Our last book was titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book will look at the 2024 election. Among other things, it discusses state and local elections.
After the first rally in her campaign for mayor of Los Angeles in 2021, Karen Bass spoke candidly about what she saw as a potential drawback to the job — a lack of world travel and involvement in global affairs.
Ms. Bass was accustomed to circling the globe as a Democratic member of Congress and of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and had spent decades working on U.S.-Africa relations. It was one of the most absorbing parts of her political career, she told The New York Times in an interview on Oct. 17, 2021, at her home in the Baldwin Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles.
“I went to Africa every couple of months, all the time,” she said, adding, “The idea of leaving that, especially the international work and the Africa work, I was like, ‘Mmm, I don’t think I want to do that.’”
She ultimately decided that she did, telling The Times that if she was elected mayor, “not only would I of course live here, but I also would not travel internationally — the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and New York, in relation to L.A.”
That pledge has been spectacularly broken.
When a cascade of deadly and destructive wildfires erupted across the Los Angeles region on Tuesday, the mayor was on her way home from Ghana in West Africa, where she had attended the inauguration of a new president.
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“I think being out of state and not at her post when the crisis broke out is fairly devastating for her,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant who was an aide to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “This is the biggest disaster in Los Angeles since the Watts riots. You have one job as mayor. It’s to be here and be leading. This wasn’t unpredictable, like an earthquake.
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The National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office began telegraphing increasingly dire messages about heavy winds on Sunday. A red flag warning about fire danger that was issued Sunday was upgraded Monday to a “particularly dangerous situation” warning, only the fifth time the agency had ever issued such a warning for Los Angeles.
“HEADS UP!!! A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, Widespread Windstorm is expected,” the agency posted on X Monday, saying that winds could reach 100 m.p.h and would hit places that were not usually affected.
