Comments
DEEGAN ON LA - Councilmember Traci Park (CD 11) is acting like a mayor, and she looks pretty good the way she is representing and fighting for the Palisades community.
The neophyte first term city council member has been aggressively advocating for the community and has not been shy about running on a separate track than actual mayor Karen Bass when necessary.
Her recent political maneuver may retroactively be seen a defining moment—she sidestepped the mayor and went straight to the governor on an issue.
The hot potato was a decision by Mayor Bass to lift the barriers to entry in the Palisades. Checkpoints have been manned by LAPD and the National Guard.
The mayor wanted them removed. Park pushed back. The community was aghast that Bass would be inviting sightseers into the fallen community and that a criminal element may be part of the influx of strangers looking around.
Park’s action was to contact Governor Newsome and lobby for keeping the National Guard in place and finding a way to allow LAPD back to their normal duties. The security vacuum was filled when the governor agreed to have the California Highway Patrol replace the LAPD at checkpoints.
With that, Bass had been check-pointed and isolated.
Significantly, it was not just Park that objected to the mayor’s plan; the mayor and her recovery czar were not in alignment on lifting the patrols either.
Bold, decisive, ever-present and unafraid to challenge authority when it goes against the grain of serving her constituents in Pacific Palisades, Park has become a political discovery. She’s acting like the de facto Mayor of the Palisades.
A regular feature at fire and recovery press conferences, Park demonstrated an aggressive flex when she disagreed with Mayor Bass about the roadblocks.
What Los Angles woke up to the morning after Bass said she was lifting the Palisades road closures was a Bass reversal that would keep the Palisades closed to unauthorized visitors. It showed another mayoral stumble to those already jittery about how she’s managing this crisis.
Rick Caruso had Instagrammed his lack of support for Bass lifting the road closures, calling it “reckless”. More telling was the non-alignment on the issue between the mayor and her recovery czar Steve Soberoff, who was also against lifting the closure. He “thought the reopening was premature”
Bass, who had no reported role in developing the revised plan that triggered her reversal, except to recall LAPD to its regular duties, could only graciously thank the governor for his intervention. It’s unknown what she may have said to Park behind closed doors at City Hall, but likely Park joins Fire Chief Kristin Crowley on a Bass list of troublemakers. Many might say “good trouble”.
If novice politico Park can leverage passion into policy what’s to stop her council colleagues, or others in the wings, from openly challenging the mayor? The Fire Chief had no qualms and apparently neither did Park. Now, other may be emboldened.
The chipping away at the mayor’s leadership was not only by Park. Rick Caruso says he is in almost daily touch with the governor to whom he shared his plans for Steadfast LA, a private foundation that will be funded, Caruso says, by his millions and featuring “top engineering and technology companies and pushing for a quick recovery that aims to prevent future calamities”.
In what looked like a “P.S.” after his announcement was splashed across the front page of the LA Times, Caruso said he would call the mayor and let her know, ex post facto, what he was up to.
Local leaders bypassing the mayor to go to the governor is not a good sign unless it is designed to be a sign.
Extending her political reach, Park has been named chair of a city council committee called the Ad Hoc Committee on L.A. Recovery, to address the unprecedented devastation caused by the Palisades Fire, adding heft to her voice in City Hall when the Palisades is on the agenda.
(Tim Deegan is a civic activist whose Deegan on LA weekly column has been a feature of CityWatch for 11 years. Tim writes about city politics and communities. Tim can be reached at [email protected].)
