‘there’s Just A Pile-on’: How Karen Bass Lost Control Of The Wildfire Narrative

LOS ANGELES — Karen Bass may have been born and raised in Los Angeles, but her fire-ravaged hometown has become newly hostile territory.

Never in her decades-long political career has the Los Angeles mayor been the subject of such intense public scrutiny, from her anxious and grieving constituents all the way up to the incoming president.

Bass has been buffeted by public relations crises since returning from her disastrously timed trip to Africa: escalating tensions with the fire chief over the department’s funding, an online petition calling for her recall and revelations of an empty reservoir and over-burdened hydrants potentially hampering the response to the deadly Pacific Palisades fire.

“Nationally, there’s just a pile-on,” said Rob Quan, an organizer with Unrig LA, a City Hall watchdog group. “If you look at her replies [on social media] now, she could be posting a video of her literally running into a burning building and taking a child out of there, and people would still be replying ‘resign!’”

Her woes are amplified by detractors with super-sized megaphones, including the owner of the Los Angeles Times, who called the paper’s 2022 endorsement of Bass a mistake on Monday. And Bass has been pummeled on social media, including by X owner Elon Musk, who has blasted out searing — and often half-baked or outright false assertions — about her leadership.

But Bass has also been hampered by instincts she honed as a deal-making legislator and coalition-building community activist. Never someone to actively seek the spotlight, her unflashy demeanor now comes off as uninspiring for people seeking a leader projecting command.

“Here’s what LA actually needs right now: someone to stand up in the middle of the Pacific Palisades or the middle of Sylmar or the middle of Hollywood every day and say, ‘This is our community, and we will rebuild,’” said one Democratic consultant in the city who was granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive political dynamic.

“I want her to show some emotion, that she’s tapping into the fear and anxiety that so many people feel, and not reflect this soft brand of optimism that she’s been known for,” the consultant added.

Bass’ public persona during the crisis has been mostly limited to appearances at briefings with other local officials, she did tour Palisades damage upon returning from Africa and planned to appear at a disaster recovery center on Tuesday. She has declined one-on-one interviews and stuck largely to talking points, standing in stark contrast to Gov. Gavin Newsom, the other California executive currently in the hot seat. Newsom, a well-worn target for conservatives who has navigated a number of scandals, has launched a freewheeling media offensive, while his better-resourced communications team has set up a rapid-response operation to combat online rumors.

Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass, said the mayor’s “greatest concern right now is protecting the lives of Angelenos during these raging firestorms,” as well as standing up a rebuilding effort “the likes of which have never been seen.”

While it’s too soon to say if her standing among Angelenos has been permanently damaged, her political detractors clearly smell weakness.

Billionaire developer Rick Caruso, a moderate Democrat and former Republican that ran against her in 2022, has kept up the pressure after blasting her initial response to the Palisades fire, releasing a slickly edited video of his neighborhood’s devastation and launching a donation drive for the fire department seeded with his own $5 million contribution. City controller Kenneth Mejia, a longtime Bass critic on budgetary matters and former Green Party member, has continued to highlight the dearth of resources to the fire department. Both are seen as potential opponents for Bass as she faces reelection in 2026.

“The mayor has gone from someone who is roundly supported to someone who the New York Times is writing about as weak,” the consultant said. “It's kind of shocking how fast this happened.”

Bass has weathered governing crises before. As Assembly speaker in 2009 during the state’s harrowing fiscal shortfall, she helped craft a budget of tax hikes and spending cuts so politically painful that she and fellow legislative leaders received a JFK Profile in Courage award for having the backbone to see it through.

But leading a beleaguered, terrified city is a whole new challenge. Since Jan. 7, at least 24 people have died and thousands of structures have been destroyed in multiple blazes, including the deadly Eaton fire located outside the city’s borders. From the moment Bass returned from her trip to Ghana for the inauguration of its president — a full day after the Palisades fire started in the canyons above Los Angeles’ coastline — the hits just kept on coming.

There was an instantly-viral ambush interview with a Sky News reporter on the jetbridge of her return flight, where the mayor stood stone-faced and silent as she was pelted with questions on whether she owed the city’s residents an apology for her absence.

Then came the brouhaha over the budget, which quickly dove deep into the weeds of the city’s fiscal complexities. While the signed budget did have a dip in dollars to the fire department, other money was approved separately for raises and equipment purchases, resulting in a net increase. (Complicating matters further, Mejia, the controller, has said the money for salaries has not yet been transferred to the department.)

The back-and-forth misses a broader point: The fire department went through deep cuts during the Great Recession and hasn’t been made whole since.

