‘Doesn’t feel very “locked arms” to me’: Texts reveal strain between Bass and Horvath

Los Angeles was still deep in crisis on Jan. 21 when county Supervisor Lindsey Horvath made her frustration known to Mayor Karen Bass.

The Palisades fire was only partially contained. Forecasters had issued a rare alert amid vicious winds, warning that new fires could spark. And the first rain of the season was expected soon, meaning mud and debris could careen down scorched hillsides.

Bass was still struggling to regain her political footing after stumbling badly in the days after the fire broke out. City and county officials had been holding daily news conferences together — until that morning and the previous morning, when Bass spoke to reporters without her county counterparts.

Behind closed doors, those appearances, and other issues involving cooperation and communication, had become a topic of contention between two of the most powerful women in Los Angeles, as a lengthy text message that Horvath sent Bass at 9:11 that morning reveals.

“You asked us to lay off the daily pressers. We did. We asked you to join us for this announcement tomorrow. No response. Now we hear you’re doing one without us today when we are in lead role at your Depts’ request?” wrote Horvath, whose district includes Pacific Palisades.

“Doesn’t feel very ‘locked arms’ to me,” she added, invoking a catchphrase Bass often uses to emphasize the importance of cooperation among government officials. The slogan is central to Bass’ political brand, with the mayor citing it at most public appearances.

Bass responded five hours later, saying she wasn’t sure what announcement Horvath was referring to and suggesting they sit down and talk that afternoon.

The supervisor’s text message and other correspondence obtained by The Times through public records requests highlight an increasingly fractious relationship between Bass, 71, and Horvath, 42. The strain comes as the two politicians navigate what could be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

As one of five L.A. County supervisors, Horvath holds a relatively low-profile position that comes with enormous power. When she won her 2022 election over a longtime legislator, the millennial former mayor of West Hollywood went from representing one of the region’s smallest cities to having more than 2 million constituents.

Her district — which stretches from coastal Malibu and Santa Monica east to West Hollywood and north through much of the San Fernando Valley — includes the entire Palisades fire burn scar. She is also working with the other supervisors to oversee rebuilding from the Eaton fire, which demolished swaths of unincorporated Altadena and other areas in Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s district.

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Bass, by contrast, is the most visible politician in the region, responsible for the city of Los Angeles’ roughly 3.9 million residents.

During her first two years as mayor, Bass, who previously served in Congress and as speaker of the state Assembly, has made strong relationships across various levels of government a key part of her identity. When she faced harsh criticism during January’s catastrophic firestorm for not being a more commanding leader, her allies touted her ability to “lock arms” as a potential saving grace in the city’s long road to recovery.

But the Jan. 21 encounter between Bass and Horvath was hardly a one-off, raising questions about whether the mayor’s trademark skill, which she has leaned on to make progress on homelessness, may be failing her when she needs it most.

Rebuilding from the Palisades fire will require extensive cooperation, not just with the county and state, but also with the Trump administration, which has promised to cut off federal funding to “sanctuary cities” such as L.A. that limit collaboration with immigration authorities.

When asked about the text message and their relationship, Bass praised Horvath and said the two were united in their mission.

“Supervisor Horvath has been a tremendous partner. ... She and I continue to work together to make sure the Palisades can rebuild as quickly and safely as possible,” Bass said in a statement Monday. “There’s going to be miscommunication along the way, and at the end of the day, the Supervisor and I are united in getting the people we serve back home and back on their feet.”

Horvath’s response was less effusive.

“Dealing with a crisis of this scale is complex, and frustrations are inevitable,” Horvath said Monday in a statement. “Mayor Bass cares deeply for the residents of Los Angeles, and I will continue to work with her — as I do with the Mayors of all of my District’s cities — to ensure the County is supporting all our communities.”

Asked whether Bass had told Horvath not to participate in daily news conferences, Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl did not directly respond, saying, “Feedback from constituents was that the press conferences were too long.”

Horvath spokesperson Constance Farrell said the supervisor had asked to continue with joint news conferences, but Bass’ office declined to participate.

