Pat Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times, shared on Monday that he believed his paper’s endorsement of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass during the 2022 mayoral campaign was “a mistake.”
“So, at the L.A. Times, we endorsed Karen Bass. I think, right now, upfront, that’s a mistake, and we admit that,” Soon-Shiong said. “So, I thought it was very important early on for me to come out.”
“And I think we were one of the few to say competence matters,” he continued while appearing on the online show The Morning Meeting.
The paper executive said there should be deeper thought into “how we elect people.”
“An interesting thing is that maybe we should think about how we elect people on the basis of did they actually run a job? Did they actually make a payroll? Do they understand what it is?” he asked.
Soon-Shiong called out “professional politicians” whose only job is to run for office.
“Not trying to be disparaging but I think we are at the stage now in this nation and in the world … that you really need people who understand how it affects a man in the street. You know, how it affects a working type of person,” he said.
The Los Angeles Times owner went on to praise President-elect Donald Trump for “addressing the problems of the man in the street” during the 2024 election.
“Competence absolutely matters,” he added. “I’m glad [it has] almost been taken up as a meme now, that ‘competence matters.’”
“Good for him,” X executive Elon Musk responded on his platform.
Bass has been receiving blowback for her overseas trip to Ghana when the fires initially started. Los Angeles residents further criticized her for a lack of water resources and having cut the fire department’s budget ahead of the wildfires. Numerous celebrities and California residents, including actress Justine Bateman, have been circulating a petition calling on her to resign.
When Bass was elected, the paper touted how she was the “first woman to lead Los Angeles.”
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She had run against businessman Rick Caruso who had previously been the president of the Los Angeles Police Commission and a member of the Board of Water and Power Commissioners. He has been a leading critic of Bass and Newsom’s leadership during the wildfires.
“There is no water coming out of the fire hydrants. This is an absolute mismanagement by the city. It’s not the firefighter’s fault … we got a mayor that’s out of the country and we got a city burning. There’s no resources to put out fires,” Caruso said to a local LA Fox TV affiliate last week. “This was a disaster waiting to happen. What is predictable is preventable. … This looks like a third-world country.”
