The Battle of Brentwood - Previewing the 2026 California Governor's Race

Why Kamala Harris v. Rick Caruso Won't be Karen Bass v. Rick Caruso

A long list of candidates is already running to replace Gavin Newsom in 2026, but perhaps the two most talked about candidates are two who haven’t even declared whether they will actually run for Governor:

Vice President Kamala Harris and billionaire shopping mall developer Rick Caruso.

The distinct possibility exists that both could face each other in a November 2026 general election.¹

It would be the Battle of Brentwood, the affluent and exclusive Los Angeles neighborhood where both Harris and Caruso live not too far away from each other.²

This is made possible by California’s lack of party primaries and its top two primary system. In the Governor’s race, all candidates will run in one single primary regardless of their party.³ All voters, regardless of their registered political party, can vote for Governor.⁴ Whichever top two candidates finish with the most votes advance to the general election, regardless of their party or overall vote share percentage.⁵

This could result in two Democrats, like Harris and Caruso, facing off against each other for Governor in the general election.

While the California Democratic Party would almost certainly endorse Harris, that would not prevent Caruso from winning a Democrat v. Democrat general election.

In several general elections between Democrats, the Democratic candidate endorsed by the California Democratic Party has lost to their fellow Democratic opponent. Some notable examples include:

• Congressman Eric Swalwell, who won his 2012 Congressional race despite the California Democratic Party endorsing his opponent.

• Congresswoman Nanette Barragan, who won her 2016 Congressional race despite the California Democratic Party endorsing her opponent.

• Congressman Ro Khanna, who won his 2016 Congressional race despite the California Democratic Party endorsing his opponent.

• Senator Dianne Feinstein, who won re-election in 2018 despite the California Democratic Party endorsing her opponent.

Caruso could enter a general election even with another Republican running and without a Republican ballot label.

In 2012, Bill Bloomfield (a billionaire developer), running as a No Party Preference candidate, entered the 33rd Congressional District general election against incumbent Henry Waxman (D-California) with large numbers of Republican voters casting their ballots for him instead of the lone Republican in the primary.

In a 2015 special election for the 7th State Senate District, a conservative-leaning Democrat, Steve Glazer, entered a general election appealing to Republican and No Party Preference voters, many of whom defected to vote for him instead of the lone Republican in the primary. In the general election, he prevailed over Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, despite the California Democratic Party endorsing her.

Of course, the Battle of Brentwood may not occur.

Harris, having come so close to the Presidency in 2024, may still wish to be President. If she runs for Governor in 2026, it likely precludes her from running for President in 2028.

Caruso, who appears bitter over his loss in the 2022 Los Angeles Mayoral race, seems to find reasons daily - real and imagined - to attack Mayor Karen Bass on social media. He may want a rematch.

Ironically, at least one of them would have to find a new political consultant if they both sought to be Governor. As journalist and Substack writer

Peter Kiefer

reported, in Meet Rick Caruso's Ace in the Hole, both Kamala Harris and Rick Caruso have the same political consultant.

That said, running for Governor is a natural move for both.

Most of the problems in LA that Caruso complains about are those that could be fixed at the state level. His decision to help victims of the Eaton Fire - completely outside of LA’s city boundaries - suggest he aims for higher office. Although he may lack statewide name recognition now, he has the ability to purchase name recognition.

Having served as U.S. Senator and Attorney General, Harris has won statewide election five times and is well-liked by most California voters. In 2024, she won the Presidential race in California by a larger margin and greater percentage of the vote than Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in both 1980 and 1984.

Who would have the upper hand in the Battle of Brentwood?

While Harris would be considered a favorite, Caruso would face a less liberal electorate statewide. Currently, 45.83% of registered voters in California are Democrats, 24.95% are Republicans, and 22.07% are No Party Preference.⁶ By contrast, at the 2022 Mayoral election, 57.98% of registered voters in Los Angeles were Democrats, 12.98% were Republicans, and 22.77% were No Party Preference.⁷

Moreover, he would not have the disadvantage of facing Karen Bass as an opponent.

