Name: California Republicans have a pulse — and see a way to more victories
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California Republicans have a pulse — and see a way to more victories

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In any other universe, the November election results would be devastating for the California GOP. It remains in a superminority in the Legislature. Only 11 of the state’s 53 House members next year will be Republicans. And Joe Biden drubbed President Trump in the state.But many Republicans are upbeat. They see hopeful sparks in those election embers and the promise of more victories to come.Fourteen years after a Republican was last elected to statewide office, the California Republican Party may have a future.Republicans won more battleground congressional seats than they lost, and than those backed by the Democratic Party. Their share of registered votersand several of their winning House candidates were immigrants or first-generation Americans — a rare sign of diversity from the GOP.Three of the winning GOP congressional candidates ousted Democratic incumbents. No Republican had done that in California since 1994.All this happened in an election in which many pundits expected Trump to drag California Republicans down with him. There were predictions that a larger, younger and less-white electorate would bury the GOP further into irrelevance. Instead, party leaders say they recruited 24,000 new donors and 42,000 new volunteers.The GOP sees opportunities going forward. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces re-election in 2022, looks less invincible than he once did — especially after his— and Republicans won’t have to run against Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for her Senate seat in 2022. The party has a strong potential candidate for governor in Kevin Faulconer, the and climate change-acknowledging mayor of San Diego.Plus, Republicans expect voters to turn on Democrats who run the state as they tire of whipsawing coronavirus rules and scandals such as the Employment Development Department’s incompetence in carrying out its basic job of delivering benefits to unemployed Californians.“I would say continue to underestimate us at your own peril,” said Jessica Patterson, chair of the California Republican Party. “California Democrats have shown that they are not focused on making our state great. They are focused on a radical left agenda that is not working for most Californians.”The challenge now for the GOP is building on this blip of momentum.Part of the solution, said Suzette Martinez Valladares of Santa Clarita (Los Angeles County), the lone Republican in November to flip a Democratic-held Assembly seat, is to recruit more candidates who reflect California’s electorate. Like her. She’s 39, Latina and doesn’t come from the corporate world — she’s the former CEO of a nonprofit preschool.“There’s been a narrative of what Republicans look like, sound like and care about. And that’s not true in the California Republican Party now, and we’re seeing that through my election,” Valladares said. “I’m a Latina. I’m a mom of a 3-year-old. I’m a Millennial.”Vallardes was recruited to run by other Republican women, including state Senate GOP leader Shannon Grove of Bakersfield, Assembly Republican leader Marie Waldron of Escondido (San Diego County) and Patterson, the party chair, who is also Latina.More for you“I think there is a formula that we can now use to replicate the success of my race, and other races from water board to school board to state Senate,” Vallardes said. “This is an opportunity, and we can’t let this opportunity slip through our fingers by not being ready.”The GOP may have found another winning formula in Orange County, where Young Kim and Michelle Steel beat Democratic Reps. Gil Cisneros and Harley Rouda, respectively.In their case, it was California’s most powerful Republican, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, who sought out candidates who reflected the changing demographics of their districts. Kim and Steel will be among the first three Korean American women to serve in Congress when they are sworn in Jan. 3 along with Democratic Rep.-elect Marilyn Strickland of Washington.Steel targeted Orange County’s Vietnamese American community with online advertising and messages aimed at small business owners. While most Asian American voters support Democrats, older Vietnamese Americans lean Republican. Steel targeted nearly 35,000 people who the campaign determined were Vietnamese-speaking voters and stressed her opposition to communism, noting how her parents fled North Korea.Kim’s team, in particular, invested early in soliciting online campaign contributions. The payoff: Nearly half the $5.3 million she raised came in donations of $200 or less in response to her online and direct mail appeals. Cisneros’ take from small contributions was $426,000.“We knew there wasn’t some silver bullet that would win this race,” said Sam Oh, a consultant for Kim and Steel. “We knew we were going to win on the margins and we were going to have to cobble together a victory.About Our Newsroom“We had to do things differently than before,” Oh said.California Republicans will have one significant advantage going forward: Trump is leaving office, making it harder for Democrats to tie Republicans to every tweet from a president who was hugely unpopular in the state.“If you were an elected official in California at the legislative level or beyond, every day you went to work you were asked, ‘But what about Trump?’ Always,” said former East Bay Assembly member Catharine Baker, in the 2018 blue wave election.“Now is an opportunity to focus on what do we more broadly stand for as Republicans and what are the solutions we bring to the challenges in the state, without the suffocating, all-absorbing focus on Trump,” Baker said.But while Trump will be out of office as of noon Jan. 20, anytime soon. Nor are the 6 million Californians who voted for him.“That’s a big unknown,” said Joe Pileggi, a consultant for GOP Rep. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita, who defeated Democratic Assembly member Christy Smith in a swing Southern California House district in November.Pileggi encouraged Republicans to focus on what is wrong in California under Democrats’ single-party rule.“People are tired of what’s coming out of Sacramento,” Pileggi said. “Whether it’s taxes or jobs or the state being shut down, people are starting to look at the policies that are coming out of Sacramento that are hitting them hard. Then they see the governor being a little hypocritical by forcing people to obey policies, but not abiding by them” himself.It’s a sign that Republicans won’t let voters forget about Newsom’s dinner last month at the swanky French Laundry restaurant in Yountville that included people from several households — the type of gathering his administration has discouraged during the coronavirus pandemic.Voters, Pileggi said, are tired “of hearing, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’”Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. Email: Twitter:About Our Newsroom

In any other universe, the November election results would be devastating for the California GOP. It remains in a superminority in the Legislature. Only 11 of the state’s 53 House members next year will be Republicans. And Joe Biden drubbed President Trump in the state.But many Republicans are upbeat. They see hopeful sparks in those election embers and the promise of more victories to come.Fourteen years after a Republican was last elected to statewide office, the California Republican Party may have a future.Republicans won more battleground congressional seats than they lost, and than...

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California Republicans have a pulse — and see a way to more victories

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