Businessman Austin Beutner has announced that he is withdrawing from the race for mayor of Los Angeles in order to spend more time with his family.
“Everything I have been successful at, I have busted my butt,” Beutner told the Daily News’s Rick Orlov. “I didn’t feel I could devote the time to this and balance it with my family.”
Beutner, who is Jewish, was running in a crowded field, and trailed a number of better-known candidates in a race to succeed his one-time boss, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Beutner, who worked as the mayor’s “jobs czar” for just over one year, finished behind three declared mayoral candidates—City Councilman Eric Garcetti, Controller Wendy Gruel and City Councilwoman Jan Perry—in a recent poll.
That poll, by the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, found that Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has not announced his intentions regarding a bid for mayor, finished in a virtual tie with Garcetti and Gruel.
The election is not scheduled to take place until March 2013.
