Democrats running as Republicans has a long ignoble history in NYC and in Louisiana
We had a similar thing happen in Florida - two (very leftist) Dems who knew they had no chance of getting elected as Dems in this heavily GOP area got the GOP to accept them as “converts” and sponsor them on the the ballot as Republicans. Needless to say, their positions remained asbolutely the same as they had been when they were Democrats, and they also continued the various corrupt schemes in which they had been involved as Democrats (influence peddling and bribery, mostly for developers). They both ended up on trial and IIRC at least one, if not both, got jail time. Oh...and they completely disgraced the GOP in this county and destroyed the GOP majority.
Republican party chairs have got to STOP accepting Dems into the party as candidates. Anybody with half a brain can see that the Dems in question are doing it simply to make an end-run around people in their own party, either other, more powerful candidates or their own party chairs, and I can’t imagine what could possibly convince GOP party officials to accept people like this.
This has simply never ended well.