California Republicans are caught between loyalty to Trump and winning swing districts

from Nadia LathanCalMatters

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a republican Leticia Castillo stunned political observers when he won the Riverside County Assembly seat in the state legislature two years ago.

The Democratic candidate, Clarissa Cervantes, the sister of the outgoing lawmaker, was favored and spent more than 10 times her.

This year, Castillo thinks he can do it again.

“I’m available to my constituents and they like that,” Castillo said at an evening reception outside a San Diego resort. Republican strategists, lawmakers and advocates are meeting for the party’s annual convention in downtown San Diego, one month before June’s primary ballots hit the mailboxes.

California Republicans are optimistic. Castillo and a handful of other GOP lawmakers can keep their seats — but only if they keep President Donald Trump at bay. It’s emblematic of the tension between leaders who are focused on strategic campaigning and the unabashed embrace of Trump by party conservatives. GOP candidates are careful not to get too close to the president, whose affiliation could enable California Democrats to vote against everything from a candidate to a ballot measure.

Inflation and America’s entry into another war destroyed the president’s popularity among voters nationally. And the California GOP is listening. Officials over the weekend repeatedly downplayed him and his influence in state politics. But between the flamboyant sweaters emblazoned with his name and his cardboard cutouts, delegates’ support for the president was on display.

Trump remains deeply unpopular in California. But his support among hardline conservative activists has rarely, if ever, wavered over the past decade. That remains true among Republican activists in California, whose devotion has not waned despite Trump’s controversial decision to go to war with Iran, which has sent gas prices to record highs.

“I love what he’s doing. I love everything he’s saying,” Los Angeles delegate Mary Boston said of Trump and the Iran war. “The whole lot — all the Democrats, all the judges — they just hate him because he’s trying to make a difference for you and me.”

Donald who?

Even so, Republican Party officials sought to minimize his role.

“I think people here are tired of California. They know the federal government is not doing anything to hurt or help California,” Riverside County Sheriff and Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco said in an interview. Last week, Trump endorsed his Republican rival, Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, over Bianco. “For the last week, people didn’t care what President Trump was doing,” he said of Trump’s endorsement.

Bianco and Hilton did not mention Trump. In a state where Democratic voters vastly outnumber Republicans, this is imperative.

State Party Chairwoman Corinne Rankin said she was surprised to see Trump “weighing something in California” and declined to comment directly on voter dissatisfaction with his policies.

Some party leaders hope Trump’s toxicity will simply subside after the June 2 primary.

“Just as quickly as gas prices have gone up, I think we’ve all seen in California how quickly gas prices can go down,” said state party vice chairman John Park. “A lot of the issues that are at the fore, the ones that people will instinctively associate with President Trump, will have subsided by then.”

At the council, the rift between the party establishment and its composition became apparent. Trump merchandise could be seen throughout the convention—at vendor booths, on walls, and on people’s clothing. In some sessions, Trump’s footprint was large. The Make California Great Again session was led by Joe Reitkop of Orange County, who founded a group of the same name shortly after Trump’s 2016 inauguration.

Reitkop and other party activists advocated a voter ID ballot initiative which will require voters to show proof of citizenship in order to vote. The ballot measure is modeled after a voting restriction bill that Trump is pushing through Congress.

Running for Legislature? Shut up about Trump

Even before voters passed Proposition 50, the ballot measure aimed at House Republicans, the California Republican Party was weak and it mattered little. Democrats continue to hold a commanding supermajority in Sacramento, where Republicans make up less than a third of state lawmakers. No Republican has been elected to statewide office since 2006.

Things briefly looked different in 2024, after voters shifted to the right in nearly every county as part of a backlash against President Joe Biden. Overwhelmingly Latino and working-class voters in Imperial County backed Trump, the first time they have backed a Republican presidential candidate in decades. Republicans too turned three seats over in the legislature, for the first time in 10 years.

These trends quickly evaporated. Voters in Imperial County and statewide overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50, complicating the narrative that Democrats are losing Latinos in California.

Imperial County Republican Party Chairman Sears Morris said the candidates’ approach will be to keep quiet about Trump because of voters’ frustration with the economy.

“We’re not going to say our candidates are MAGA candidates. We’re focusing on them,” said Morris, a Trump supporter. “Things are tough right now. The economy isn’t super good. And we’re at war.”

Member of the Coachella Republican Caucus Jeff Gonzalez will be a test case. He redistricted two years ago despite a 12-percentage-point registration advantage for Democrats. Gonzalez’s challengers include Indio City Councilman Oscar Ortiz and former El Centro Mayor Tomás Oliva. So far he has surpassed all s $630,000 in his campaign account at the end of last year.

Gonzalez did not attend the convention, and spokespeople for his campaign did not return calls and emails seeking comment.

Republicans are also targeting Castillo’s Riverside Assembly seat and Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones’ San Diego district, where the GOP has only a slight edge as voters in northern and eastern San Diego County move left. He is splitting at the end of this year.

“This is the one we’re all looking at,” said GOP activist Justin Schleifel.

The debate over who should succeed Jones, a moderate Republican, has been a point of tension among San Diego Republicans.

Jones and U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa endorsed San Marcos City Councilman Ed Musgrove. Meanwhile, Reform California, a multimillion-dollar political organization led by a Republican Assembly member Carl DeMaiosupports Christy Bruce-Lane, a twice-failed assembly candidate who is further to the right of Musgrove.

Moderate Republicans fear Lane is too conservative for what will be the most competitive district this year.

Neither candidate garnered enough support for endorsement at February’s San Diego County GOP convention after hours of heated debate.

“We spend a lot of money against each other just because of this,” said Schleifel, a friend of Jones’. “It’s winnable, but it’s very tight.”

Back in Riverside, Castillo has far more war funds than she did two years ago, when she narrowly won her seat by a few hundred votes against Democratic City Councilwoman Clarissa Cervantes.

At first, Cervantes was considered a shoo-in. But she was stuck two DUI convictions. Cervantes attributed her loss to low Democratic turnout. This time, she hopes things will be different.

Castillo continues to focus on public safety and parental rights.

“I understand that people just want to keep saying ‘Trump, Trump, Trump,'” she said. “After all, we’re in California and Trump doesn’t rule here.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.