This is far more significant than many pundits recognize. And understanding why Caruso lost the 2022 Los Angeles Mayoral election race is critical to understanding why he could very well win the 2026 California Governor’s race.

By all accounts, Karen Bass should have lost in 2022.

The city wanted change and she was an elected official who had been in office for 18 years. As a Congresswoman and previously an Assemblywoman, she had only represented one part of Los Angeles, and lacked name recognition. Most Angelenos in 2022 saw her on the ballot for the very first time.

Financially, the self-funding Caruso swamped her. Spending $104 million, he outspent her by more than 10-1. And the financial gap between them was actually wider given the independent spending against her by the LAPD and LAFD unions.

Although he had not run for office before, Caruso also had name recognition as a developer. He had built some locally beloved shopping centers in Los Angeles like the Grove and Palisades Village. In the case of the Grove, his development helped revitalize a commercial district that had long been economically stagnant.

Los Angeles has traditionally lacked great shopping streets and commercial areas. The world famous Rodeo Drive is located in Beverly Hills, an independent city that is not part of the City of Los Angeles. So too are most of the well-known shopping districts in the greater Los Angeles area.

As for Los Angeles’s shopping districts, they’ve generally suffered from neglect, bad planning, crime, and overly excessive taxation. Even the most successful like Westwood Village and the Miracle Mile went into long decline. When Caruso built his shopping centers, he helped create neighborhood centers for Angelenos that Angelenos otherwise didn’t have. He was broadly well-liked as a result.

Granted, not everyone loved his malls. In a very moving (and admittedly heartbreaking) piece about losing his family home in the Palisades Fire, My Own Private Palisades: A Writer Remembers His Vanished Neighborhood, the aforementioned

Peter Kiefer

wrote of Caruso’s Pacific Palisades shopping center “The longtime residents I knew ultimately came to accept but could never fully embrace this new, shiny version of the Palisades.”

Nevertheless, Angelinos did not have to love fancy malls to respect his business acumen. And his campaign message of making the entire city like one of his shiny and upscale malls had great appeal.

Caruso also had support from many progressive leading Hollywood elites who happily endorsed his campaign. Kim Kardashian, who interviewed him on her Instagram channel, broadcast her personal endorsement to tens of millions of people.

Even their local educational backgrounds reflected the mismatch. Caruso graduated from what is now Harvard-Westlake (then Harvard School for Boys), a prestigious, private preparatory school where the city’s wealthy, famous, and powerful spend nearly $50,000 a year (in 2024-2025) in tuition alone to educate their children, while Bass graduated from Hamilton High School, a free LAUSD public school.

Yet Bass won.

And not narrowly, but decisively, winning by the largest margin of victory in an open race for Los Angeles Mayor in 93 years.

Many stunned political pundits have pointed to the fact that Caruso was a Republican for most of his life as the reason for his loss (he only re-registered as a Democrat a month before announcing his campaign for Mayor).

But that doesn’t wash as an explanation. In all local races in California, candidates run on a non-partisan basis and their party affiliations are not included on the ballot.⁸ It makes a significant difference in election outcomes.

Two examples:

• In 2020, Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, an unabashed progressive Democrat (who would not consider being called “woke” to be an insult) lost re-election 56.44%-43.56%, to Republican Kevin Lincoln despite Stockton being a heavily Democratic city.⁹ On the same ballot, Stockton voted for Biden over Trump by a 66%-32% margin.¹⁰

• In 2024, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, a Democrat, was defeated for re-election by lifelong Republican turned No Party Preference Nathan Hochman by 20%. Hochman was the Republican nominee for Attorney General in 2022, losing decisively statewide to Democrat Rob Bonta. In Los Angeles County, Hochman lost by a 67.4%-32.6% margin to Bonta in 2022.¹¹

  
  In the City of Los Angeles, Bonta defeated Hochman by a 74.17% to 25.83% margin.¹² Running without party labels in 2024, Hochman defeated Gascon in the City of Los Angeles by a 54.10%-45.90% margin.¹³

How did Bass win then?

