to the report and cited her document of criticizing the fireplace response, together with dismissing the fireplace chief.
“That is muckraking journalism at its lowest kind,” the mayor’s workplace stated in an announcement. “It’s harmful and irresponsible for Los Angeles Instances reporters to depend on third hand unsourced data to make unsubstantiated character assaults to advance a story that’s false.”
Caruso referred to as the scenario “an absolute outrage,” in a submit on X.
At the moment’s @latimes report is an absolute outrage. Karen Bass actively coated up a report meant to look at probably the most important catastrophe in Los Angeles historical past. Relating to life security issues, that is now not a matter of constructing poor judgement, apologizing and shifting… https://t.co/YT6qL0IIFt
— Rick J. Caruso (@RickCarusoLA) February 4, 2026
If no candidate will get greater than 50% within the June major, the 2 highest vote getters will face off within the November common election.
High photograph: Rick Caruso and Karen Bass Photographer: /Bloomberg.
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