Billionaire Caruso on spending binge to sway LA mayor's race

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rick Caruso, billionaire developer and underdog candidate for Los Angeles mayor, is mounting what might become the city’s largest-ever voter-turnout operation to try to defeat U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, who could be the first Black woman to lead the nation’s second-most-populous city.

Caruso is deploying several hundred paid canvassers and droves of volunteers to knock on doors, make phone calls and send texts and emails. Their targets are identified by campaign staff who rely on demographic research and polling to ferret out potential supporters among undecided Latinos, Asians and independents.

Of particular interest are people who sat out the June primary when Bass topped the field and outdistanced Caruso by 7 points, setting up a runoff.

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. Bass has been fighting for their votes, too, and has lined up endorsements including former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Council President Nury Martinez and labor leader Dolores Huerta.

Longtime Democratic consultant Roy Behr sees an opening for Caruso if he can win over enough voters who would otherwise have skipped the election. The outcome is “really dependent on both the turnout and the choices of Latino voters,” Behr said.

Consultant Dveen Babaian, who oversees Caruso’s paid canvassers, said in lower-income neighborhoods typically overlooked by campaigns “our door knocks are the first door knocks some of these voters have ever gotten.”

“This campaign will be won by engaging marginalized communities,” Babaian said.

On a recent afternoon in a heavily Latino neighborhood of modest homes in the city’s San Fernando Valley, a Caruso canvasser was knocking on doors and...