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The billionaire real estate mogul hoping to be elected mayor of Los Angeles sparked widespread mockery by claiming that he was not white, because he was Italian-American.
Rick Caruso, 63, was appearing at a mayoral debate on Tuesday night with his opponent, Karen Bass, a Democrat who is hoping to be the first black woman to run the city.
The debate moderator, Honduras-born Telemundo anchor Dunia Elvir, started her question by stating: ‘The next mayor of Los Angeles will be either an African-American woman or a white man.’
Caruso then interjected: ‘I’m Italian.’
Elvir responded: ‘Italian American.’
The Republican candidate, whose grandparents emigrated from Italy, said: ‘That’s Latin, thank you.’
Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate mogul, is hoping to be the next mayor of Los Angeles
On Tuesday night Caruso objected to being referred to as a white man, and insisted he was ‘Latin’
While in Europe, Italians, Spaniards, French, Portuguese and several others are frequently referred to as ‘Latins’, in the United States the word refers to Latin Americans.
Caruso’s claim was immediately mocked online.
‘Wow, did Caruso just say he is Latin? That he is not a white man? I am floored,’ said Alberto Retana, the president and CEO of the South LA group Community Coalition.
‘We cannot let him do this. Terrible.’
Comedian Nick Jack Pappas joked: ‘Can’t wait for Rick Caruso to claim Columbus was a Latino immigrant.’
Activist Jessica Burbank said: ‘After consultation with the Italian American delegation, we offer to trade in Rick Caruso for 3 cannoli.’
One person accused Caruso of attempting to fake his race, and drew a parallel of white woman Rachel Dolezal, who famously claimed she was black.
‘Rick Caruso pulled a Rachel Dolezal this evening. ‘White? Me?’ ‘I’m Italian’,’ he said.
And another added: ‘He either doesn’t know what Latin means, or doesn’t know what continent Italy is located on.’
Latinos make up about half the city’s population of about 4 million and they tilted toward Caruso in the primary, but can be inconsistent voters.
The contest was jolted Sunday by the disclosure of a nearly year-old recording of racist comments made during a closed-door meeting of several prominent City Council Latino Democrats and a Latino labor leader.
The Los Angeles Times, which obtained the leaked recording, reported that Council President Nury Martinez is heard describing the black son of a white councilmember as behaving ‘Parece changuito,’ or ‘like a monkey.’
The Times said Martinez also referred to the councilman, Mike Bonin, as a ‘little b****’ and at another point mocked Oaxacans, who are from a state in southern Mexico that has a high percentage of indigenous peoples.
Martinez, who is backing Bass, resigned on Monday.
‘They have let our city down,’ Caruso said.
Caruso, in his first race for elected office, was a longtime Republican who switched and became a Democrat near the deadline to enter the race in a city where the GOP is virtually invisible.
He’s tapped into his estimated $5.3 billion fortune to build a $60 million war chest, most of it his own money – an amount that easily eclipses fundraising by all candidates in the previous three mayoral races.
Despite the financial advantage, even his internal polling shows he’s trailing.
Time is running out and the race has taken on an increasingly hostile tone as mail-in ballots go out for an election that concludes Nov. 8.
‘It’s not the power of the money, it’s the power of the people,’ Bass, a lifelong Angeleno and former state Assembly speaker, told cheering supporters at a recent outdoor rally.
Karen Bass is currently leading Caruso in the polls ahead of the November 8 election
The contours of the race have been set for months: finding solutions for the long-running homeless crisis, rising crime and runaway rents and housing prices.
The centrist Caruso, the son of Italian immigrants, is testing if the famously liberal city might swing to the political right for the first time in decades.
He’s promising to expand the police department and quickly get homeless encampments off the streets.
The progressive Bass has positioned herself as a coalition-builder and emerged as the Democratic establishment pick, with her supporters including President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, a former California U.S. senator and attorney general.
The winner will replace outgoing two-term Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has been largely absent in the contest.
His nomination to become U.S. ambassador to India — made by Biden more than a year ago — appears stalled in the Senate over sexual harassment allegations against a former Garcetti top adviser.
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