Nicole Avant, the wife of Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and a major player in Hollywood, is supporting law-and-order Los Angeles mayoral candidate Rick Caruso over far-left Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA).
Avant’s mother, Jacqueline Avant, was shot and killed last year in her Beverly Hills home. She was 81 and married to esteemed music producer Clarence Avant. Her murderer was sentenced to at least 150 years in prison.
“There are no words to describe the nightmare we have endured due to the cruel and vicious acts of the defendant,” Nicole Avant said in a victim impact statement read aloud by prosecutors at the time. “We are shattered.”
“This is like a breaking point,” Avant told Bari Weiss’ Substack while discussing Los Angeles.
Avant pointed to the problems that have unfolded across the city in recent years, which many Los Angeles County residents, including Caruso, have partly blamed on soft-on-crime policies implemented by District Attorney George Gascón.
“Who is in charge here? How is this happening?” she said. “It’s the drug addicts in front of people’s houses, it’s people naked in the street—there’s so much chaos, and Rick is the opposite of that, and we just need to reel things in and do things in a different way.”
Caruso is a billionaire real estate developer and Democrat who used to be a Republican. He has promised to restore law and order to the city. Avant is a former ambassador to the Bahamas under President Barack Obama.
Avant, who is black, said she finds it “very insulting” when people say she should support Bass, who is also black, because of her skin color.
“I don’t ever vote on race or gender,” Avant said. “I’m a free thinker. People told me not to support Barack Obama and to support Hillary Clinton for the same reason, because she’s a woman. You can’t win.”
Patty Quillin, a Bay Area philanthropist and the wife of Netflix’s other co-CEO, Reed Hastings, pumped more than $1.6 million into efforts to elect Gascón in 2020 and has financially backed other criminal justice reform drives in L.A. County.