SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Following the November election, California Republicans felt they had some momentum.
After losing a devastating seven congressional seats in 2018, the California GOP was able to win back four in 2020. After several years of declining registration, Republicans in the fall reported being slightly above those who choose “no party preference.”
They were modest gains, but they signaled that California Republicans were connecting with voters.
Then, things took a turn.
Former President Donald Trump’s monthslong battle to overturn the results of a fair and free election culminated in violence at the U.S. Capitol.
Now, as California Republicans continue to fight for representation in a state that voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, some say the former president’s efforts to undermine the election makes Golden State Republicans’ uphill climb even steeper.
“The Trump stink is going to have a long, long tail,” said Mike Madrid, a former political director for the California Republican Party who worked against Trump’s reelection. “And it’s not just going to be politicians he surrounded himself with. It’s going to splash onto consultants who worked with him, appointees that worked around him, the people who worked with candidates that were endorsed by him.”
Establishment Republicans prefer to change the subject, concentrating their energies instead on an effort to recall Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
California GOP Chair Jessica Millan Patterson declined an interview discussing Trump’s influence moving forward. In emailed statements, CA GOP spokeswoman Samantha Henson said Democrats are pushing this story to “avoid talking about Newsom’s failures.”
“California’s problems are not because of President Trump; they are the makings of Gov. Newsom’s inability to lead,” Henson said.
Still, some Republicans who continue to defend the former president are already suffering the consequences.
State Senate Republican Leader Shannon Grove was ousted from her position in late January after her party lost two Senate seats. For weeks, she had perpetuated Trump’s claims about the election and falsely said the riots were the result of antifa.
Republican Party decline
In largely Republican states, a candidate could win a primary with Trump’s seal of approval and remain viable in a general election. That’s much less likely in California, where even moderate Republicans have a hard time gaining political traction.
Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, the only California Republican who voted to impeach the president a second time, has drawn three primary challengers, including one Republican who said he’s running specifically because of the impeachment vote.
But a Trump supporter isn’t likely to win the seat, which the former president lost to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The California Republican Party last year endorsed three GOP congressional candidates who supported various aspects of the QAnon conspiracy theories, a fringe conservative movement based on the false idea that Trump was elected to fight against a Satan-worshipping cabal of Democratic pedophiles.
All three candidates lost by double-digit margins to their Democratic opponents.
Republicans have been on a long, downward slide in California for decades. Some argue Trump was just an accelerant.
In the last 20 years, Republican registration has declined significantly in California, from 35% to 24.2% last fall and it’s been nearly two decades since voters elected a Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003.
Rob Stutzman, a GOP consultant who worked as Schwarzenegger’s communications director, said the party has struggled to remain relevant under shifting demographics.
The Republican identity is often characterized by Southern white men, Stutzman said, and in a state where the Latino demographic is growing every day, it’s been hard for Republicans to hold ground. Similar to national trends, California Republicans have also lost a good portion of college-educated white people.
The 2020 election illustrated that Republicans are willing to turn out and vote, he added. But it doesn’t mean those seats can’t flip in the future. All four congressional districts that went to Republicans also voted for Joe Biden as president.
The party will have to work hard to hang on to those voters in the coming years.
“If the Trump baggage continues to define the party, then they’re at risk of losing those voters,” Stutzman said. “I think we’re in the midst of not knowing how the last 10 weeks since the election will now damage the party going forward.”
Following the riots at the Capitol, Schwarzenegger, who is still registered Republican, excoriated Trump and fellow party members who had promoted the election lies that led to the violence at the Capitol. He reflected on his own experience in post-Nazi Austria, comparing the Jan. 6 incident to Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass” that signaled the start of the Holocaust in Europe.
Local government pipeline
The bench of up-and-coming Republicans that could run for state office in California continues to shrink.
Robb Korinke of GrassrootsLab, who tracks California local government, said the number of Republicans winning city and county seats declined in recent years.
Previously, it wasn’t uncommon for Californians to vote Democratic in national and statewide elections while electing Republicans to their local councils. But that’s changed within the last decade.
“There were many of those, six or eight years ago, dozens of cities that were Democratic majority voters but had a Republican-majority council,” Korinke said. “That went away.”
California saw 607 newly elected city officials in 2020. Of those, Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one.
Winning local races is key for building the kind of name recognition and reputation that can bolster a candidate to state office. But now, in the wake of Trump, moderate Republicans are less likely to win seats in local government, Korinke said. More polarizing candidates could run for those local seats instead, but they’re unlikely to be viable at the state level.
“The brand has become so toxic at the top of the ticket that none of the people will wear it at the bottom of the ticket,” Korinke said.
The key moving forward, Stutzman said, will be for Republicans to focus on the long game.
“Trump is not the future of the party and Trump cannot be appeased,” Stutzman said. “Do you ever want to have majorities again and expand your coalition? Then you have to go about this difficult work of moving beyond Trump.”
