File this story under the “sad but true” category. The race to be the next mayor of Los Angeles has at least been a bit more entertaining this year than the typical contests where Democrats simply win by default and almost don’t have to bother campaigning. Republican businessman Rick Caruso has been flushing a significant part of his personal wealth into campaign advertising and has proven to be significantly more competitive than many expected in his race to defeat Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass. In a time when crime is running even more rampant than normal in the City of Angels and homelessness has turned part of one of America’s most expensive and beautiful municipalities into a festering dump, Caruso thought he smelled an opportunity to upset the status quo. But he didn’t do himself any favors during a debate this week when he was asked a question by a moderator that focused on race. Dunia Elvir referred to Caruso as “a white man,” at which point he responded by saying, “I’m Italian.” He followed up by saying, “Thank you, that’s Latin.” I’m sure you can imagine where things went from there. (The Guardian)

The Republican candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, Rick Caruso, faced criticism and mockery after claiming in a debate that he was not white but “Latin”, because he is Italian American.

He was responding to a question about the racial identity of the two candidates: him and Karen Bass, an African American Democratic congresswoman.

Moderating the debate on Tuesday night, the Telemundo journalist Dunia Elvir said: “And this question goes for the both of you. The next mayor of Los Angeles will be either an African American woman or a white man.”

“I’m Italian,” Caruso said.

Here’s the video of that segment as it was posted to Twitter, just so you can see that it wasn’t taken out of context.

“The next mayor of Los Angeles will be either an African-American woman or a white man.”

Rick Caruso: “…I’m Italian. That’s Latin, thank you.” pic.twitter.com/PMSImugONP

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) October 12, 2022

The actual substance of the question asked by Dunia Elvir (which has been included in almost none of the coverage) doesn’t really matter. It requires no leap of the imagination to see why she prefaced it the way she did. She inserted a preface saying that the next mayor would either be “an African-American woman or a white man.” The rest of the question wasn’t really relevant. She simply wanted to remind voters in the city that Los Angeles is woke and it’s 2022 so we can’t be electing any cis-male, straight white men to office.

Caruso had the opportunity to simply let it slide and stick to the issues, but he didn’t. Granted, you can tell he was joking around a bit and trying to have fun with the question from the tone of his voice. But his political instincts (limited though they may be) should have warned him to simply let it pass. He should have known that the liberals would pick up that line and hurl it like a grenade.

Ignored in all of this brouhaha is the fact that Caruso was saying something that is technically accurate in a more traditional sense. Notice that he didn’t claim to be “Latin-American.” He simply said that Italy as a country is considered “Latin.” That was historically true for most of the countries around the Mediterranean from Greece all the way around to Portugal and Spain, particularly in the areas where the Latin language was traditionally spoken.

But that doesn’t matter in California in the 21st century. Latino, Latina, or LatinX (or whatever we’re supposed to say this week) is essentially a plug-in for “Hispanic.” So Caruso will now be accused of cultural appropriation or whatever leftist crime carries the political death penalty these days.

Will any of this really matter, though? The most recent polling as of two weeks ago indicates that Caruso has done an admirable job of closing the gap with Bass, but the race still appears to be out of reach. He’s pulled within three points of Bass among registered voters, but he still trails by 15 among likely voters, and there is very little time left on the clock. Anyone who is despondent over how badly Los Angeles has been run into the ground has already had plenty of time to make up their minds and back Caruso. It’s tough to see what else could happen in the final three weeks of the race to push them further to the right.

Yes, the city is a disaster and most of the people capable of fleeing have done so or are probably planning to leave in the near future. But they can’t seem to break themselves of the habit of voting for the same eternal slate of Democrats who brought them to this state of affairs to begin with. And if that’s the case, why should we shed any tears for them? This is what they voted for. And to steal a quote from H.L. Mencken, democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and they deserve to get it good and hard.