Embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was once on Biden’s shortlist for vice president

Before she garnered intense public attention for her response to the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, LA Mayor Karen Bass was held in high esteem by top figures in the Democratic Party.

President Biden once considered Bass a front-runner to be his 2020 vice presidential running mate, while former President Barack Obama previously predicted she would make an “extraordinary mayor” of the city.

When Bass was a US representative from California, the Biden campaign interviewed her as a potential opponent of the then-Democratic candidate. As reported by Politico at the time, the campaign deemed the congresswoman “persuasive but not flashy,” “trusted by progressives but still respected by Republicans” and “passionate but not someone who would let her own goals overshadow her responsibilities as Biden’s number 2.”

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After then-Senator Kamala Harris eventually secured the role, Bass ran for LA mayor in 2022 and earned high praise from Obama, who he called her that year and predicted that she would “make an outstanding mayor of LA”

This high praise from the two party leaders for Bass was called into question because Bass was angry about how she was handling the wildfires that destroyed large parts of her town.

As the flames destroyed thousands of homes, killed at least 11 people and forced nearly 200,000 people from their homes, the mayor was hit by budget cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Between fiscal years 2023-2024. and 2024-2025, Bass oversaw cutting fire department budget by almost 18 million dollars, while her original proposal was to reduce it even more – to 23 million dollars.

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LAFD budget for fiscal year 2023-2024. of $837 million was also less than the city’s $1.3 billion homeless budget.

Bass took a lot of heat from an overseas trip to Ghana earlier this week, which meant she was thousands of miles away from her hometown during the first day of destruction on Tuesday.

The mayor ran home on Wednesday, facing a barrage of media questions about where she had been.

“Do you owe the citizens an apology for being away while their homes burned? And do you regret cutting the fire department’s budget by millions of dollars, Madam Mayor?” Sky News reporter David Blevins asked as Bass waited to disembark the plane on Wednesday following her trip to the African nation.

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The mayor appeared hard to answer first questions from journalists. Finally, she replied, “I took the fastest route back, which involved being on a military plane, which made it easier for us to communicate. So I could be on the phone the entire flight.”

Director and former star of “Family Ties”. Justine Bateman summed up the anger many local residents feel toward Bass and other city officials, saying, “If you’re going to run a city or a state, you’ve got to take care of the basics, and that’s making sure your firefighters and your police are well funded.”

“If you can’t cover the basics, get out of our town. You’re useless to us. You’re a hindrance and you’ve ruined people’s lives because you didn’t do your job,” she said. “You didn’t do what you were hired to do. You didn’t do what we paid you to do,” she added.

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

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Fox News Digital’s Sarah Rumpf-Whitten and Kira Mautone contributed to this report.