With one day left to declare candidacy in the race for Los Angeles mayor, all eyes are on Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer behind outdoor shopping meccas like The Grove.
Caruso ran and narrowly lost to Karen Bass in the last election, then became a fierce critic of the mayor — never more so than in the aftermath of the devastating wildfires that wiped out the Pacific Palisades and Altadena in early 2025. Caruso famously hired private firefighters to save his Palisades Village, successfully sparing it from the flames. Bass, alternately, was in Ghana for a diplomatic trip as L.A. burned, a decision she later admitted to regretting.
Caruso announced several weeks ago he would not be seeking public office. As the minutes tick away to the campaign deadline, however, chatter has grown that he could be lured back into the race. The chatter has grown even louder due to his outrage over a Los Angeles Times report that Bass — who is running for reelection — directed officials to soften details in a fires report, in order to lessen the impression of a failure of leadership in response to the disaster, which claimed 11 lives. (Bass denies the claims.)
There are yet even more controversies roiling L.A. politics. The Graffiti Towers still loom over downtown, with the 2028 Olympics a little over two years away. And speaking of the L.A. Olympics, organizing committee president Casey Wasserstein is facing calls to step down amid recent revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein document dump that tie him, via flirtatious emails, to Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, albeit ones dating back to 2003.
The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Caruso to get his take on all of it. The gloves are off, the language is blunter, and the patience for euphemism is gone. He may be staying private, but he is not staying polite.
I’m seeing conflicting reports regarding you and the mayor’s race: First you’re out, then you’re considering it, then the L.A. Times says you’re out again. What’s your final answer?
I’m not running. I said that a couple of weeks ago and then very nicely people were trying to recruit me to come in, and that was very flattering. But I made a decision a couple of weeks ago not to run and that stands. I love the city. I will find many other ways to continue to support it.
There seems to be a groundswell of voices who feel L.A. could really use you.
I really appreciate that. I really do. And it’s such a great honor that so many people have confidence in me, but it’s just not the right time for a number of reasons. And as you know, these decisions are so deeply personal. There are a lot of different reasons [why I can’t run].
I loved running three years ago. I had a great experience. I obviously didn’t like the way it ended, but the experience was great and we had a wonderful time as a family doing it and I gave it my all. It didn’t work out. But at this point, there will be no run this time.
Is there anyone that you would throw your weight behind that you see in the field?
Let’s see how the field shapes up. There’s one more day. I really don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest, but we have time for that. There will be time for that.
Spencer Pratt has served himself up as an anti-Karen Bass candidate, but he’s also a reality star. I was just curious what you think of him.
I think he’s a very well-intended guy. The only thing I would say about anybody who wants to run is that we’ve had somebody that didn’t have the experience to run the city, so I think experience is really important on knowing how to manage a job like that.
The last time we talked about these Graffiti Towers, it was two years ago. They stand as a monument to something going very wrong in L.A. Things seem to have moved now in a positive direction with them getting out of bankruptcy and available for a sale, but I’m wondering what your thoughts are, with your real estate expertise. The question I already posed, is can we get this fixed before the Olympics? What do you think?
Well, what do you define as fixed?
Well, that’s a good question. I’m not imagining even move-inable, but something that doesn’t look like a big graffiti stained, ugly eyesore on the skyline.
I think it’s absolutely terrible. It’s sitting there as a billboard announcing that we’ve got a city in some kind of crisis. It just demonstrates the city is not functioning properly, because it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. And when it did happen, it should have been cleaned up immediately. So can it get cleaned up before the Olympics? Sure. And it should get cleaned up. And the city, if it has to, has got to spend the money to do it.
But can it get finished as originally intended? I don’t think so. From what I looked at, and I haven’t looked at it for a couple years, there just isn’t the market in order to support spending the money to finish that as originally intended.
But they’re not even saying the city would spend any money. They’re saying that they would sell it to now a new owner, I guess a non-Chinese owner, but not necessarily, who then would put the necessary money into making it livable. So you’re saying there won’t be a buyer?
Well, maybe there’s going to be a buyer, but I don’t think there’s going to be somebody that buys it to finish it. The market can’t support what they originally intended to build. And the numbers that I looked at a couple of years ago, what it will take you to finish that building will be more money than what it’s worth when you’re done. So nobody would ever do that.
We’re actually in a worse situation now, because the market in downtown has declined so much. You’ve got a market downtown that has a 40 percent vacancy rate because of the crime and because of the homeless situation down there. Companies have moved out, so there’s less of a market and less of a demand for this building.
I asked this two years ago: Is demolition the only solution?
I think it’s probably the best solution. And demolishing that building, by the way, is not inexpensive. That is a very expensive building to demolish.
I can’t even imagine what goes into demolishing something of that size.
Fortunately, I’ve never had to do that in my career, so I’m glad I don’t have that experience.
You do the opposite. You save buildings.
I do my best. I like building things, not destroying things. But listen, it’s a tough one. It just goes back to the failure of leadership in the city — that our leadership allowed this to happen and didn’t secure the building when they saw it first happening. And then it turned into a circus down there.
I would certainly be working to find a way to get that building cleaned and have the city go after the owners to reimburse the city so we’re not out of pocket for it. But I think the city very much has to take the lead in getting it cleaned.
Now, in her defense, this thing started going up before Karen Bass was mayor. Eric Garcetti was mayor at the start. But, not in her defense, I saw you tweet about the story in the L.A. Times about her ordering the details softened in the fire-action report. I wonder if you could just comment on that.
It’s an outrage. It’s unthinkable. It is a complete violation of public trust to have an elected official, a mayor, a chief executive that takes an oath of office to protect people and to execute her job, and to be changing an official report that is intended to learn from so that it doesn’t happen again. It just undermines the whole validity of that report.
People died, thousands of homes and thousands of jobs, but also 11 people died. And I don’t know what she was thinking. I can’t even imagine. Just a complete lack of judgment.
And it’s a coverup. It’s clearly just a coverup.
And to be clear, you had the same weather information before the fires, right? So you took that information and hired private firefighters to save Palisades Village. And she, with the same information, went to Ghana. Is that correct?
That’s correct. And, obviously, she did not make sure that there was a plan before she left to deal with the predicted winds and to make sure that the original fire was put out.
Are you surprised she’s running again at all?
I’m not going to comment on that, because I’m going to say something I’ll probably regret. What I will say is that some people may not have the best self-awareness and understanding of their responsibilities and are not willing to be held accountable. She’s just not willing to be held accountable — for anything — and that’s not good leadership. That’s bad leadership.
I’m sure you’ve seen the Casey Wasserman stuff coming up in the Epstein files. Asked to weigh in, she referred it to the Olympics committee. What are your own thoughts?
I’m not going to speak on that. I think that’s a very personal decision that Casey’s got to make and decide if he can execute his job given what’s happened. And that’s something that he’s got to decide himself.
So you’re passing on mayor. What about California governor?
No. No. I’m going to stay private for now.
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