LA Times Owner: ‘Competence Matters’

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is the billionaire owner of the LA Times. He’s been making news lately for suggesting the paper needed to change to become more balanced and offer opinions from all sides. He plans to add a bias meter to every article to get feedback on how the paper is doing. And true to his word of looking for divergent voices, he even added Scott Jennings to the LA Times editorial board.

So it’s not a complete shock that Soon-Shiong is being criticial of how the Los Angeles wildfires are being managed. Last week he started talking about the importance of competence in elected officials.

Maybe the lesson we learned out of this catastrophe in California is to now vote not based on left or right or D versus R but perhaps based on competent or no experience in operating a job !! We have to elect based on competence…yes competence matters.

— Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong (@DrPatSoonShiong) January 10, 2025

Like me, he was pretty irritated when LA County sent out an emergency evacuation notice to all 10 million people in LA County by accident.

Loved Justine Bateman’s comment that “ if you are that incompetent you actually don’t know that you are incompetent “!

— Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong (@DrPatSoonShiong) January 10, 2025

Saturday he admitted his paper’s endorsement of Karen Bass for mayor of LA a mistake and tied that to his decision not to allow the paper to endorse Kamala Harris.

Is this you, @pmarca? Are you hedging your endorsements? But you’re not the only one who makes mistakes. I’ve made some—like endorsing Karen Bass. And that’s a big reason we didn’t endorse Kamala. I don’t have the luxury of a hedge. Now is the time for leadership, and I’ll…

— Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong (@DrPatSoonShiong) January 12, 2025

His message is that competence in elected officials matters and, by implication, we’re clearly not seeing much of that from Mayor Karen Bass. He starts by accepting some blame because his paper endorsed Bass when she ran for office in 2022. “We endorsed Karen Bass. I think right now in front that’s a mistake and we admit that,” he said.

LA Times owner @DrPatSoonShiong says on @2waytvapp that it was a “mistake” for his paper to endorse Karen Bass for Mayor in 2022

“Competence matters,” he says. pic.twitter.com/LMQNPIcPnR

— Jacob Wheeler (@JWheelertv) January 13, 2025

Soon-Shiong hasn’t been quite as aggressive in criticizing Gov. Gavin Newsom but he did reference him in another interview he gave yesterday. “I just heard this excuse about disinformation,” he said. “I mean I think that’s outrageous when you have thousands of acres burning and 10 people are dead,” he added.

LA Times owner is astounded that California continues to elect incompetent people:
Leland Vittert: “Pacific Palisades Reservoir was offline and empty when the firestorm exploded.”
Patrick Soon-Shiong: “That is so crazy that we have leaders that a reactive rather than proactive. I… pic.twitter.com/91L2lZRGQr

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) January 12, 2025

I’m pretty certain he’s referring to Newsom there as this is the pinned tweet on Newsom’s account:

A lot of misinformation out there.

Just launched a new site to ensure the public has access to fact-based data around the Southern CA wildfires.

The TRUTH:
– CA did NOT cut our firefighting budget. We have nearly doubled the size of our firefighting army and built the world’s…

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) January 11, 2025

Newsom will say anything to keep his future run for higher office in play which is why today he’s suddenly RTing Charlie Kirk and praising Gov. Abbott today. He’ll praise anyone who let’s him lay claim to being a competent leader at the moment and he’ll attack anyone who says otherwise.

So what about that empty reservoir? That’s still under investigation which means he can defer all questions about that until the investigation is complete. When will that be? Probably weeks or months from now when the initial heat of this disaster is no longer on him. This is a political tactic masquerading as an attempt at accountability.

In any case, it’s good to see the owner of the LA Times making competence an issue and forcing elected Democrats to defend their failures.