He is blamed for his absence from the city when the fires started, and his decision to cut the local fire department’s budget by $17.5 million.
She did not expect such a welcoming committee. Wednesday, January 8, early in the afternoon, Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, returned from a four-day stay in Ghana, where she went to attend the inauguration of the country’s president, John Dramani Mahama. After a sixteen-hour plane journey, she has just landed at the Los Angeles airport. Since the day before, his city has been on fire.
On the bridge, a journalist from the British channel SkyNews bumps into him. “Madam Mayor, the firefighters say they are running out of water, what do you tell them? », he asks. Karen Bass, blocked by a closed door, brushes the question aside. “Do you owe the citizens of the city an apology for being absent while their homes burned? Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars? », insists the reporter, coming up against the marble face of the councilor who avoids his gaze. After a minute and a half, she manages to escape through a door, but the video instantly goes viral.
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B for Bass
For Karen Bass, 71, the disgrace is harsh. Until these fires which ravaged a large part of his town and killed 16 people, everything seemed to be smiling on him. A former medical assistant, this postman’s daughter had climbed the ranks of the all-powerful Democratic Party one by one in this city which has always voted to the left. First a member of the local California parliament, where she became a “speaker”, she was elected congresswoman (deputy) in the House of Representatives in Washington in 2011. She is one of those that Joe Biden considers as a possible running mate for vice-president. presidency during the 2020 presidential campaign. The favorite, Kamala Harris, then senator from the same state of California, is not unanimous, since, during a debate, she accused Biden of having supported measures she said were racist. Jill Biden never digested it. So we need a plan B.
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B for Bass. The African-American MP with short curly hair sometimes dyed blonde, always smiling, is an apparatchik appreciated by her Democratic peers in Congress. Only problem: she is completely unknown nationally and above all, her pro-Castro declarations as well as her participation in the inauguration of a Scientology church suddenly make the headlines. The war between the contenders for the vice presidency is raging and the stink balls are flying, notes David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s famous political strategist. Kamala ends up winning, Karen Bass obtains, as a consolation gift, the presidency of the “Black caucus” (the parliamentary group which brings together black elected representatives in Congress) in the House of Representatives, then the town hall of Los Angeles in December 2022 . A marshal’s baton which ends a busy career. But everything changes with the fires.
-On social networks, the controversy is growing
Saturday January 4: Karen Bass flies to Accra, while all the radio stations in the city are predicting strong winds and high fire risks. The mayor doesn’t want to hear anything and no one understands why she doesn’t cancel this trip which is not a priority. The local weather forecast even announces the date of the disaster: it will be Tuesday January 7 or Wednesday January 8. And the prognosis unfortunately turns out to be correct: on Tuesday, fire broke out in three places in the city.
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At Los Angeles City Hall, press briefings to coordinate relief efforts are led by Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the president of the city’s municipal council, and not by Karen Bass, whose absence is blinding. The next day, she returned and rushed to the field in Pacific Palisades to survey the damage, but the damage was done. On social networks, the controversy is growing over the budget of the city’s firefighters which the mayor has cut by 17.5 million dollars, the fire hydrants on the sidewalks which do not work because the water is no longer coming, the Santa Ynez reservoir closed for repairs and therefore empty and unusable. The flames spread quickly and the firefighters remain powerless.
Karen Bass then becomes the target of all attacks. Donald Trump says she is “grossly incompetent”. Friday, January 10, Kristin Crowley, the Los Angeles fire chief, accuses her of having “failed” the city in an emotional interview with a local channel where she appears on edge. Showing on camera several reports where she sounded the alarm to her supervisory authorities about the lack of resources in her service, she affirms that the saving of 17.5 million in her budget has “had an impact” negative on the ability to control fires, thus contradicting the mayor who swears the opposite.
Star victims of the fires get involved. “Karen Bass, you are a joke,” Khloe Kardashian, who was evacuated, said on Instagram on Friday. Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt announced his intention to sue the State of California for “negligence”, according to him responsible for the destruction of his $3.8 million house on the hills. of Pacific Palisades… Former leader of the Democratic Party, Karen Bass was until recently assured of being re-elected in the municipal election of June 2026. But since these fires, things have gotten off to a bad start.
