Michael Grimm was swept into office in the 2010 Tea Party wave. But when he got to Washington, he adapted. 

He voted against cuts to the food stamp program, one of only 15 Republicans to flip sides. It's just one example of Grimm's moderate record while serving in Washington. 

During his short tenure in Congress, Grimm was marked with low grades by influential conservative groups, including a 32 percent from the Heritage Foundation and a 45 percent from Freedomworks. The American Conservative Union gave him its lowest score in 2013. 

Now that he is running for office again, he is taking a harder line to the right.

"Ultimately, would you say I have gotten slightly more conservative? Yeah," Grimm said earlier this week. "I've gotten a little more conservative because of the legal process I had to go through and my constitutional rights deprived."

Grimm had always called for more border security, going back to his initial run for congress in 2010.

"Securing our borders, once and for all. Yes, we need to build a fence and man it with the border patrol and national guards unit where necessary," he said in a 2010 campaign video.

But in Washington, he was seen as Republican open to immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship.

"I want to see a pathway to legalization that is fair and responsible and makes this country a better place and is what the American people want," Grimm said in July 2013. When pressed at the time on whether he wanted legalization and not citizenship, he replied, "Well, I think legalization leads to citizenship. That's the ultimate goal."

In Congress, Grimm has said multiple times he wanted to work across the aisle to solve the country's problems. It is unclear if that bipartisanship would still hold up.