One year after the Palisades fire, Mayor Karen Bass is still trying to shake the political image that took hold in the days after flames tore through the hillside neighborhood: a city in crisis — and a mayor not in town when a major disaster struck.
As Los Angeles moves from emergency response to rebuilding, and toward a 2026 election, Bass faces an unusually high-stakes test of leadership: proving the recovery is real, and persuading voters she’s the right person to finish it.
At a downtown rally launching her reelection campaign on Saturday, Dec. 13, Bass and her allies largely steered the spotlight toward areas where she argues her leadership has strengthened —clashes with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement, a decline in homelessness, housing production, and her ability to broker politically difficult deals, including recent labor agreements that averted planned city worker layoffs amid a major budget shortfall. Speakers included leaders from immigrant rights groups, AAPI organizations, unions and business groups.
But Bass also nodded to the disaster that reshaped her first year in office. “It started in tragedy,” she told supporters, referencing the wildfire, before adding: “But we stood together. We stood together to help those Angelenos who lost their homes and their communities. And we won’t rest until every family in the Palisades is back home.”
The fire erupted on Jan. 7 while Bass was on a diplomatic trip to Ghana. The catastrophic blaze killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Her absence, along with frustrations over emergency response and communication, quickly became a flashpoint over leadership and preparedness, a narrative Bass has spent the last year trying to counter.
Political analysts say the fire has become the defining event of Bass’ first term — an upheaval so dramatic it reshaped the city’s political conversation and even eclipsed other long-running crises.
“I would not have thought there would be another issue that emerged that actually would put homelessness secondary – but it did,” said Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University. He said the disaster has become “the defining moment of her first term,” and is likely to factor into the 2026 mayoral race.
It also created a political vulnerability Bass has been forced to manage: criticism that she was traveling internationally when the fire erupted and that the city did not respond as effectively as residents expected.
“At the time, it appeared that the mayor’s reaction to the fire was going to cause her tremendous political damage,” said Dan Schnur, a political analyst and a professor at USC and UC Berkeley. Schnur said Bass’ overseas travel, while not unusual for elected officials, “ became symbolic of what many perceived to be a lack of attention and oversight on her part.”
In the first month or two after the fire, Schnur said, “ it looked like they could potentially cost her reelection.”
Both Schnur and Guerra said Bass now faces the challenge of shaping how voters understand the recovery, and whether it is moving forward.
“They’re trying to see that things are progressing, but how you measure progress — what are the metrics, what are the stories — is going to be very important for the mayor to define that narrative,” Guerra said. He said Bass must be able to argue that the city is on schedule or ahead of schedule on actions within its power — such as debris clearance and permitting — while also explaining what depends on federal support, insurance companies and homeowners.
Guerra said Bass’ leadership style, often centered around coalition-building and giving others a voice, can clash with the demands of a crisis.
“In a crisis… it has to be one clear voice,” he said, “and that’s the challenge for her because it’s not in her nature … to try to hog the spotlight.”
Cautious optimism and lingering concerns
For residents, the political debate is inseparable from everyday realities: insurance uncertainty, rebuilding costs, and whether the city can turn promises into real progress on the ground.
David Schwarz, who chairs the Pacific Palisades Community Council’s Rebuild Committee, said the community’s mood is best described as “cautious optimism,” paired with anxiety about whether the Palisades can be fully rebuilt “within their lifetime.”
“The obstacle to reconstruction is, to begin with, lack of insurability or under-insured homeowners,” Schwarz said. Even homeowners who want to rebuild, he said, fear they won’t have enough insurance proceeds “to go the distance,” or be able to afford coverage afterward.
Schwarz said residents’ top priority is preventing a repeat catastrophe — “fire safety, fire safety, and fire safety” — from undergrounding utilities to repairing hydrants, water mains and other aging infrastructure.
He argued that speeding up reconstruction will require a major upfront investment in infrastructure, particularly in streets and sewer and water systems that in some cases are more than 100 years old. Residents, he said, increasingly recognize that “the price of improving the infrastructure” will require shared responsibility among federal, state and city governments, as well as residents themselves.
“We’re pretty much still in the starting blocks,” he said, praising the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA for debris removal but warning that reconstruction of infrastructure demands coordination and funding the city and state may struggle to provide.
Speaking from his own perspective, he added: “Without the federal funding, I don’t see this rebuilding happening within my lifetime.”
