rick caruso

Former Los Angeles Unified schools Supt. Austin Beutner is planning to announce a challenge to Mayor Karen Bass in the 2026 election, arguing that the city has failed to properly respond to crime, rising housing costs and the devastating Palisades fire.

Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker who lives in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, would become the first serious challenger to Bass, who is running for her second and final term.

Beutner, whose announcement is planned Monday, said in an interview Saturday that city officials at all levels showed a “failure of leadership” on the fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 12 people dead.

The inferno seriously damaged Beutner’s house, forcing him and his family to rent elsewhere in the neighborhood and destroyed his mother-in-law’s home.

“When you have broken hydrants, a reservoir that’s broken and is out of action, broken [fire] trucks that you can’t dispatch ahead of time, when you don’t pre-deploy at the adequate level, when you don’t choose to hold over the Monday firefighters to be there on Tuesday to help fight the fire — to me, it’s a failure of leadership,” Beutner said.

“At the end of the day,” he added, “the buck stops with the mayor.”

A representative for Bass’ campaign declined to comment.

Beutner’s attacks come days after federal prosecutors filed charges in the Palisades fire, accusing a 29-year-old of intentionally starting a New Year’s Day blaze that later rekindled into the deadly inferno.

With the federal investigation tied up, the city Fire Department released a long-awaited after-action report Wednesday. The 70-page report found that firefighters were hampered by poor communication, inexperienced leadership, a lack of resources and an ineffective process for recalling them back to work. Bass announced a number of changes in light of the report.

Beutner, a onetime advisor to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, could pose a serious political threat to Bass. He would come to the race with a wide range of experiences — finance, philanthropy, local government and even the struggling journalism industry.

Although seven other people have filed paperwork to run for her seat, none have the fundraising muscle or name recognition to mount a major campaign. Rick Caruso, the real estate developer whom Bass defeated in 2022, has publicly flirted with the idea of another run but has stopped short of announcing a decision.

Bass beat Caruso by a wide margin in 2022 even though the shopping mall mogul outspent her by an enormous margin. Caruso has been an outspoken critic of her mayorship, particularly on her response to the Palisades fire.

Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said he believes that Beutner would face an uphill climb in attempting to unseat Bass — even with the criticism surrounding the handling of the Palisades fire. However, his entry into the race could inspire other big names to launch their own mayoral campaigns, shattering the “wall of invincibility” that Bass has tried to create, he said.

“If Beutner jumps in and starts to get some traction, it makes it easier for Caruso to jump in,” Guerra said. “Because all you’ve got to do is come in second in the primary [election], and then see what happens in the general.”

Earlier Saturday, The Times reported that Beutner’s longtime X account had featured — then quickly removed — the banner image “AUSTIN for LA MAYOR,” along with the words: “This account is being used for campaign purposes by Austin Beutner for LA Mayor 2026.” That logo was also added and then removed from other Beutner social media accounts.

Beutner’s announcement comes in a year of crises for the mayor and her city. She was out of the country in January, taking part in a diplomatic mission to Ghana, when the ferocious Palisades fire broke out.

Upon her return, she faced withering criticism over the city’s preparation for the high winds, as well as Fire Department operations and the overall emergency response.

In the months that followed, the city was faced with a $1-billion budget shortfall, triggered in part by pay raises for city workers that were approved by Bass. To close the gap, the City Council eliminated about 1,600 vacant positions, slowed down hiring at the Los Angeles Police Department and rejected Bass’ proposal for dozens of additional firefighters.

By June, Bass faced a different emergency: waves of masked and heavily armed federal agents apprehending immigrants at car washes, Home Depots and elsewhere, sparking furious street protests.

Bass’ standing with voters was badly damaged in the wake of the Palisades fire, with polling in March showing that fewer than 20% of L.A. residents gave her fire response high marks.

But after President Trump put the city in his crosshairs, the mayor regained her political footing, responding swiftly and sharply. She mobilized her allies against the immigration crackdown and railed against the president’s deployment of the National Guard, arguing that the soldiers were “used as props.”

Beutner — who, like Bass, is a Democrat — said he voted for Bass four years ago and had come to regret his choice.

He described Los Angeles as a city “adrift,” with unsolved property crimes, rising trash fees and housing that is unaffordable to many.