In retrospect, the election should be viewed in context.

The last two Mayors, Antonio Villaraigosa and Eric Garcetti, both campaigned for office with grand promises. Not only would they solve all of LA’s pre-existing problems but under them, LA would finally take our rightful place in the pantheon of the world’s greatest cities.

But after 8 years of Villaraigosa and 9 and 1/2 years of Garcetti, the city’s problems seemed worse than ever and very few grand promises had been delivered.

To be fair to Villaraigosa and Garcetti, both had accomplished some monumental things that were once considered impossible. Much of the current heavy rail mass transit system in LA is the product of Villaraigosa’s efforts. It is to Garcetti’s great credit that the Olympics will be in LA in 2028.

But those accomplishments were not tangible to voters.

Caruso made a very similar pitch to the ones made by both Villaraigosa and Garcetti.

Bass, on the other hand, ran on a platform of practical governance instead of big promises about the potential of LA. While she wasn’t Debbie Downer, Bass was clear-eyed about the limitations of the Mayor’s office and what she would not be able to fix.

She avoided making grand promises. Her platform was decidedly non-ideological, even opposing the disastrous “Mansion Tax” on the ballot supported by some progressives (which should be held unconstitutional if the courts follow the law).

That resonated with many longtime voters who had been disappointed with being overpromised and under delivered.

Nevertheless, the financial advantage alone should have guaranteed Caruso a victory or at least narrowed Bass’s victory. After all, to quote former California Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird, money is the “mother’s milk of politics with the third house owning the dairy.”¹⁴

But three intangible factors helped Bass overcome the massive campaign spending deficit.

1. The Richard Close Connection and the Support of Homeowners Associations
   
   A San Fernando Valley secessionist, Close was a longtime conservative activist who ran the powerful Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association. He and Bass had been friends dating back to the early 1990’s when she was a community activist in South Central Los Angeles - so much so that she eulogized him when he died in early 2022.¹⁵ He was not the only unlikely activist homeowner she worked with during her time as a community organizer. It made a difference electorally.
   
   While the Valley was supposed to be Caruso’s stronghold, Bass swept the predominantly white and conservative-leaning leafy suburban neighborhoods of the southeastern Valley, including Sherman Oaks. On the westside, she won Rancho Park and overperformed in Cheviot Hills and Comstock Hills, which all have strong homeowners associations.
   

2. The Endorsement of Steve Soboroff
   
   In the 2001 Los Angeles Mayoral Election, Steve Soboroff, a conservative Republican, ran for Mayor as the handpicked successor of outgoing Mayor Richard Riordan, the last Republican to serve as Los Angeles Mayor. Soboroff, a successful real estate developer who developed Playa Vista and Staples Center, ran on a pro-law enforcement, pro-business, and anti-big government platform.
   
   A serious self-funding contender, Soboroff narrowly lost the primary but he came the closest to winning the office as any Republican has in the 21st century. Surprisingly in 2022, he endorsed Karen Bass for Mayor in the primary and then enthusiastically campaigned for her across the city.

   
   As it turned out, they had been old friends who worked together on LAUSD bond accountability issues before either one ever considered running for office.¹⁶ In an LA Times profile article on his 2001 campaign that admittedly did not make him look very good, she offered some of the only positive comments about him.
   
   Simple math illuminates the power of his endorsement. In the 2001 Los Angeles Mayoral Primary, an election that skewed towards the most high propensity voters paying the most attention to city politics, Soboroff received 106,189 votes citywide. Bass’s citywide winning vote margin in the 2022 general election was 89,914 votes.¹⁷
   

3. Support From Antonio Villaraigosa Loyalists
   
   In the 2001 Mayoral Election, a runoff between then City Attorney James “Jimmy” Hahn and then former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa became incredibly racially polarized with Hahn running a vicious race-baiting campaign against Villaraigosa. This included television ads with side-by-side images of a grainy black and white photo of Villaraigosa and brown hands cutting crack cocaine.
   
