Billionaire Caruso Rides Fury Over LA Fires to Political Revival

In early January, a wildfire started smoldering in a tinder-dry part of Southern California where it hadn’t rained in eight months. The Santa Ana winds kicked up, stirring a cyclone of flames that hurled embers the size of sparrows into the Pacific Palisades. The coastal enclave was home to Hollywood celebrities including Tom Hanks, Ben Affleck and Kate Hudson who, up until then, could be forgiven for thinking they’d landed in a particular slice of paradise: a walkable village in the land of freeways, nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Mountains. The blaze was unrelenting, engulfing ...