By Jim Newton, CalMatters

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View of downtown Los Angeles from Ascot Park during sunset on Nov. 18, 2022. Photo by Larry Valenzuela for CalMatters

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Plenty of Angelenos these days complain about what they see as the city’s lack of leadership, a critique that often is directed at the city’s mayor and council. 

That’s understandable in one sense — these are trying times, especially in big cities — but it’s poorly focused in Los Angeles, where history and custom suggest that what’s lacking is not necessarily political authority but civic leadership. 

The lament focuses on several points: Mayor Karen Bass was unimpressive in the early days after the Palisades Fire; much of the city feels unsafe and run-down; the Olympics are fast-approaching, and Los Angeles doesn’t feel ready to put on a show of that scale and significance.

These are fair complaints, but they include several fallacies and one key misunderstanding about what city leadership actually looks like.

It’s true that Bass was on a diplomatic mission overseas when the fires erupted in January. When she first returned, she seemed overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge. But the recovery has moved relatively swiftly, and there is no evidence to suggest that her absence or early uncertainty made the situation worse. 

Indeed, the fact that Altadena, which is outside the city limits, suffered precisely the same fate and then confronted precisely the same recovery obstacles — and that part of Los Angeles is rebounding at least as quickly — is proof that Bass’s contributions have helped, not hindered, the work in the Palisades. 

This was a fire, bigger than any mayor or fire department. Bass should be judged on the recovery, and so far, she has earned high marks.

As for public safety, while Los Angeles may feel embattled to some residents, it’s actually safer than it has been in many, many years. New updates on crime and homelessness reveal progress on both fronts. Homicides are on pace to reach annual lows in 2025 not seen in decades, and the number of people sleeping on city streets has declined in back-to-back years. 

That does not sound like failure. 

The sense of a city in disrepair is to be reckoned with, but addressing it — in Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere — starts by being clear that the numbers do not support the uneasiness. For anyone who lived in Los Angeles in the 1990s, when more than 1,000 people a year were being murdered — this is a much safer city. And though homelessness remains dismayingly widespread, progress should be applauded.

Is the region ready for the Olympics? No. But the concern about the Olympics is a good reminder of what actually counts for leadership in this city. While Los Angeles is not facing a crisis of political leadership, it does confront a dearth of civic leadership. 

Leadership from beyond City Hall

It was not that long ago that the city’s mayor was just one source of influence in this notoriously diffuse civic culture. The Committee of 25, a loose but powerful collection of civic leaders, once exercised quiet leadership over local affairs. The committee, organized by insurance executive Asa Call, collected some of the city’s most influential executives and marshalled their efforts on behalf of city priorities, from municipal bond measures to the construction of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The committee had its failings — it was almost entirely the domain of white, Protestant men, for one thing — but it complemented the mayor and council as a source of leadership.

With the committee’s eventual demise, other notable individuals rose to fill the vacuum. Modest and shrewd, Warren Christopher acted as a kind of civic consigliere over his long and distinguished career. In addition to serving as a top deputy to President Carter and Secretary of State to President Clinton, Christopher chaired the colloquially titled “Christopher Commission” that examined the LAPD in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating in 1991. 

The commission’s findings about racism and brutality at the LAPD laid the groundwork for the modern police department. In all my years of covering local, state and national politics, I have never seen a commission whose recommendations resulted in more profound and lasting change.

Christopher died in 2011, but the baton of civic duty was carried forward by others, most notably billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, whose civic contributions included school reform, the redesign of Los Angeles’ architectural landscape and the completion of Disney Hall, which stood as a monument to civic failure until Broad took it over and brought it to fruition, delivering the city an architectural and cultural gem. 

Mayors played a role in the work of those civic leaders — Mayor Tom Bradley created the commission that Christopher managed, and Mayor Richard Riordan turned to Broad for help with Disney Hall — but Christopher and Broad had their own standing and regard, independent of City Hall.

Ill-advised political aspirations

That’s what is absent in Los Angeles today. Where the city’s political leadership has its stumbles and failings, its civic leadership is altogether missing in action. 

Witness the aftermath of the Palisades fires. Bass turned to Steve Soboroff to lead that effort, but it quickly bogged down in misunderstandings about his role and whether he should be paid for it. He bowed out in April.

Developer Rick Caruso, meanwhile, convened a group of his own, but it drew largely from his political supporters, and was dismissed as a vehicle for his aggrandizement rather than for genuine city responsibility. 

What made Christopher and Broad effective, in addition to their generosity and intelligence, was their disinterest in holding elected office. Their advice was unsullied by their personal ambition, at least in terms of local politics. Not so for Caruso. 

Caruso could opt to be a civic leader in Los Angeles, but his ambition is too great for that. Instead, he aimed for political office and failed — Bass beat him by 10 points in 2022 — and he may yet try again, so he remains a would-be political figure rather than a civic leader.

Other sources of power and leadership have similarly disintegrated, most notably the Los Angeles Times. The Chandler family once stood at the center of Los Angeles leadership — for better and for worse — and the paper was a mighty voice. 

Today, The Times is a shell of its former self, and its owner is more a subject of ridicule than a leader. To take just one example, he recently announced his intention to create a “leadership council.” It sank without a trace. Who wants to be a member of a leadership council that shows no capacity for leading?

Which brings us back to the Olympics. One of those estimable L.A. figures who made a name for himself in actually guiding Los Angeles, rather than merely seeking political office, was Peter Ueberroth, whose signature contribution was in spearheading the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Ueberroth helped make those games a roaring success and set a template for the modern Olympics. That did not, however, translate into political triumph. Ueberroth was a flop in his ill-advised 2003 campaign for governor. 

That only underscores the point: Political leadership and civic leadership are different things. Los Angeles has the former, but it needs much more of the latter.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.