Beutner said that he supports “in concept” Senate Bill 79, the law that will force the city to allow taller, denser buildings near rail stations.

“I just wish that we had leadership in Los Angeles that had been ahead of this, so we would have had a greater say in some of the rules,” he said. “But conceptually, yes, we’ve got to build more housing.”

Bass had urged Gov. Gavin Newsom not to sign the bill into law, which he did Friday.

Beutner is a co-founder and former president of Evercore Partners, a financial services company that advises its clients on mergers, acquisitions and other transactions. In 2008, he retired from that firm — now called Evercore Inc. — after he was seriously injured in a bicycling accident.

In 2010, he became Villaraigosa’s “jobs czar,” taking on the elevated title of first deputy mayor and receiving wide latitude to strike business deals on the mayor’s behalf, just as the city was struggling to emerge from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Slightly more than a year into his job, Beutner filed paperwork to begin exploring a run for mayor. He secured the backing of former Mayor Richard Riordan and many in the business community but pulled the plug in 2012.

In 2014, Beutner became publisher of The Times, where he focused on digital experimentation and reader engagement. He lasted roughly a year in that job before Tribune Publishing Co., then the parent company of The Times, ousted him.

Three years later, Beutner was hired as the superintendent of the L.A. Unified School District, which serves schoolchildren in Los Angeles and more than two dozen other cities and unincorporated areas. He quickly found himself at odds with the teachers union, which staged a six-day strike.

The union settled for a two-year package of raises totaling 6%. Beutner, for his part, signed off on a parcel tax to generate additional education funding, but voters rejected the proposal.

In 2022, after leaving the district, Beutner led the successful campaign for Proposition 28, which requires that a portion of California’s general fund go toward visual and performing arts instruction.

Earlier this year, Beutner and several others sued L.A. Unified, accusing the district of violating Proposition 28 by misusing state arts funding and failing to provide legally required arts instruction to students.

He also is involved in philanthropy, having founded the nonprofit Vision to Learn, which provides vision screenings, eye exams and glasses to children in low-income communities.

Rick Caruso, the developer and longtime civic leader, launched a new foundation on Monday to hasten the rebuilding from wildfires in Los Angeles and Altadena by convening top engineering and technology companies and pushing for a quick recovery that aims to prevent future calamities.

The foundation, Steadfast LA, already has a roster of industry-leading names who have signed on: Andy Cohen, co-chair of architecture and design powerhouse Gensler; Carey Smith, president and chief executive of infrastructure engineering giant Parsons; Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos and his wife, former Ambassador Nicole Avant; Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale; and executives from banking, insurance, real estate and private equity.

Caruso told The Times in an interview this weekend that Steadfast LA would tackle the most pressing challenges facing Pacific Palisades, Altadena, Malibu and Pasadena by tapping experts for innovative solutions and closely collaborating with all levels of government. Calling the scale of the reconstruction effort “way too big for the government alone,” Caruso cited Operation Warp Speed — which developed the vaccine against COVID-19 — and the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan after 9/11 as inspirations for the public-private partnership he envisions.

“I wanted to bring together some of the smartest people in different fields and literally roll up our sleeves, get our hands dirty,” Caruso said. “What I’m telling our team is to bend the curve. If we think it’s going to take three years, how do we get things moving in a year? If we think it’s gonna be a year, how do we get things moving in six months?”

The foundation will be funded solely by Caruso, who said he plans to commit “millions.” None of the companies or executives involved as advisors, who also include Mike Hopkins, chief of Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video, will be compensated. If approached by outside donors, Caruso said, he and his team will pair them with schools, churches or others in need.

During the 2022 mayor’s race, Caruso poured millions into his campaign against Karen Bass. After his defeat, Caruso took on a lower profile, but that gave way after the Palisades fire broke out on Jan. 7. As Bass was flying back from Ghana and the city burned, Caruso gave a series of interviews accusing her of showing a lack of leadership and criticizing her absence during a crisis.

Caruso told The Times that he wanted to put their differences aside and that he planned to phone Bass on Monday and pledge the foundation’s help in rebuilding.

“This has nothing to do about politics, and I will gladly have her be the hero, because this is all about the thousands and thousands of people that are displaced,” he said. “If we do a great job, which I think we’re going to — we’re going to work really hard — and it helps her do a good job, and she comes out as a great mayor of the city for moving this along, I’ll be thrilled.”

