I’m a conservative who moved to a liberal city, and I was surprised to see my views change on several issues

Sean Pavone

I became a conservative while I was still in high school, and remained that way until I moved out West.
Spending time in liberal cities like Los Angeles has given me a fresh perspective, and now I align much further to the left.
Some elements of life in LA now make perfect sense to me, but my conservative background still makes me bristle occasionally.
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I became a Reagan Republican during the Gipper’s 1979 campaign against Jimmy Carter — back when I was a plucky 14 years old.

I spent the next few decades as a dedicated ideological conservative, though my politics were admittedly always a little complicated. I’d tell people I was conservative on fiscal and foreign policy, a believer in a strong military, but more left-leaning on social policy. I put my money where my mouth was, spending a decade in the Air Force before exiting to become a writer.

After hanging up my uniform, I traced a path westward, moving from Michigan to Colorado to Seattle to Los Angeles. Each city I’ve lived in has been a little more liberal than the one before it, and both local and national politics have served to whittle away at my right-wing positions.

Now, I suspect I’ll never vote Republican again — the party doesn’t seem to represent me anymore. But I still sometimes feel like an outsider, seeing Los Angeles through eyes that grew up conservative. They still occasionally roll at the ludicrousness of a city that tends to marinate in uncontested liberalism, but I see the world differently now than I did five or 10 years ago.

Here are some of the issues I’ve changed my views on since moving to LA, and a couple of liberal causes I can’t quite get behind.

With cannabis dispensaries everywhere in LA, I no longer have a problem with weed

Amir Cohen/ Reuters

To be honest, I’ve never liked anything about marijuana and have never used it. When I arrived in California, I spent a lot of time on the beach in Venice, where it was hard to avoid the dispensaries — they’re everywhere. I bristled at the clientele, the rank smell, and everything else about it.

And now that it’s legal for recreational use, seemingly every billboard in West LA is dedicated to advertising a dispensary or a cannabis delivery service. I’m a bit worried it’s well on its way to overwhelming sober culture — it’s hard to walk through a green space in LA without being inundated with the smell.

When I was younger, my objection to pot was largely on hard-to-define moral grounds; in more recent years, I’ve softened. These days, my stand on pot is very libertarian: I don’t care what you do. I just wish you didn’t do it on the beach or in the park right next to me.

LA has a severe homelessness crisis, and crossing paths with so many homeless people has changed my view of them

Sean Pavone/shutterstock

By some accounts, there are some 60,000 people living on the streets of LA.

Before arriving in LA, I had virtually no exposure to homelessness, and had given it little thought. Here, it’s unavoidable. Pick almost any street corner in LA at random, and odds are that someone with a sign and a cart full of clothes will be there. Wherever the ubiquitous California highway system passes over a surface street, you’ll find a line of tents in the dark underpass. To call the magnitude of the problem distressing is an understatement.

When I first moved here seven years ago, I avoided any contact with the homeless, part of me thinking of them as an unproductive drain on the system, people who checked out and were unwilling to contribute to society.

I have a very different opinion now. I see the homeless as people the system has failed. People who, for a variety of reasons somewhat beyond their control, have been discarded and forced to live on the fringes. It’s heartbreaking.

There’s not a lot any one person can do, but when I encounter homeless people, I occasionally try to hand them my restaurant leftovers or small amounts of cash. A few dollars or a sandwich isn’t going to get anyone off the street, but it will hopefully provide some small relief from an existence that’s surely miserable beyond my ability to imagine.

I vehemently opposed Obamacare, but now I want socialized medicine

Bangkoker/Shutterstock

Perhaps no other single issue have I had such a hard 180-degree turn on than healthcare. As a conservative, I vehemently opposed Obamacare and saw it as a slippery slope to a single-payer healthcare system — in other words, socialized medicine.

But now I live in California and, self-employed, need to provide my own healthcare. Using the Covered California website to find a healthcare plan, I find that the cheapest possible plan is about $500 per month — plus another $40 for dental coverage. That’s $6,480 per year just for health insurance, which doesn’t include copays ($75 per visit, because the premium is so cheap) and medication. I know California isn’t the most expensive in the country, but it’s still a huge amount of money for a self-employed person to spend out of pocket.

I recognize that a lot of people in California are in far more dire financial situations than I am. How can they afford healthcare? I have a new opinion about universal healthcare: Bring it on. The sooner the better. Thirty-year-old Dave would not even recognize me.

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