California Republicans are accustomed to a cautious dance with Donald Trump’s divisive presidency, but the president’s racist tweets this weekend are testing that balancing act in the nation's most diverse state, with conservative calls to denounce Trump’s statements competing with the need to placate the party base.
While Trump generally polls abysmally in deep-blue California, he remains popular among the California GOP’s shrinking base. Leaders of the beleaguered state party have to thread a needle of neither embracing Trump too enthusiastically nor denouncing him and risking a backlash.
But 24 hours of silence from the party’s leadership — after Trump tweeted that female minority members of Congress should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came” — have angered a vocal minority of California Republicans who have warned for years that Trump is dragging their party to oblivion.
Even as California Democrats universally condemned the president, the head of the California Republican Party did not respond, nor did Republican leadership in the state Legislature. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also has remained silent.
Other California Republicans have taken note of their leadership’s reluctance to speak.
Republican Assemblyman Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley) was the sole GOP legislator to
Republican strategists and former GOP officials also lambasted Trump. That included never-Trumpers like former Arnold Schwarzenegger aide Rob Stutzman, who
“Donald Trump is speaking to his base and has no interest in talking to the rest of America,’’ said Luis Alvarado, founder of the California-based GOP firm Latino Strategy, who noted that “you can count on one hand” the number in his party speaking out.
“It’s not an issue of partisanship,” Alvarado said. “It’s an issue of being a true believer in what American values are — and that’s why I am in disbelief that our elected officials are not standing up to Donald Trump once again.”
“Time to lead,” former California Republican Party political director Mike Madrid
Patterson was chosen in February to lead her party out of the political wilderness, with California Republicans holding zero statewide offices, reduced to less than one-third of the Legislature and reeling from having forfeited seven frontline House seats.
Debate about the party’s relationship with Trump dominated the campaign. Patterson became the frontrunner after a former Republican assemblyman dropped out, saying his refusal to vote for Trump alienated too many party members; by contrast, Patterson voted for Trump and emphasizes that she supports the president.
According to a 2017 Department of Finance demographics report, Latinos comprised the largest ethnic group in California in 2016 at 39 percent, compared to 38 percent white and 13 percent Asian. In 2036, the state's population is projected to be 43 percent Latino in 2036, 35 percent white and 13 percent Asian.
The Public Policy Institute of California projects that immigrants will make up 27 percent of California's population in 2030, the same share they did in 2013.
As California has grown more diverse, the California Republican Party’s share of the electorate has steadily declined, dropping below the number of no-party-preference voters last year. Some Republicans, like Madrid, believe the party’s decline stems in large part from its inability to attract minority voters — a problem that critics believe Trump exacerbates.
“Donald Trump just made life a lot easier for Katie Hill and Katie Porter and the rest of the freshman Democrats running for re-election out here,” said Dan Schnur, a former California Republican official who is now an independent and teaches politics at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley.
Indeed, while some Republicans say they were appalled by the tweet, they believe party officials are in a tough spot if they condemn the president publicly. They said that they believe Patterson, the CAGOP chair, has been placed in a particularly delicate spot.
“Jessica needs the VP to come and do a fundraiser,’’ as Vice President Mike Pence just did last week in the Central Valley, said one leading Republican, who asked to speak without attribution. “She has nothing, no infrastructure. So if she criticizes the federal administration ... no cabinet secretaries will meet with your donors ... she will have literally no money” to fight the 2020 cycle.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine