A Conservative Mayor of Los Angeles?

E very so often in politics, you find an oasis in the desert. A glimmer of light in grim darkness. A Republican in deep Democratic territory. Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg — before their ill-fated positions both for and against Trump — were such figures in New York City. Their policies of “stop-and-frisk,” the “Broken Windows” Theory of policing, and use of the “CompStat” mapping tool helped deter crime across the city and improve the quality of life. It was good to have Republicans (party-switching aside) in charge of America’s most Democratic city for 20 years.

Now, Los Angeles is within the grasp of a similar prospect with the mayoral candidacy of Rick Caruso. In last night’s jungle primary, he came out on top over Representative Karen Bass (D., Calif.), who is leaving Congress to run for the job. Having passed through the jungle, Caruso will again face off against Bass in November’s runoff.

Whereas Bass, 68, is a career politician who has been in office for nearly 20 years, Caruso, 63, is the more interesting of the two. After washing cars at the LAX airport, he graduated from Pepperdine Law in 1983 as a scholar but instead decided to develop properties across the city. Over time, he built an empire of malls and apartment buildings in L.A. — led by The Grove, a popular public-entertainment complex, and the Americana mall. Today, Forbes lists him as the 261st-richest person in America.

This was concurrent with his public service as president of the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners. He hired Bill Bratton, Bloomberg’s NYPD commissioner, to become the chief — and Bratton went on to implement a Giuliani-and-Bloomberg-style approach to crime. Major felonies fell by 30 percent, homicides by 38 percent, and overall violent crime by 46 percent. Later, Caruso advised both the Trump administration and California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom’s administration on economic recovery after Covid-19.

This experience gives Caruso serious political and business credentials that would serve him well as mayor. What’s most remarkable, however, is his platform. He is a longtime Republican who recently became a Democrat, but his platform still reads like an urban-conservative manifesto.

Homelessness is among his top issues. It’s a chronic problem up and down the West Coast, where progressives’ taxation and zoning policies have sent rent sky-high and put people on the streets. This bad situation has gotten worse with drugs and defecation in public spaces, which are now routinely strewn with needles and trash. Diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis — and even the bubonic plague — have increased as the city turns into an encampment. Democratic mayors have done nothing effective to stop it.

Caruso, by contrast, has zero tolerance for homelessness. He wants to declare a state of emergency and remove encampments from city limits, while promising to move the homeless to rural parts of L.A. County, where cheaper land makes for cheaper shelter. Rather than take the progressive approach of “harm reduction” and “safe supply” — i.e., giving addicts “safe” drugs and paraphernalia — he wants to fight drug use with mental-health workers. L.A. needs its “own mental-health and addiction treatment,” with at least “500 people on the streets” working to care for those who need it, he said.

Then, there’s crime. In Los Angeles, homicides, robberies, and assaults have increased 7.1 percent year on year since 2020. Even as many progressives want to “defund the police” — which L.A.’s left-wing city council did by $150 million in 2020 — Caruso wants to reverse it: restoring the budget and increasing the force by 1,500. Remarkably, in taking on violent crime, he’s not endorsed the gun restrictions of California Democrats. Caruso’s plan also involves expanding the LAPD Gun Unit. It’s identical to the plan of New York City mayor Eric Adams, who restarted an Anti-Gun Unit closed by Bill de Blasio over progressive accusations of its racial bias.

It’s hard not to agree with Caruso’s platform. It’s not left-wing, and it is strong and decisive — using power to enforce the law and improve the quality of life. One should not be surprised, given Caruso’s past as a businessman, police leader, devout Catholic, and registered Republican for over 30 years. It makes him an oddball in the California Democratic Party, which has rallied against him in favor of the establishment candidate Bass. Their arguments are blatantly partisan — that Caruso is simply not “Democratic” enough for Los Angeles. “If you look at his background, he doesn’t reflect the heavily Democratic values that voters in Los Angeles support,” said Garry South, a political consultant, to Politico. Bass has made Caruso’s Republican past and business success — for spending his own money rather than taking PAC donations — a major talking point in the race.

Yet, despite jumping in one day before the filing deadline, Caruso surged ahead of Bass. In last night’s primary, he came in first with 42.1 percent — eight points shy of winning outright and five ahead of Bass. It was an upset finish; in the last poll taken, he had 32 percent, compared with Bass’s 38 percent — though it was a four-fold increase in as many months. His surge was driven by black and Latino male voters — part of a larger pattern across the country. In race after race, conservatives are surging in minority areas when they talk about tackling crime and issues of personal responsibility. Caruso’s focused message on housing and crime fits hand and glove into this paradigm. It’s helped him gain a host of high-profile endorsements, including from Snoop Dogg, Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Elon Musk, who said that Caruso is “awesome” — helping to boost his candidacy among younger voters against the Hillary Clinton–esque Karen he’s opposing.

Looking at this race, Caruso’s surge heralds a shift in American cities, where the Left’s star is burning out. Citizens are fed up with progressive policies — on inflation, education, and crime — from the White House to the townhouse. These cities may not be comfortable electing a Republican yet, but now they certainly have a taste for conservative ideas, even as they come from a Democrat’s lips. In that vein, New York City — after eight years of Lefty Blasio — elected a former Republican police captain in Adams. L.A. may now follow suit and do so with Caruso.

Caruso may be a Democrat, but one in name only (a DINO?). He walks and talks like a Republican, with sound plans to fix Los Angeles. In November, voters should choose him.