The text messages and emails obtained by The Times include other contentious exchanges between the mayor and the supervisor, as well as terse communications from a senior Horvath staffer to top aides in the mayor’s office.

Even before the Palisades fire, Bass and Horvath had been at odds. In November, Horvath went public with a proposal to shrink the duties of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which is overseen by city and county political appointees.

Horvath, after spending about a year chairing the homeless authority’s board, called for hundreds of millions of dollars to be shifted out of the agency and into a new county department focused on homelessness.

Bass pushed back, voicing concern that such a move would create a “new bureaucracy” that would slow the momentum to reduce the number of homeless encampments.

The “locking arms” mayor has also experienced frayed relations on other fronts in the weeks since flames felled entire city blocks.

Days after the fires started, Gov. Gavin Newsom told podcast host Jon Favreau that his team “wasn’t getting straight answers” from local leaders.

Bass has also appeared at times to be out of sync with Traci Park, the City Council member who represents the Palisades. And Bass shut her own chief recovery officer, Steve Soboroff, out of at least one important decision before appearing to narrow the scope of his role.

Some of those tensions came to a head on Friday, Jan. 31, 10 days after Horvath sent her sharply worded text, when Bass announced at a community Zoom meeting that the Palisades would reopen to the public that Sunday.

As more than 600 Palisades residents watched, Park took the highly unusual step of directly criticizing the mayor’s decision, saying she believed it was too soon for the neighborhood to reopen.

And Soboroff — who had been handpicked by the mayor two weeks prior, in part because of his Westside cultural fluency and deep ties to the affluent coastal neighborhood — said he was unaware of the reopening plan and thought it was premature.

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Outrage from Palisades residents also spewed hot and fast. Hours before the neighborhood was set to reopen, Bass reversed course, saying that the checkpoints blocking off the area to almost everyone except residents would remain in place.

Bass’ eleventh-hour announcement of her reversal caught some local leaders, including Horvath, flat-footed. Bass’ aides did not inform Horvath of the reversal until after they had publicly announced it.

On the evening of Saturday, Feb. 1 — one minute after Bass’ office sent a news release to reporters about her plan to keep the checkpoints in place — a senior Bass staffer forwarded the release to Horvath’s top deputy.

“FYI — wanted to make sure Sup Horvath saw this. Let me know if you have any questions!” Joey Freeman, Bass’ deputy mayor of intergovernmental affairs, wrote to Estevan Montemayor, Horvath’s chief of staff.

The lengthy news release included a bullet point saying that the city’s portion of Pacific Coast Highway would not reopen until Monday — potentially creating additional confusion, because the vast majority of the road is under county jurisdiction and would still reopen Sunday morning.

In an email to Freeman and Bass’ deputy chief of staff, Jenny Delwood, Montemayor called the delay “problematic” but said the county would stay the course on reopening its portion of PCH.

Montemayor put a finer point on his frustration in a 9:56 p.m. text message to Delwood: “Hi. Is there a reason you called the mayor of Malibu and not the county?” (Malibu, which is also in Horvath’s district, is a separate city from Los Angeles.)

Delwood told Montemayor that the mayor’s office had “split the list of calls” and that Freeman was supposed to reach out to him. She said she was always happy to connect and offered to hop on the phone.

“Sending a press release is not coordination. What you have done is create more chaos not less,” Montemayor replied. “What is done is done.”

Minutes later, Horvath expressed her own displeasure to Bass in a 10:18 p.m. text message:

“Is there a reason your staff called Malibu officials without calling me or the Sheriff? We are working within protocol and they are not your jurisdiction. Sheriff has been working with [Los Angeles Police] Chief McDonnell, until you pulled the rug on the coordinated plan,” Horvath wrote.

“I reach out to no avail. Even you and Traci [Park] don’t seem to be on the same page. [Steve] Soboroff says he learns of your plans from press,” the supervisor continued. “I don’t know what’s going on over there. Coordination is missing but it’s what people want and deserve. Would be great if your team could get on that page with us.”

Times staff writers David Zahniser and Rebecca Ellis contributed to this report.