Rick Caruso Might Be L.A.’s Next Mayor. What’s He Like as a Philanthropist?

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Angelenos have long known Rick Caruso as the man behind The Grove, a popular L.A. retail destination that has defied the shopping mall’s decline and continues to attract throngs of visitors from Southern California and much further afield. Caruso’s success as a real estate developer has brought him a sizable fortune — Forbes pegs it at $5.3 billion — and has also fueled the mall magnate’s political ambitions.

At the time of writing, Caruso is one of the leading candidates to succeed Eric Garcetti as mayor of Los Angeles. He’s running against U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, whose policy positions are generally more progressive. As a candidate, Caruso has embraced law-and-order messaging, promising to “clean up” a city facing high rates of homelessness and beset by multiple corruption scandals in city government.

Caruso, a former Republican, is a divisive figure in a solidly Democratic city where many residents also say existing leadership has failed to make progress on entrenched problems. He’s had to walk a fine line during his mayoral campaign between the right-wing tenor of some of his messaging on issues like crime, and more liberal positions elsewhere.

A certain caution also comes through in Caruso’s philanthropy, which is pretty traditional. The bulk of it goes to organizations in the L.A. area, with plenty of gifts for “eds and meds” as well as grants focused on youth opportunity in underserved parts of the city. Caruso’s giving is also quite modest compared to, say, the expansive philanthropic agenda of that other billionaire businessman who became mayor of one of the nation’s leading cities. (Though to be fair, Mike Bloomberg’s fortune is over 10 times larger than Caruso’s.)

Whether or not he wins the mayoral race this November, Rick Caruso’s growing fortune and local clout in the nation’s second-largest city make him a philanthropist to watch. Here are a few things to know about who he is and how he gives.

“L.A.’s Walt Disney of shopping”

Now 63 years old, Rick Caruso was born in Los Angeles into a family of Italian extraction. His father, Henry Caruso, founded Dollar Rent-A-Car and owned car dealerships, settling the family in Beverly Hills. Young Rick didn’t grow up poor. But the one-time real estate lawyer’s fortune really started to skyrocket when he moved into real estate development, starting off with a small duplex and eventually graduating to open-air shopping centers that challenged the indoor mall status quo of the 1980s and 1990s.

Aided by L.A.’s balmy weather, Caruso’s model flourished while other mall developers floundered. The Grove is Caruso’s signature property, alongside the Americana at Brand, a major, mixed-use retail and residential complex in the L.A.-adjacent burb of Glendale. Through his company, simply called Caruso (formerly Caruso Affiliated Holdings, LLC), the billionaire also owns and operates numerous other commercial and residential properties in the region, and continues to develop new ones. In 2015, the Hollywood Reporter dubbed him “L.A.’s Walt Disney of shopping” in reference to the Disneyland-like vibe of Caruso’s largest developments.

Of course, the Disneylands and upscale shopping malls of the world didn’t fare so well when the pandemic set in. Caruso’s net worth was dinged a bit in 2020. But like the wealth of many other billionaires with retail-based fortunes, it quickly bounced back.

Caruso’s mayoral campaign also follows several other public service roles in L.A. over the years, including as a commissioner of the L.A. Department of Water and Power back in 1985 and an appointment to the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners in the early 2000s, where he was elected president.

Eds, meds and youth opportunity

Caruso and his wife Tina have a long record of local philanthropy under their belts. The couple started the Caruso Family Foundation in 1991 and have since used it to move a steady stream of funding to schools and universities, places of worship and other Catholic-affiliated groups, and organizations in the medical field. There’s also a related stream of grants to support children and youth in underserved communities. Most but not all of the foundation’s grantees have been local to the L.A. area. In the foundation’s earlier years, Caruso’s father Henry Caruso occasionally contributed assets alongside his son, before the elder Caruso’s death in 2017.

Caruso’s grantmaking through the family foundation has grown over time, though it remains a lean operation. Besides Caruso and an all-family board, there appear to be no dedicated staff. There’s also no substantial endowment. Instead, Caruso tends to fund the foundation on a yearly basis and moves most of that money out the door fairly quickly, often in the form of general support. While his giving through the foundation is still modest next to his fortune (grants totaled about $7.4 million in 2019 and $4 million in 2020), Caruso has made several larger gifts in recent years to local institutions.