   Outraged and offended by the racism, Richard Riordan changed his neutrality pledge and endorsed Villaraigosa. As did LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. But it was to no avail, as Hahn won and the city seemed to redivide itself on race as it had nine years previously during the 1992 Riots.
   
   Hahn, who is white, was the son of legendary Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, an early civil rights supporter who was beloved by LA’s black community. Hahn was supported universally by the black political establishment, and he won more than 90% of black Angelenos in a narrow victory.
   
   However, as a community activist, Bass took on a role that is probably familiar to most black Republicans and conservatives. She endorsed Villaraigosa and campaigned for him. She rejected calls to vote based on race and emphasized that Villaraigosa was the best person for the job. She did so even though less than 10% of fellow black Angelenos joined her.
   
   Although Caruso won the Hispanic/Latino vote with great investment into outreach and disillusion among Hispanic/Latino voters, he only did so narrowly. Many longtime Hispanic/Latino community leaders, who remembered Villaraigosa’s painful 2001 election defeat, campaigned for her, blunting his advantage.

These three factors suggest that Bass was probably the only candidate who could have defeated Caruso.

If a Battle of Brentwood takes place in 2026, Harris lacks the same political history and background of Bass that enabled her to overcome a major campaign finance deficit.

Moreover, her own unlikely supporters will have to amplify their voices in an electorate that is more than ten times larger than that of Los Angeles.

Harris will also not have the same advantages she had in the Presidential race. While many Never Trumpers voted for her against Trump, (at risk of stating the obvious) she won’t be running against Trump in 2026. To win those same voters again, she will have to take positions that appeal to them on California-centric issues. The same will be true with disgruntled Democratic and No Party Preference voters.

It will also be harder to paint Caruso as a Republican. Provided Caruso remains a registered Democrat, he will get to run on the ballot listed as a Democrat.¹⁸ He has the opportunity to appeal to disgruntled Democrats and No Party Preference voters who want change though have absolutely no wish to vote for a Republican.

There is an odd historical parallel.

In 1961, Richard Nixon, who had just narrowly lost a Presidential race as the sitting Vice President, lost his home in the 1961 Bel Air fire. In 1962, he ran against incumbent Governor Pat Brown and lost a race where he began as the favorite (this is where he gave his famous quote “you don’t have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

Having just narrowly lost a Presidential race as the sitting Vice President, Harris’s Brentwood home was in the mandatory fire evacuation area for the Palisades Fire. While her home fortunately survived, it was the subject of an attempted burglary by looters taking advantage of the fire.

It’s a reminder. Wildfires are not predictable and politics similarly so. Like Nixon, her victory is far from guaranteed.

That said, Kamala is still Kamala. She overcame major disadvantages to prevail in the 2003 election for San Francisco District Attorney, the 2010 election for California Attorney General, and the 2016 election for United States Senate when by all accounts, she should have lost.

Whether the Battle of Brentwood takes place is anyone’s guess, but if it does, it will certainly be an election to watch.

1. The author of this article is an attorney licensed to practice in the State of California and the District of Columbia. This article and all of the works on this Substack page are statements of the opinions of the author, only, and do not constitute legal advice; they are not intended to be relied upon by any individual or entity in any transaction or other legal matter, past, pending, or future. A paid subscription to this Substack page supports the author’s scholarship and provides access to research that the author has compiled, but does not establish an attorney-client relationship. The author does not accept unsolicited requests for legal advice or representation, and this Substack page is not intended as legal advertising. The opinions expressed on this Substack page reflect the personal views of the author only.

2. The neighborhood of Brentwood in Los Angeles is not to be confused with the city of Brentwood, California, located in Contra Costa County, which is located in Northern California, specifically the greater San Francisco Bay Area.