LOS ANGELES — U.S. Rep. Karen Bass and businessman Rick Caruso showed up to Tuesday night’s Los Angeles mayoral debate with two sharply different messages — about leadership and, to an extent, the current state of the city.
Caruso cast Los Angeles as a dystopian Gotham City, one so beset by crime that every last resident is scared to walk outdoors. He cast his opponents as “career politicians” — saying the word a bit like one might handle week-old fish — and told the audience those rivals were offering “a lot of empty promises.”
Bass pushed back on that assertion, giving the real estate developer and former police commissioner a polite lecture on city government. She advised Caruso, whom she described as a friend, to stop denigrating people who have “devoted their life to public service.”
