CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2018 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2018 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CALIFORNIA
GOP DOESN’T HAVE TO BE IRRELEVANT”
From
across California, the obituaries for the California Republican Party have come
thick and fast ever since the November election. After all, the GOP’s onetime
national stronghold in Orange County now lacks even a single Republican in
Congress.
All statewide
officeholders also are Democrats, from the governor right through the nominally
nonpartisan state school superintendent. Democrats hold majorities of more than
two-thirds in both houses of the Legislature, allowing them to pass any tax
increase they like.
So the
eulogies now being read over the seemingly dead body of the onetime Grand Old
Party amount to piling on after Republicans’ worst defeat ever in California.
One
veteran conservative commentator suggests the GOP should stop calling itself
Republican and adopt some other label because the present one was poisonous for
so many candidates. The party’s former leader in the state Assembly, Kristin
Olson, opined in print that her party “is dead.”
But it
doesn’t have to be that way. And a major Democratic operative has now outlined
just how Republicans can recover in this state. A potential GOP recovery,
though, would probably require its candidates to divorce themselves as much as
possible from President Trump and his brand of government by insult,
belittlement, braggadocio, whim and tweet.
If
Republicans in California do as the Democrats did after their 2016 losses, they
have a shot at making a significant comeback. But so far, the GOP is so
enmeshed in feeling sorry for itself that there is little sign it will make the
kind of effort Democrats did starting at the end of 2016 and carrying right
through this fall’s election.
The
first thing Democrats did then was select the Republican congressional seats
they had a chance of winning. In the end, they took virtually all of those.
Their
chief criterion was simple: Target districts where Hillary Clinton beat Trump,
but which elected Republicans to Congress. Those included all the Orange County
areas they flipped this fall, and three in the Central Valley. They also made a
strong, successful effort to ensure they didn’t lose any of the 39
congressional seats they already held in California.
Republicans
have plenty of potential targets for 2020, if they take even a cursory look.
They might go after districts where GOP candidates led in Election Night
counts, but lost when late mail and provisional ballots were counted.
Those
include three Orange County districts that went Democratic this year after
decades of Republican representation. The GOP also could examine districts like
those of Democrats Ami Bera and Jerry McNerney, perpetual targets for them in
the northern San Joaquin Valley where the incumbent Democrats rarely pull more
than 53 percent of the vote, even in big Democratic years like 2018.
There
is definite potential for Republican recovery. But only if the GOP adopts some
of the tactics outlined in a post-election memo sent to reporters by Drew
Godinich, regional press secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee.
The
DCCC, Godinich reported, started by making sure it had solid candidates. It
then spent big money on primary campaigns to get those candidates into the fall
runoff. Democrats also put local organizers into target districts just two
weeks after Trump’s inauguration, while he was embroiled in feckless and false
arguments over whether his inauguration crowd matched Barack Obama’s.
The
DCCC then invested $30 million to register and turn out new voters from diverse
ethnicities, women and younger voters known as millennials. It hired 11
full-time organizers to expand Latino and African-American voting, one reason
those groups came out in larger numbers than almost any prior mid-term
election.
And it
made sure each target voter heard from Democrats more than 100 times in the 60
days prior to Nov. 6.
Still,
it’s likely none of those things would have won for the Democrats if not for
the negative presence of Trump, who loomed over the entire election.
So far,
Republicans aren’t following up on any of this and show no signs of learning
from the Democrats, while Trump appears unready to go away.
All of
which means recovery is possible for the GOP. But only if it cleans up its act,
and very soon.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias
at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising
Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now
available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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