Los Angeles billionaire Rick Caruso announced he would not run for governor of California or mayor of Los Angeles in 2026.
I don’t want to alarm Los Angelenos or Californians, who have already been through a lot in the past year. But the news that L.A. billionaire developer Rick Caruso will not run for mayor of L.A. or governor in 2026 is bad news for the future of the city and the state. Caruso ran a more-competitive-than-usual bid against Karen Bass in 2022, back when Bass was just a longtime congresswoman and no one thought the city would face one of the worst natural disasters in state history. (The fires killed 30 people and destroyed more than 16,200 buildings; one estimate put the cost of what was lost in the fires at $65 billion.)
“After much reflection and many heartfelt conversations with my family, I have decided not to pursue elected office at this time,” Caruso posted on X. “It was a difficult decision, and I am deeply disappointed to step back from an election that is so critical to California’s future.”
According to one of Caruso’s advisors, this was not a matter of not seeing a path to victory.
Political consultant Mike Murphy, who was advising Caruso, said he was surprised by Caruso’s decision.
“It wasn’t a winnability thing. It was a family, quality of life thing,” Murphy said.
Murphy said that polling in both the mayoral and gubernatorial races was promising for Caruso.
“I could tell he was agonizing all week long,” Murphy said.
California is so heavily Democratic that a Republican win in the governor’s race is always the tallest of orders, barring some bizarre twist in the state’s open primary that picks the top two finishers, regardless of party affiliation. (Here are the Republican candidates’ share of the vote in the past four California gubernatorial elections: Meg Whitman won 40.88 percent in 2010, Neel Kashkari won 40.03 percent in 2014, John Cox won 38.05 percent in 2018, Brian Dahle won 40.82 percent of the vote in 2022. Four very different candidates, four very similar results.)
But you would have liked to think Caruso would have had a better-than-average shot in a rematch against Bass, arguably the worst mayor in America and inarguably AWOL as her city burned.
One complication for Caruso’s potential bid may have been the announced bid of Austin Beutner, an investment banker and former city schools superintendent and deputy mayor under former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. For conservatives, Beutner is a considerable downgrade from Caruso, as Beutner was a staunch ally of the city’s teacher’s unions and fan of tax increases. Beutner also spent a year as publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times.
Still, Beutner’s assessments of the city’s problems are accurate enough, and his criticism of Bass – recently laid out in the Los Angeles Daily News, is likely to resonate across the political spectrum:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says the buck stops with her. It’s time she starts acting like it.
It’s become increasingly clear, this wasn’t a “natural disaster.” The fire was started by an individual and much of the destruction could have been prevented. Federal officials say the cause was a holdover, meaning it was due to a small fire days prior that was not extinguished completely. Press accounts, and my conversations with many Palisades residents, reveal chaotic evacuations, broken hydrants and fire trucks and a reservoir out of commission along with too few firefighters at the outset to prevent or battle the blaze.
Mayor Bass recently issued a report prepared by the Fire Department about the fires. The findings were changed to cover up mistakes made by city leadership.
She hired a civic leader to serve as Chief Recovery Officer, but sidelined him immediately. When he left after only 90 days she promised a replacement. Millions were spent on a consulting firm to develop a comprehensive restructuring plan. A year later, there’s still no leader and still no plan.
Mayor Bass keeps announcing recovery strategies, only for them to get bogged down in details or abandoned altogether.
You figure the next time a major crisis hits the city, Beutner will not be in Ghana.
Reality television star Spencer Pratt, who lost his home in the wildfires, is also running for mayor as a Republican.