Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) admitted at a debate between the candidates for Los Angeles mayor on Wednesday night that her sense of personal safety in the city had declined from “10/10” in March to “5/10” today, after her home was burglarized.
Billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, who finished second to Bass in the primary election, responded: “You’re worried about your kids going to school. I don’t want to put a ‘5’ on my kid and say, ‘Well, there’s a 50/50 chance you make it.'”
Crime is one of the major issues in the election, along with homelessness — though Bass, like other Democrats, has seized on the issue of abortion to motivate voters against Caruso, a former Republican who donated to pro-life candidates in the past.
Earlier this month, Bass was the victim of a break-in at her home in which two guns were stolen. Bass told local Fox affiliate KTTV-11 “that her guns were registered, locked in a safe box, and stashed away in a closet” when they were stolen.
At the debate, Caruso pointed out that the current mayor, Eric Garcetti, had “defunded” the police by $150 million; Bass was an early critic of the “defund the police” slogan and supports increasing the size of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The two candidates clashed over their policies on homelessness, and an ongoing bribery case at the University of Southern California, where Bass, who is not a target of prosecution, received a $95,000 scholarship she belatedly reported to Congress.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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