LA Mayor Karen Bass promised voters earlier than being elected that she wouldn’t journey overseas — solely to be caught gallivanting round Ghana when the worst wildfires within the metropolis’s historical past broke out final week.
Only a 12 months earlier than she took workplace, Bass pledged to the New York Occasions that if elected, “Not solely would I after all reside right here [in Los Angeles], however I additionally wouldn’t journey internationally — the one locations I might go could be DC, Sacramento, San Francisco and New York, in relation to LA.”
The previous congresswoman was addressing questions on her earlier globe-trotting as a member of the Home Overseas Affairs Committee on the time.
However Bass has since damaged that promise not less than 5 occasions this 12 months alone, together with when critics say she skirted her duties again house by just lately touring to Africa for Ghana’s presidential inauguration — as LA’s devastating wildfires broke out.
Bass went to Africa to ring within the inauguration of Ghana’s 14th president, John Dramani Mahama, 4 days earlier than the wildfires started Tuesday. Earlier than that whereas mayor, she had gone to Mexico for the inauguration of President Claudia Sheinbaum and thrice to France for the 2024 Olympic Video games in Paris, the Occasions mentioned.
Rivals and constituents throughout the aisle have levied heavy criticisms in opposition to the mayor for going overseas.
Even liberal Los Angelenos have been outraged at their Democratic mayor as they grapple with the lethal devastating blazes which have killed ultimately 16 folks and destroyed hundreds of houses and companies, with a few of hte fires nonetheless burning uncontrolled.
Conservatives are calling for her resignation alongside California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Firefighters who endorsed her opponent Rick Caruso throughout the 2022 mayoral race have accused Bass of chopping their funds, hampering their blaze-fighting efforts. Even town’s fireplace chief advised a reporter final week that she believed the Los Angeles Fireplace Division had been failed by town’s leaders.
“My message is the hearth division must be correctly funded. It’s not,” LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley advised Fox 11.
Because the fires proceed to rage, many are questioning how Bass will be capable to successfully serve in her place going ahead after shedding the folks’s belief.
“I feel being out of state and never at her submit when the disaster broke out is pretty devastating for her,” Rob Stutzman, a Republican political guide who was an aide to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, advised the Occasions.
“That is the most important catastrophe in Los Angeles because the Watts riots. You will have one job as mayor. It’s to be right here and be main. This wasn’t unpredictable, like an earthquake,”
Since her return to the states Wednesday, Bass has constantly pushed her constituents to “reject those that search to divide us.” She even made one other promise: to have “a full accounting of what labored and, particularly, what didn’t” as soon as the fires are extinguished.
Bass claimed that she was constantly in touch with folks within the states “virtually each hour of the flight” whereas she was en route again from Ghana. She went to the Pacific Palisades fire-ravaged area as quickly as she landed, she mentioned.
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