LA Mayor Karen Bass’s popularity has taken a nose dive over her handling of the wildfires, with a shocking number of residents in the famously liberal city now even willing to vote Republican, a poll shows.
More than half of the people surveyed said they disapprove of Bass’ leadership, and she lags behind Dem rival Rick Caruso by 7 points in a hypothetical mayoral match-up, according to the poll, which was sponsored by conservative consultancy Madison McQueen.
Forty-three percent of respondents said they would even “consider Republican leadership” now in Los Angeles, which has not had a Republican mayor in more than 20 years.
The poll highlights the blowback Bass received as the Palisades Fire recently chewed through some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, killing several people, incinerating thousands of structures and forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes.
Bass had been on a trip to Africa when the fire and a slew of other local blazes broke out, and critics slammed her for being absent during the crisis, freezing up when questioned by the reporters and having previously cut $17.6 million in fire department funding in the new city budget.
Chief among her critics is real-estate mogul and former water Commissioner Caruso, who lost to Bass in the 2022 mayoral election.
Caruso was quick to publically bash Bass and the Los Angeles Fire Department in the early days of the fires, during which hydrants ran out of water and firefighters proved helpless to bring the blazes under control.
“There’s no water in the fire hydrants,” Caruso had fumed to local media. “The firefighters are there, and there’s nothing they can do — we’ve got neighborhoods burning, homes burning, and businesses burning. … It should never happen.”
According to the Madison McQueen poll, Caruso may have already positioned himself as a frontrunner in the upcoming 2026 mayoral election, should he choose to run again.
Outside city limits, residents of LA County — where the Eaton Fire torched more than 14,000 acres — also have blasted local and state leaders, particularly Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who, after years of bolstering fire preparedness suddenly slashed the state’s firefighting efforts by $101 million just seven months before the fires broke out.