Caruso said he had already shared his plans for the foundation with Gov. Gavin Newsom at a recent meeting and that the two were in contact “almost every day.” He said he also planned to call California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and the White House.

A spokesman for Bass, Zach Seidl, expressed support for the new foundation. “Mayor Bass is bringing the public, private, philanthropic and non-profit sectors together to execute a monumental recovery for the Palisades,” Seidl said in a statement. “We welcome everyone’s help in this effort.”

Caruso, 66, has deep experience in building — or attempting to build — in cities across the region and navigating thickets of red tape. His malls, including the iconic Grove, and apartment complexes sit in the San Fernando Valley, Calabasas, Thousand Oaks, Glendale and central L.A. He struggled for years to win approval to rebuild on the site of a long-vacant hotel in Montecito, eventually opening the Rosewood Miramar. Projects in Arcadia and Carlsbad, however, never made it through the approval process.

Among the ways the foundation could help, he said, is by expediting how cities issue residential building permits. His team is exploring how artificial intelligence could be integrated with existing municipal codes to review construction plans and quickly flag code violations, citing a pilot program in Austin, Texas. He said the foundation would use its influence to help resolve anticipated supply chain issues, like sourcing concrete and other materials needed for such a large-scale rebuilding.

The foundation will also propose ways to upgrade the region’s infrastructure to be more resistant to wildfire and other potential calamities. Caruso, who served on the L.A. Department of Water and Power board for more than a decade, said he would push for installing power lines underground, boosting water supplies for fire hydrants and updating water mains.

“We shouldn’t go back to old systems. You’ve got to have the backbone of these areas be in the 21st century,” he said.

Caruso also said he plans to use the bully pulpit to advocate for struggling residents and businesses. He pointed to his statements this weekend criticizing Bass’ decision to remove the National Guard, scale back LAPD officers’ presence and reopen Pacific Palisades, which she quickly reversed late Saturday.

Some of those involved in the foundation lost their homes in the Palisades fire. Caruso said his family lost three homes — two in the Palisades and one in Malibu — giving him a front-row view to comparing the response by the city of L.A. against that of L.A. County, which handles firefighting and public works in unincorporated areas like Altadena and smaller cities like Malibu.

“Obviously, we are fortunate with the resources we have, but I see the pain my daughter has in losing a home, and how we feel as a family losing a home,” he said. “But it’s not just losing your home. They lost their way of life — everything that connected and made community is gone … Their home, where they feel safe? Gone. The local park? Gone. Rec center? Gone.”

“It’s just massively devastating,” he continued.

The foundation will be run by Najla Kayyem, a commercial real estate executive who worked for Caruso in the early aughts and recently was an executive vice president at Pacific Retail Capital Partners, an L.A.-based outfit that owns or manages malls across the U.S.

Kayyem will initially work out of Caruso’s offices at the Grove and will later move to “ground zero” in the Palisades, Caruso said. Another office serving Altadena may open at the Americana, the Glendale shopping and apartment complex that Caruso owns.

Times staff writer Julia Wick contributed to this report.

Amid the devastation of downtown Pacific Palisades caused by this week’s firestorm, the Bay Theater has emerged relatively unscathed.

While nearby buildings were reduced to ash, developer Rick Caruso, who owns the Palisades Village retail-restaurant-residential complex that includes the movie theater, confirmed in an email to The Times on Thursday, “The theater is fine.” Palisades Village sustained damage in the fire but remains standing.

Netflix operates the five-screen luxury theater and uses it as a showcase for its original theatrical films, often in exclusive engagements, along with curated classic movies. The theater’s design pays homage to the original Bay Theatre, which operated just a few blocks away from 1949 until its closure in 1978, after which it was repurposed as a hardware store.

Mexican theater chain Cinépolis opened the current location of the Bay Theater in late 2018 as a dine-in theater with a full bar and specialized kitchen to cater to the area’s affluent community.

“The Bay is one of those rare places that’s modern but also feels like a throwback experience of your local Main Street cinema,” Scott Stuber, then-head of global films at Netflix, said in a statement when the streaming giant took over the theater in 2021.

Netflix also operates the historic Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, which like the Bay, remains temporarily closed due to the fires.

Times deputy editor Matt Brennan contributed to this report.