Palm Beach Republicans put Mike Caruso on their voter guide despite his arrest on child sex-abuse and kidnapping charges — then removed him after the endorsement exploded publicly.
The Palm Beach County Republican Party managed to create the kind of endorsement problem that usually requires several meetings, a lawyer and someone quietly asking who approved the PDF. The local party put former state Rep. Mike Caruso on its voter guide even though Caruso had already been arrested on charges including kidnapping and child sexual abuse.
Then people noticed.
Caruso, a former Florida lawmaker running for Palm Beach County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller, was arrested in August. According to court records cited by The Daily Beast, the case involves allegations concerning two children, including a male relative younger than five. Caruso has pleaded not guilty and denies the allegations.
The Florida Republican Party says it withdrew support immediately after the arrest and asked Caruso to leave the race. He refused. That did not stop the Palm Beach County GOP from later including him on its voter guide, creating the very avoidable impression that the local party had decided kidnapping and child-sex-abuse charges were not a deal breaker for a down-ballot endorsement.
After the guide drew attention, the local party removed Caruso’s name. Florida Republican leaders, including Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott, have condemned him and said he should not remain a candidate.
The sequence is what makes the story so spectacularly messy. This was not a candidate arrested the morning after endorsements went to print. The arrest happened in August. The state party says it had already withdrawn support. Yet somehow Caruso still made it onto a local Republican voter guide in October.
The party has not produced some dramatic ideological defense of him. Instead, the endorsement appears to have been treated as something that needed to be corrected once it became public. That leaves the less glamorous question of how it happened in the first place.
Caruso remains legally innocent unless convicted. The charges are allegations, and he has entered a not-guilty plea. That distinction is critical, especially given the seriousness of the accusations.
But political endorsements do not operate under the same standard as criminal convictions. Parties routinely withdraw support from candidates facing major felony charges long before a jury reaches a verdict. The state GOP apparently understood that immediately. The local party’s voter guide somehow missed the memo.
The Daily Beast reports Caruso was released on $160,000 bail. His campaign website has since disappeared, donors have reportedly received refunds and statewide Republican leaders have distanced themselves from his candidacy.
Caruso, however, has said he intends to continue running and serve if elected. That creates a bizarre ballot situation where a candidate can remain legally eligible even after the party that once backed him wants voters to pretend the endorsement never happened.
For Palm Beach Republicans, the problem is no longer merely Caruso’s candidacy. It is the competence question created by the guide itself. Political parties spend enormous amounts of time vetting candidates, building voter lists and coordinating messaging. “Did anyone Google the guy before endorsing him?” is not supposed to make it onto the postmortem agenda.
The broader question is how a local party endorsement process can fail this badly when the charges were already public, the state party had already pulled support and the candidate’s arrest was hardly a minor development.
