It took a while, but we finally have what looks like a contest for mayor of Los Angeles.
In addition to Mayor Karen Bass, we have businessman and civic leader Austin Beutner, engineer Asaad Alnajjar and progressive activist Rae Huang as announced candidates.
Doing some sloppy political math: One can imagine the candidacy of Huang giving her fellow progressive Bass problems, which could in turn ease the path for the back-to-basics Beutner.
That might be for the best.
Mayor Bass ran for office full of promises. Given the absenteeism of Eric Garcetti in his final years in office, Bass seemed like a relative improvement.
She started off strong with moves like Executive Directive 1, which sought to streamline housing construction across the city, for example. And her later selection of Jim McDonnell as chief of the Los Angeles Police Department made perfect sense.
But otherwise? There’s not a whole lot to say favorably about the leadership of Mayor Bass.
Even on ED 1, she succumbed to political pressure and has walked it back ever since, imposing greater restrictions on when projects could receive regulatory relief. In housing construction, as in life, time is money and the longer homebuilders have to sit out waiting for government bureaucrats to do their jobs the costlier things get.
Meanwhile, the chickens have come home to roost on Measure ULA, a tax on high-valued properties that Bass supported. It turns out that when you excessively tax the sale of real estate, people don’t really like doing business in your jurisdiction. According to the UCLA Lewis Center on Regional Policy studies, “Measure ULA is reducing multifamily housing production in Los Angeles by at least 1,910 units per year — an 18% decline, relative to the 2020–2022 average, among projects with 20 or more units.”
Bass has touted some wins on homelessness. But a Rand Corp. study from last month throws cold water on even that, finding year-over-year undercounts in the number of people living on the streets. The report estimated just 68% of the unsheltered population were counted in three neighborhoods evaluated.
Meanwhile, utility bills have skyrocketed, with Beutner estimating the average L.A. family has seen their trash, sewer and utility bills spike an average of $1,223 annually under the leadership of Mayor Bass. No one looking at their LADWP bills recently could be thrilled to have the privilege of seeing the costs rise faster than the rate of inflation.
And who could forget, of course, Bass’s absenteeism at the start of the wildfires? Or her failed efforts to lead on the rebuilding process?
In the meantime, Bass has waged war on the hospitality sector, indulging union interests to mandate $30 minimum wages for hotel worker, and lauded the City Council for recently making the city’s counterproductive rent control policies worse.
If this all resembles a failed policy agenda for Los Angeles, that’s because it is.
What I can say for sure is that the agenda of Rae Huang, a democratic socialist, is almost certainly going to take the worst policies of Bass and double down on them. Huang has vowed, for example, to push for “free” transit, which sounds like a recipe for making LA Metro not only costlier to taxpayers but also a less desirable experience for people who rely on transit.
Of Alnajjar and Beutner, the latter clearly has the easier path to actually winning. I criticized Beutner as much I credited him during his time as superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, but his more pragmatic, less-ideological approach is much closer to what L.A. needs than what it’s currently getting. Beutner could be the sort of practical reformer along the lines of San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan or Daniel Lurie in San Francisco.
Whoever is the next mayor of Los Angeles needs to be able to center the interests of all Angelenos over the special interests that dominate City Hall. They also need to focus on actual policy outcomes, rather than intentions, and deliver results accordingly. So far, Beutner is the only candidate who seems to have the sense to do this. It’ll be a fun race to watch.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com