Billionaire Rick Caruso is sticking together with his determination 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 yr’s lethal wildfires.
“Rick is extremely moved by the outpouring of help however reached an earlier determination in a considerate course of and it stands,” a spokesperson stated in emailed message Thursday, a day after Caruso stated he was contemplating coming 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 Occasions report that she requested 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 Occasions reported, whereas Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath has publicly mulled coming into the race as properly. 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 dying final month of his 22-year-old daughter.
“My household has skilled the unimaginable lack of our beloved daughter Emily,” Beutner stated in a press release. “She was a magical particular person, 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 Occasions 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 town’s restoration from the wildfires and its upcoming function internet hosting sports activities occasions together with this yr’s World Cup soccer video games and the 2028 Olympics.
But questions on her stewardship of the fires, and town’s restoration, have weighed on her marketing campaign.
At the very least 12 individuals 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 town.
Practically, half of Angelenos gave Bass an unfavorable ranking final yr, in line with a survey by the UCLA Luskin College of Public Affairs — outcomes sharply decrease than from the identical ballot the yr earlier than the fires.
These issues rekindled Wednesday when the LA Occasions, citing individuals acquainted, stated the ultimate report watered down accounts of town’s failure to pre-deploy assets earlier than the January 2025 Palisades Hearth, fearing it might expose town to authorized liabilities.
Bass denied that she or her employees ordered modifications to the report and cited her report 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 a press release. “It’s harmful and irresponsible for Los Angeles Occasions reporters to depend on third hand unsourced info to make unsubstantiated character assaults to advance a story that’s false.”
Caruso known as the state of affairs “an absolute outrage,” in a put up on X.
As we speak’s @latimes report is an absolute outrage. Karen Bass actively lined up a report meant to look at essentially the most important catastrophe in Los Angeles historical past. Relating to life security issues, that is now not a matter of creating 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.
Prime photograph: Rick Caruso and Karen Bass Photographer: /Bloomberg.
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