“The department is woefully, frighteningly underfunded, and it has been for a long time,” said Mike Bonin, a former city council member who is active in progressive politics. The left’s complaints that police funding is crowding out other vital spending needs such as the fire department is a valid criticism, he said — “not of one particular person [but] the system over a couple of decades.”

But the budget debate culminated in an extraordinary public rift with city fire Chief Kristin Crowley, who said in multiple television interviews the city had failed her department. That led to a closed-door meeting Friday evening between the mayor and chief and a false news report Crowley had been fired, exacerbating a sense of chaos in the city’s leadership.

Bass and Crowley put up a united front the next day, both stating they were focused on saving lives and property. Any differences they may have, Bass said, “will be worked out in private.”

The city’s water system, including a nearby reservoir that was closed for repairs and hydrants that ran dry during peak usage, prompted Newsom to call an independent investigation.

Since the first day, when hurricane force winds propelled embers for miles and kept crucial firefighting aircraft grounded, firefighters have been remarkably successful in halting additional damage — despite new fires cropping up throughout the week.

“All of those could have been massive conflagrations had they expanded, and they didn’t,” said Doug Herman, a Democratic strategist who works with Bass.

With a new round of potentially dangerous winds threatening the region starting Tuesday, there’s been little time to savor those successes.

In the meantime, Bass has gotten poor reviews on the performative part of her job. One New York Times writer, a Los Angeles resident, calledfor an action-hero type to project control of the frightening situation. But that’s never been Bass’ style.

Instead, she’s presented herself as a genial team-player, even managing to win over some Republican colleagues.

“I kind of feel for her, because I don't really like watching her suffer in a situation like that,” said California GOP Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who served with her in both Sacramento and Washington. “But you also have to be accountable for the decisions you make and the people you appoint.”

Confronted with pointed criticism or calls for her resignation, Bass has stuck to her line about focusing on the current crisis — a message even allies concede can be read as defensive or evasive.

“When the fires are out, we will do a deep-dive, we will look at what worked, we will look at what didn’t work and we will let you know,” she said in an emblematic exchange. “Until then, my focus is on the tv screens behind you that are showing devastation that has continued. [I] answered it in the morning, answered it now, won’t answer it again.”

Compounding the political damage is the fact that the fire has roared through some of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods, a constituency Bass had painstakingly courted. The top ZIP code to donate to Bass’ 2022 mayoral campaign, the Brentwood neighborhood of 90049, has been under mandatory evacuation orders for days. The Pacific Palisades neighborhoods that saw the worst of the devastation also ranked among her top 10 areas of financial support.

Quan, the local politics watchdog, said Bass went out of her way during the first two years of her mayorship to cater to “the caricature of the wealthy westside lib mega-donor,” seeking to assuage their concerns about crime, homelessness and fears about increased development.

“And the one time they actually needed her, a bunch of their houses burned down,” he said. “This is in part why I think this rattled her from the start, because this could not have happened in a worse place for her.”

It also could not have happened at a worse time online. Social media, particularly Musk’s X, has been torqued to elevate conspiracy theories and outrage clickbait, even as Musk himself was being debunked by a firefighter when he claimed they did not have enough water.

“When you have the wealthiest man in the world who has bought his own propaganda machine actively deploying it and unleashing it in your direction with targeted misinformation and then amplifying [it] ... that's a hard thing for anyone to step in front of,” said Los Angeles Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Democratic ally of Bass.

A facet of the social media deluge has fixated on Bass as a Black woman, pointing to her race and gender as a commentary on DEI.

“She's used to dealing with these kinds of things — she's had to fight these fights all her life,” said Herman, the Democratic strategist. “What I don't think she expected is that it would be so ugly and prevalent in the middle of a natural disaster. I don't think anybody could predict that.”

There have been some small efforts among Bass supporters to rally to her defense. Yvette Nicole Brown of the NBC sitcom “Community” and Kym Whitley, an actress and stand-up comic, praised the mayor’s “spine of steel” to TMZ and declared they were angry on her behalf for the pushback she’s faced. Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, a Los Angeles Democrat, posted a #BassStandsWithUs message online.

But others in her camp are looking ahead to the recovery phase of this catastrophe, including issuing an executive order to expedite rebuilding. That, they say, will be the better judge of how Bass’ legacy will ultimately be forged by these fires.

“Elected officials don't have magical powers that will stop a natural disaster from happening,” said Michael Trujillo, a Democratic consultant who has vigorously defended Bass online. “Their magical powers come after — in the rebuild, in the clean-up.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.