California Republicans may not be on the verge of a red wave any time soon, but the steady drip of gains shows the state is on the verge of becoming more competitive than anyone could guess. Competence (or the state Democratic Party’s incompetence) could be the key.
The 2024 elections saw President-elect Donald Trump flip several counties and cut his deficit from 29 points against President Joe Biden in 2020 to 20 points against Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris was the first Californian to be a major party presidential nominee since former President Ronald Reagan in 1984, and yet she performed the worst of any Democratic presidential candidate since John Kerry in 2004. Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to win Riverside County (4th-largest county by population), San Bernardino County (5th-largest), and Fresno County (10th-largest) since 2004.
The modest shift could be seen across the state down the ballot as well. Republicans are poised to win the Assembly seat in the 36th District, a Latino-majority and longtime Democratic stronghold, as well as the Latino-majority 58th District in Riverside County. Other results are more notable: Proposition 36, which reimposed strict criminal penalties for shoplifting and drug dealing, was opposed by state Democratic leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Nearly 70% of voters defied Newsom to support it. In Los Angeles, progressive pro-criminal District Attorney George Gascon lost by 20 points to a tough-on-crime former Republican.
Again, these are all modest victories. Trump came nowhere near winning the state, Republicans are still likely the superminority to the Democratic Party’s legislative supermajority. However, the signs for a turnaround have popped up for years. In 2022, Newsom won reelection over a little-known Republican state senator by 18.4 points. That was less than Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) won in Florida, which was a swing state just a few short years prior, against a former Republican governor running as a Democrat. That uninspiring showing came after Newsom faced a very real scare in a recall election, which he was able to escape comfortably after conservative radio host Larry Elder made for an easy boogeyman as one of the candidates running against Newsom.
All of this is more evidence of a changing political landscape than Texas Democrats have, which is just a good 2018 Senate performance and a racist assumption that the party owns the votes of Hispanics. What adds to the optimism of an eventual California GOP revival is that the California Democratic Party has something that the GOP in Florida and Texas do not: A track record of incompetence.
That was on display with the passage of Prop 36, a reversal of the soft-on-crime policies supported by Newsom and his supporters done over the objections of Newsom and his supporters. Newsom, Gascon, and state Democrats showed they were unable or unwilling to address crime in any meaningful way, and voters made sure they paid the price, if even just on that narrow matter.
That is not the only area in which California Democrats have shown their incompetence, though. California is projected to run a budget deficit of $2 billion next year, but Newsom is hoping to create a state tax credit program for electric vehicles to replace the federal one Trump is poised to eliminate. If Newsom were to do that by reviving the state’s previous tax rebate program, he would be taking money away from water infrastructure or housing, as all of those things were covered by the same fund. Newsom has also chosen to politicize his new program, banning Tesla cars from being included even though the company is far and away the best (and most popular) EV manufacturer.
California has been terrible on the economy, even as Newsom boasts about the state’s top-line gross domestic product number. California has the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation and saw a net loss of 18,000 workers who fled for more affordable states in 2023. That was the highest net loss of any state, quadrupling Illinois’s losses. Three in four Californians said the cost of housing is a “big problem,” and even parts of the state that have seen a population decline haven’t seen housing costs follow as developers try to make up for the construction costs that come with California’s onerous regulatory regime.
Or take immigration, a matter California Democrats think they have the upper hand on (with too much agreement from California Republicans). The New York Times detailed that several Hispanic voters in heavily Hispanic areas, such as the aforementioned Fresno County, have been upset with Biden’s open borders, supported by Newsom. According to the outlet, after interviewing Hispanic voters in the state, “many immigrants in California’s Central Valley actually agreed with Mr. Trump that Democrats had allowed too many people to cross the border with the lure of asylum protections. Friends and relatives had spent decades toiling in the fields and paying taxes with no legal pathway.”
All of this leaves openings for the California GOP to chip away at voters who are tired of paying so much money just to live in California, tired of the special privileges given to illegitimate asylum-seekers, tired of the environmentalist games making cars, gas, and everything else more expensive, and tired of the rampant homelessness, drug abuse, and crime on display in Democrat-run cities. The California GOP benefitted from Trump being rightfully seen as the guy who can help make people’s lives more affordable. If the party can stake out that reputation for itself in California, many more wins can be on the horizon.
That requires a competent state party that is laser-focused on turning the ship around. California GOP Vice Chairwoman Corrin Rankin, who is running to become the new chairwoman, has laid out her plans for a more sustainable fundraising model and more voter registration initiatives. In a state where every matter can be traced solely to the Democratic Party’s monopoly on power, showing up and spreading that message is the best thing California Republicans can do.
The harder part is icing out the bad candidates that blow important races. No matter how well-liked someone like Elder is among Republicans, he will not win a statewide race in California. Neither will faux Republican celebrity candidates such as Caitlyn Jenner, who launched a joke of a run for governor during Newsom’s recall and is teasing doing so again in 2026.
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The path forward for statewide Republicans is moderate but, more importantly, ruthlessly competent. Someone like former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who was the best option to run against Newsom in the recall, is someone the state should use as an ideal candidate mold. Lanhee Chen was another fantastic candidate for the California GOP in 2022, running some 300,000 votes and 6-8 points better than other Republicans on the ballot in the state’s Controller race. Faulconer fought San Diego Democrats while improving residents’ quality of life. Chen was well-versed in policy as Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-UT) policy director during the 2012 presidential election.
Those are the kind of candidates the California GOP should be looking for while fighting tooth and nail on quality-of-life matters and letting voters know Republicans are there to clean up the California Democratic Party’s mess on every single matter. It will be a grind, but the path to return to relevance is there for the California GOP, so long as everyone is willing to put in the work.