Rick Caruso is not your typical Los Angeles Democrat. As a candidate in the deeply blue city’s contentious 2022 mayoral race, the billionaire real estate developer, philanthropist, and former Republican has been unafraid to stand in contrast to the progressive platforms of his primary opponents. Despite his city’s long history of police brutality, Caruso has been openly tough on crime, advocating for the addition of 1,500 new LAPD officers. To address LA’s more than 66,400 homeless residents, he plans to arrest those who refuse to comply with his ambitious public housing plan, which he projects will create 30,000 shelter beds within its first year.
In a city that Bernie Sanders won by 11 points in 2020, any candidate running so far to the right of the field would be expected to gain little traction. Yet, Caruso has managed to buck earlier trends. In LA’s June 7 primary, he took home 36.33% of the vote, putting him just 6 percent behind progressive California Rep. Karen Bass and advancing him to the city’s November run-off election.
Caruso is not the first conservative-leaning candidate to find unlikely success in a blue state in the years since 2020. Virginia Republican Glenn Youngkin shocked Democrats when he took back the state’s governorship after Virginia’s strong 2020 showing for Biden and near-decade of Democratic leadership. Youngkin’s campaign focused primarily on bread-and-butter issues, including rising crime, high taxes, and the teaching of critical race theory in schools.
A similar formula was used by moderate Democrat Eric Adams, who won the New York Mayoral race against a large field of progressive candidates by harnessing a base of primarily working and middle-class voters. Adams, who is Black and a former captain in the NYPD, used his unique credentials to make public safety the principal focus of his campaign, while still being able to appeal to Black and Latino voters concerned about the role of police violence in any attempt to clean up the city. His election runs in stark contrast to the city’s historically far-left politics. For reference, 35 of the 51 seats on the New York City Council currently belong to members of the Progressive Caucus.
And yet, with an ominous midterm cycle looming, Democrats still haven’t learned the lesson that these seemingly-outlier races clearly teach: Go back to the basics. While Caruso, Youngkin, and Adams may not have been the candidates who most strongly reflected the purportedly progressive ideologies of their constituencies, they were each able to tap into something far more powerful by speaking to the daily frustrations that their voters face.
Caruso said it best when asked in February about his unlikely popularity: “I think ideology has gone out the window,” he said. “People want to be safe and they want to live their lives. They want to send their kids to school. They want to walk to dinner. They want to have a slice of the American Dream, and they want to believe in somebody who can do that.” Until Democrats can find a way to speak effectively to these bread-and-butter issues too, they will continue to lose control of their party, and the country, to those who can.
A large factor in this failure to connect with voters is that Democratic leaders assume that their top priority issues align with those of their constituents. After having had their lives personally threatened by a violent mob, it makes sense for Democrats in Congress to see the Jan. 6 public hearings as an important exercise that all Americans should see. Yet some have naively made the mistake of envisioning the prime-time hearings as the silver bullet for a midterm comeback.
This will not be the case. Even with the hearings’s recorded peak of 20 million viewers, over 80% of the eligible voting population has still not heard the committee’s case against the GOP’s election lie. Even for those who do tune in, it is unlikely that the hearings will be front-of-mind come November. In Gallup’s most recent poll asking voters to identify the largest problem America currently faces, election reform was marked by less than 1% of participants. Coming in at 37%, the economy — again, a bread-and-butter issue — will undoubtedly be the issue driving voters this cycle.
So where can Democrats go from here if they want to stop losing on their home turf? The first step is always acknowledging that a problem exists, and for Democratic candidates, that means accepting that the desire for stability, safety, and prosperity goes beyond ideology. Regardless of how blue the state, a candidate who cannot promise those fundamental things has no future. To see that, one need only look at the San Francisco School Board, which recently had every eligible member recalled for pursuing a radical progressive agenda. If voters in the most liberal city in the country can lose faith in their Democratic leadership, no district is truly safe.
Next, Democrats cannot rely as heavily on their anti-Trumpism to deliver them victory as they did during the Trump Presidency. While the former President was in office, Democrats in blue states could win by simply running as an alternative to Trump’s moral character and far-right agenda. Now, with a member of their own party in the White House and majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats can no longer turn their campaigns into a referendum on worsening national conditions — they must instead answer for these problems.
We have already seen the consequences of choosing to ignore this shift. In the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race, Youngkin’s Democratic opponent, former Virginia governor Terry McCaullife, made the error of labeling his opponent “Glenn Trumpkin,” despite Youngkin having made little mention of the former president on the campaign trail and focusing instead on his state-specific platform. Virginia voters saw through that move, as will voters across the nation in 2022 if Democrats continue to use thin attacks in place of offering real policy solutions.
Most importantly, Democrats need to find a way to deliver true liberal solutions to the problems that Caruso, Youngkin, and Adams each capitalized on from a conservative stance. There is no reason that the GOP, a party currently endorsing a violent insurrection, should have a premium on running anti-crime. With gun violence on the rise, Democrats have an opportunity to reframe themselves as the true party of law and order. By turning heated national debates over gun control legislation into compassionate discussions of the role of gun violence in local communities, Democratic candidates can reframe rhetoric-filled issues in a way that better resonates with voters in their daily lives.
Even in tackling something as tough as the economy, there is hope. Democrats are the party fighting for living wages, affordable healthcare, and a tax system that favors the middle and working class — solutions that directly pass benefits to their constituents. These are broadly popular initiatives that aid the American family far more directly than Republican initiatives that promote economic growth through tax breaks to large corporations. Democrats can use this economic platform to appeal to voters who may not be as touched by the party’s social objectives.
Democrats face an uphill battle in 2022, but with heavy losses projected, there is little harm in trying something new. By using the playbooks of those who have defeated them, which include denationalizing their campaigns and directly taking on the fundamental issues that voters want addressed, Democrats may have a renewed chance at righting the future of their party and their country.
Image by Mirah Curzer licensed under the Unsplash License.
Associate Managing Editor