In 2015, for instance, the Carusos gave $25 million to the USC Keck School of Medicine to fund research on hearing loss and other head and neck disorders following their daughter’s treatment there for hearing issues. That’s just one of numerous gifts to USC over the years — the Caruso website boasts of over $50 million in total contributions to the university. Until very recently, Caruso also headed USC’s board of trustees, where he faced criticism over his handling of an on-campus sex abuse scandal.

Like so many wealthy alumni we write about, Caruso’s higher ed giving favors his alma maters. He got his bachelor’s degree at USC and his J.D. at the Pepperdine School of Law, where he’s also a top donor. Despite his own dissatisfaction with a career in law, one of Caruso’s biggest gifts went to Pepperdine in 2019 — $50 million for needs-based scholarships, expanded academic programming, and programs supporting bar passage and job placement. The commitment also expanded the Caruso Family Loan Forgiveness Fund at Pepperdine, a fund the Carusos established in 2003 to help repay the student loan debt of graduates entering public interest law.

As IP’s Mike Scutari noted at the time, the Carusos’ Pepperdine gift reflects the couple’s interest in supporting educational and career opportunities for young people from low-income backgrounds. The family foundation has also been a major backer of Operation Progress, a nonprofit that manages collaborative efforts “to guide hundreds of underserved students from elementary school through college graduation” in the low-income L.A. neighborhood of Watts. Also involved are the Los Angeles Police Department and multiple local Catholic schools. In addition, Caruso backs Para Los Niños, which is based in Skid Row and provides wraparound support to vulnerable children and youth.

Some other major recipients of Caruso support over the years include St. John’s Health Center, the Brentwood School, House Ear Institute and South Central Scholars. The foundation has also been a significant supporter of local Catholic churches, schools and organizations like Saint Paul the Apostle Church, St. Monica Catholic Church, Loyola High School, Verbum Dei High School and the Catholic Education Foundation.

Ideological ambivalence

In a lengthy interview with the L.A. Times editorial board discussing his mayoral platform, Caruso stressed that growing up, he spent a lot of time with grandparents whose priorities were faith, family and community. On one hand, that can sound like feel-good boilerplate from a billionaire magnate whose mayoral prospects depend on his ability to connect with a largely Latino electorate. On the other, Caruso’s philanthropy — if not necessarily his business empire — does evoke that sort of traditionalism.

For the most part, Caruso ticks the boxes for safe, old-school family philanthropy. He’s an alumni donor, he gives to address medical conditions affecting his family, he gives to his children’s schools. He also gives alongside his family: In addition to his wife Tina, his brother Marc and sister Christina sit alongside Rick on the foundation’s board.

Caruso is also a religious donor, though his Catholic funding does not appear to include the kinds of advocacy groups backed by other Catholic philanthropists in the fight against abortion rights. On the campaign trail in deep-blue L.A., Caruso has made a point of taking a pro-choice position, although his past political support for anti-abortion Republican politicians has been noted. Of course, it’s difficult to say whether donors on either side of the abortion debate back related advocacy through less-transparent means like DAF giving. Caruso seems to have let the issue alone, but that’s only as far as we can tell.

He has, however, been a modest but consistent supporter of the Los Angeles Police Foundation and other organizations associated with law enforcement and emergency services. That comports with his long history of involvement with the LAPD as a commissioner and now as a mayoral candidate taking a very pro-police line. Caruso has also supported the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and sits on its board alongside a host of Republican luminaries. As a political donor, he’s backed both Democrats and Republicans over the years.

Caruso’s mayoral ambitions have placed him in something of an ideological muddle — he’s on the Reagan library board but he’s tweeting about LGBTQ rights and a woman’s right to choose. His philanthropy, however, more cleanly evokes a kind of center-right, pre-MAGA conservatism. Angelenos will decide this fall whether that’s the kind of person they want as mayor. But even if he loses, his billions ensure that Rick Caruso will remain a force to be reckoned with on L.A.’s civic stage.