BURLINGAME >> For years California Republicans have staggered through the desert, ragged and forgotten. But this weekend they will brush the sand from their clothes and skip into a sparkling oasis.
The state GOP convention begins with a bang this afternoon with an address by Republican presidential front-runner and political supernova Donald Trump. When he takes the stage at the Hyatt Regency near San Francisco International Airport, Trump will usher in a dizzying five weeks of campaign seduction and media saturation culminating June 7 when Golden State Republicans cast what may be decisive votes in the race for the GOP nomination.
John Kasich speaks tonight, followed Saturday by Ted Cruz and his newly announced running mate, former HP chief executive Carly Fiorina.
The June primary is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for California Republicans, who along with Democrats typically vote well after presidential nominations have been clinched, said Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego. California has grown increasingly blue since the 1990s, when Gov. Pete Wilson alienated much of the state’s growing Latino population by aggressively pushing Proposition 187, a 1994 measure aimed at denying services to illegal immigrants.
Since then, the number of registered Republicans in California has fallen from 37.2 percent to 27.6 percent. The last Republican presidential candidate to carry the state in a general election was George H.W. Bush in 1988. Democrats have held California’s two Senate seats since 1993.
“There’s more than a little irony here,” said Dan Schnur, a former GOP operative who once worked for Wilson and now directs the Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “California Republicans have shrunk to a quarter of the electorate, they haven’t elected a candidate to statewide office in 10 years, and they may be in a position to pick their party’s next presidential nominee. That’s pretty heady stuff.”
But the party could suffer in the long run for its brief moment in the national spotlight, said Kousser, who views some of the right-wing positions taken by Trump and Cruz, as a possible “nail in the coffin for the Republican brand” in California.
After Trump’s landslide victories Tuesday in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, the real estate mogul has a clear path to victory. But if he wants to lock down the nomination before the Republican National Convention in July, Trump must do well in California, where recent polls indicate he has a significant lead among likely voters.
It’s been decades since the California Republican convention had this kind of national juice.
“The last time that either party had a state convention that mattered this much was before we had the Internet or cable television,” said Schnur, who served as Sen. John McCain’s communications director during the 2000 presidential election.
And it’s been almost as long since a Democratic or Republican presidential candidate treated California anything more than an ATM.
“California is the state of one-night stands. Presidential candidates visit us, they take our money, they’re gone the next morning,” said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who once wrote speeches for Gov. Wilson. “This is a chance for California not just to be on the radar screen for a few weeks — but dominate the radar screen.”
Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College, said the primary will force the Republican candidates to leave the hotels and mansions they call home during fundraising trips, meet real voters, “and get a sense of the state’s cultural and economic diversity and the kind of problems we’re facing.”
But will California’s immersion in the race help or hurt Republicans in their quest for statewide relevance?
To recapture the center in progressive California, the state party will have to strike a moderate tone, some experts say. But Trump and Cruz have staked out positions on a range of issues, from abortion to same-sex marriage, that are too extreme for most California voters. In particular, Latinos, who now make up a plurality of California’s population, are sure to recoil from the candidates’ hard-line policies on illegal immigration.
It’s no mere coincidence that, as the Republican ranks have shrunk over the past three decades, the Latino population has nearly doubled. But they aren’t the only constituency the GOP needs to win back. Experts point to women and young people as groups that have eluded the party’s grasp.
“The voters whom the party needs to become competitive again in California are not going to be attracted by either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump,” Schnur said.
Harmeet Dhillon, vice chairwoman of the state Republican Party, acknowledged there is some risk that a polarizing candidate could turn away Latinos or other constituencies, but she warned against making broad assumptions about groups of voters.
“It’s a mistake to put people in boxes or treat them as monolithic. I have met many immigrant and Latino supporters of Donald Trump,” Dhillon said. “People are mainly interested in jobs, education, infrastructure, taxation — things that affect them every day.”
But rather than worry about the potential for long-term blowback, Republicans like Chuck McDougall are enjoying their moment in the sun.
For five years, he has kept the Republican flame flickering in San Mateo County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 3 to 1, little suspecting that one day his county would be the center of the political universe.
“I’m 75 years old,” said McDougall, chairman of the county GOP, “and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
A Vietnam veteran who believes in small government, low taxes and a strong national defense, McDougall said he’s torn between Trump and Cruz and eager to see them speak.
Asked which way he’s leaning, he laughed and said, “Call me on Monday.”
