LOS ANGELES, Calif.—Los Angeles mayoral candidates Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and City Attorney Mike Feuer said they would not support the recall of LA District Attorney George Gascón, while LA Councilman Joe Buscaino and businessman Mel Wilson said they would support the recall effort, during a United Chambers of Commerce LA luncheon on March 21.
Kevin de León was expected to attend the luncheon but did not show up. Billionaire mogul Rick Caruso was also not in attendance, but his campaign manager confirmed he will be attending a March 22 debate hosted at the University of Southern California.
Gascón’s progressive criminal justice reforms have been a hot-button issue in previous debates as candidates discuss how they plan to restore public safety in LA. According to recent polls, public safety and homelessness are the top issues for residents voting this year.
Feuer, the city attorney, said while he will not support the recall, he disagrees with some of Gascón’s policies, though he did not clarify which ones. Gascón made sweeping reforms when he took office in 2020 by reducing sentencing for some crimes, preventing prosecutors from seeking the death penalty, and eliminating cash bail in non-violent cases.
“The DA and I will disagree where we will—and we also have to collaborate to make you safer when it comes to things like gun homicides on our streets, and so for that reason, because we have to be that team when it comes to those issues where we can agree, I’m not involved in the recall,” Feuer said.
Bass concurred with Feuer and added she thinks “reforms are important, but reforms should never be rigidly imposed.”
“They should be adjusted depending on the situation. I think the way to deal with the [district attorney] is massive public pressure,” she said.
More than 30 cities in LA County, including Torrance, Santa Clarita, Lancaster, and Beverly Hills, support the recall, with more than a dozen passing votes of no confidence against Gascón. Several prominent organizations support the recall, too, including the Association of Deputy District Attorneys and the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs.
Buscaino, an LA councilman and former LA Police Department officer, said “we can have justice, and we can have safety at the same time.”
“But if you’re a violent repeat offender, you don’t belong back out in the streets.”
Buscaino was the first mayoral candidate to back the recall of Gascón in January 2022. Caruso recently announced his support for the recall—despite supporting Gascón’s candidacy in 2020—and donated $50,000 to the recall organizers.
Amid an uptick in crime across the city, candidates who shared the stage on Monday had a similar vision for LA: keeping Angelenos safe and getting the homeless off the streets. But a few differ in their methods.
While Los Angeles County has the highest population of homeless individuals with 66,000, the city has more than 41,000, according to the last homeless count in 2020. It is estimated that roughly 1,500 homeless people died on the streets during the pandemic.
Encampments are speckled across the city and grew during the pandemic when certain city codes were relaxed to allow homeless people a place to shelter-in-place. But two years later, many of those rules have not been reinforced.
Candidates discussed whether the homeless issue is rooted in substance abuse or affordable housing, with Bass, Buscaino, and Wilson concluding it’s a substance abuse and mental health issue, while Feuer argued it’s a housing problem.
“It’s clearly an issue of housing. We are hundreds of thousands of units short of housing, clearly we have an affordable housing crisis,” Feuer said. “There’s an open-air asylum on our streets, and vacant substance abuse beds.”
Proposition HHH—a $1.2 billion bond passed in 2016 to create 10,000 permanent supportive housing units—has only created 1,142 units, according to a recent report by the city’s controller, and those that have been developed have an average cost of over $530,000 each.
One project in development, according to the report, had a price tag of $837,000 per unit.
“Tonight, hundreds of beds are available tonight. It’s irresponsible to say homelessness is a housing issue,” Buscaino said. “There’s dangerous drugs that have caused paranoia … people on the streets are not in the right mind frame to say yes to help.”
Wilson, a local businessman, said that “when you look at the homeless are, they are mentally ill. They are on drugs and they can’t seem to get off of it.”
Bass said that “when prisons were downsized, we didn’t make plans for the people who got out.” She said she would declare a state of emergency immediately and involve the federal government in providing housing and various resources for the mentally ill homeless population.
Each candidate said they would increase the LAPD and support the slated 12 percent increase in the police budget next year. According to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, homicides in LA are up 94 percent over the last two years and there’s been a 54 percent increase in car thefts.