Schwarz also criticized what he described as overly rosy messaging from City Hall, noting that permitting totals do not always translate into shovel-ready homes. In many cases, he said, multiple permits are required before construction can begin — a reality that can make progress appear further along than residents experience day to day.
“I would say the mayor’s office gets low grades from me on transparency, gets low grades from me on telling the people what the plan is to undertake the big jobs and who it expects will be able to do that,” he said. “And I think it’s a terrible mistake on the part of the city not to overcompensate when it comes to keeping people informed.”
The mayor’s office pointed to a series of executive actions intended to speed rebuilding, including emergency orders aimed at cutting red tape and streamlining permitting. According to the office, rebuilding permits in the Palisades are being approved nearly three times faster than typical single-family home projects before the wildfire, with more than 1,400 rebuilding plans approved and more than 1,140 permits issued.
The office also said more than 350 projects have been confirmed to have started construction, and that utilities were restored for standing homes within roughly two months after the fire. The suspension of permit and plan check fees associated with rebuilding, officials noted, still requires City Council approval to become a full waiver. Earlier this month, the City Council postponed a final decision after intense debate over how much relief the city should offer and who should qualify for help.
But Schwarz said residents are watching for more tangible signs of momentum, such as streets reopening, sewer mains being dug up and repaired and evidence that agencies involved in reconstruction are actually coordinating the work.
“I would like to believe that the first and most important bellwether of progress is a plan,” Schwarz said. ”And I ain’t seen a plan.”
Sharon Kilbride, an area representative on the Pacific Palisades Community Council who said she evacuated for about two weeks, described widespread frustration with emergency communication during the fire and, later, a lack of warnings ahead of heavy rain and debris flows.
“We had no police going door to door in our area warning us,” Kilbride said. “Everything was pretty much an alert… we kept just watching the TV as much as we could before the power went out.”
A year later, Kilbride gave the city’s recovery effort a “D,” pointing to stall action on waiving the permit fees, uncertainty around insurance and skepticism that leaders will follow through on proposed relief.
“People don’t even know if they can get insurance again,” she said. “You’re going to rebuild — then if you can’t get insurance, that’s … why build?”
Competing views of the fire
Bass’ opponents are expected to keep the fire — and her response to it — in the foreground. Former LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner, who is running for mayor, said the disaster underscored what he described as a failure of leadership.
“In the most simple terms… a crisis is the ultimate test of a leader,” Beutner said, arguing leaders must “react quickly, understand the problem, develop a solution, and build and empower a team.” “By most measures,” he added, Bass “has not passed the test of leadership” during the Palisades fire.
Beutner said major questions about the fire and its aftermath remain unanswered nearly a year later, and called for an independent commission to publicly examine what went wrong and what should change before the next disaster.
But strategists cautioned that reelection campaigns rarely hinge on a single moment — and that by the time voters head to the polls, other issues could rival or even overshadow the fire’s political impact.
Schnur said Bass has benefited politically from high-profile clashes with the Trump administration over immigration enforcement during the summer— a fight that “gave Bass a chance to rehabilitate her political image,” he said.
“Bass’ campaign would’ve had a very difficult challenge in convincing Angelenos either to forget about the fires, or to reassess Bass’ response to them,” Schnur said. “Now they have the ability to raise an entirely different topic.”
While many residents are still grappling with wildfire recovery, Schnur said immigration enforcement is a more recent issue and one that resonates more immediately with a broad swath of voters.
“The wildfires are a textbook example of how a politician should not respond to a crisis,” Schnur said. “Bass’ push back against the ICE raids is a textbook example of how politicians should respond.”
Voters’ opinions of Bass’ handling of the fire, he said, are largely fixed. Whether it defines her reelection may come down to which episode voters ultimately weigh more heavily.
“It will either be the most important memory of her first term or the second most important memory of her first term,” he said. “The answer to that question will determine whether or not she’s reelected.”
Guerra similarly said the fire does not automatically determine Bass’ political fate.
“In no way does the fire mean she will not be elected or reelected,” he said, arguing that Bass can point to a broader record in other areas that could “overcome” the damage.
“ While I say it dominated it,” Guerra added, “it’s not a foregone conclusion that it was a deciding factor in her victory or defeat.”
Mayor Bass’ office did not provide an interview for this story. A spokesperson said the team is working on written responses to questions.