Clearly Karen Bass didn’t cover herself in glory at the outset of the Palisades fire.
Karen Bass probably doesn’t herself think that she covered herself in glory.
But at this time of deep tragedy and destruction of a vast neighborhood in a great world city, and of the need to rebuild, that doesn’t mean that the best use of the energies of Angelenos is in the recall of the mayor of Los Angeles.
In fact, such a massive political effort would be a distraction and a waste of time and money.
L.A. has too much to do right now to do an end run around the normal electoral process. Bass is two years into a four-year term in City Hall; quite soon enough the voters will be able to weigh in on whether she is the best person to run Los Angeles.
Of course there is anger, and rightly so, about the lapse of leadership on Bass’s part during this ongoing disaster. We’re not among those who believe that a mayor of a city of the importance of Los Angeles has no business traveling the world. Representation is important. But clearly the predictions of extremely dangerous Santa Ana winds just before her trip to Ghana should have given her pause. She should have canceled at the last minute. Once there on her mostly symbolic diplomatic mission, she should have returned more quickly than she did. And since a huge part of mayoral leadership is the unifying symbolism shown by eloquence and strength under literal fire, sheesh, the mayor’s huge failure to articulate any words at all under a journalist’s questioning when Bass stepped off the plane from Africa was a community disaster of its own.
That failure may well be a deciding factor in the mayor’s bid for re-election in 2026.
And those failures are all in the past. The present is where Los Angeles’s energies need to be focused. The mayor of the city needs to work in concert with the City Council, the city of Malibu, the county, the state of California and federal authorities to plan for rebuilding in the Palisades and then to actually rebuild.
The nitty-gritty of fire codes, of zoning issues, of working with public and private schools, of coordination with private groups currently raising significant monies toward meeting humanitarian needs is where Bass’s leadership will be tested in the next two years.