News Analysis Rick Caruso was a Republican 3 years ago Will voters care

With less than a week until the Los Angeles mayoral primary, Rick Caruso’s political evolution from Republican to Democrat still remains opaque to many voters in the overwhelmingly liberal city he hopes to lead. It’s widely known that Caruso, who was a Republican for much of his life, switched his party registration to “decline to state” in 2011 while mulling over a run in the city’s 2013 mayoral election. It’s also widely known that Caruso changed his party affiliation to Democratic in late January of this year, less than a month before filing to run in the 2022 mayoral election. Less attention has been paid to the fact that Caruso re-registered as a Republican in March 2016, according to records from the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office. Caruso kept his Republican Party affiliation until mid-November 2019, when he changed his registration back to “no party preference, ” according to county records. All told, the real estate developer has changed his party registration four times in the last 11 years, shifting twice between Republican and no party preference before re-registering as a Democrat about four months ago.“I’m a Democrat, and I’m proud to be a Democrat, ” Caruso said when asked Tuesday about his prior changes in voter registration. “What fascinates me is that we’re even having this conversation because the electorate, the voters in the city don’t care about this. What the voters of the city care about is crime and homelessness and corruption. ”Caruso could be right about that. In a race where frustration is the prevailing sentiment and issues of homelessness and public safety have dominated nearly every discussion, it’s unclear how much voters care about a candidate’s political development â€" even if most know little about it. The candidate’s GOP past has been the subject of frequent fire from his rivals and their supporters. Caruso has typically dismissed criticism and most questions about his registration history. Voters seeking to better understand his zigzagging political transformation will find few answers in his $25-million barrage of advertisements. But Caruso offered more candor about his evolving political thinking during a meeting with an influential homeowners group in March. Speaking to the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. over Zoom, Caruso did not correct the interviewer’s mistaken impression that he had remained a no-party-preference voter from 2011 until registering as a Democrat in 2022. But he did share insight into his worldview with the relatively small audience, saying he became an independent because he didn’t like ideology.“When I was a Republican, I was a centrist. When I was an independent, I was a centrist. As a Democrat, I’m a centrist, ” Caruso said, describing himself as “fiscally conservative but socially accepting of how people want to live their lives. ”He didn’t want to return to the Republican Party, he said, because he worried about the direction it was heading. All data is taken from the source: http://latimes.com Article Link: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-02/rick-caruso-2022-mayoral-election-republican-transformation #caruso #newsstory #newsworldfox #bbcworldnewstoday #bbcnewstoday #newstodaylocal #


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