{"id":13184,"date":"2023-08-06T22:57:52","date_gmt":"2023-08-06T22:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13184"},"modified":"2023-08-06T22:57:53","modified_gmt":"2023-08-06T22:57:53","slug":"in-reagans-california-democrats-overtake-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13184","title":{"rendered":"In Reagan’s California, Democrats overtake Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Jeremy B. White <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It\u2019s official: California\u2019s Orange County is Democratic territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Punctuating a political sea change, registered Democrats now \noutnumber card-carrying Republicans in a onetime bastion of the \nwithering California Republican Party. The shift, decades in the making,\n both underscores the Republican Party\u2019s free fall in the largest U.S. \nstate and offers a warning to national Republicans in a time of rapid \ndemographic change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, the county has been a mainstay of Republican power in \nCalifornia, helping to launch the careers of Richard Nixon and Ronald \nReagan while serving as an incubator for socially conservative values \nand economically conservative policies, a reliable source of Republican \nvotes and a wellspring of campaign cash from a wealthy populace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are 179 more registered Democrats than Republicans, according \nto an update released by the Orange County Registrar of Voters Wednesday\n morning. On the eve of the 2018 election, Republicans retained a \nroughly 18,000-vote advantage. And now Democrats are feeling optimistic \nthat the county could be a harbinger of similar changes in long-red \nstates with booming populations of Latino and young voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That history meant that a disastrous 2018 election for California \nRepublicans, in which Democrats flipped seven formerly GOP House seats, \nyielding a once-unimaginable outcome: There is not a single Republican \nrepresenting Orange County, which lies between Los Angeles and San \nDiego, in Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those results came as a gut punch to the beleaguered state party, \nwhich has been relegated to superminority status in the Legislature and \nshut out of statewide office. But the transformation of Orange County \nhas been a gradual process paralleling California as a whole shading \nevermore blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Orange County GOP\u2019s heyday in the 1980s and 1990s, when Republicans were migrating there en masse from places like Los Angeles, \u201cyou couldn\u2019t print registration forms fast enough to keep up with Republican demand,\u201d said former Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh. \u201cBut when the demographics started changing aggressively, there was a direct correlation with the voter registration numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look at demographics going forward, the folks who are going \nto be registering in the next five to 10 years are not people that \noverwhelmingly vote Republican, so the challenge is not going to get \neasier,\u201d Baugh said, though he noted a glimmer of hope in Democratic \ndominance given that Republicans in California rebounded from a \npost-Watergate nadir as they saw \u201cliberal policies out of Sacramento \nswitch the momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Changes in Orange County have paralleled those in the California \nelectorate writ large, where Republican registration has shriveled as \nmore voters shy away from parties altogether \u2014 this year, \nno-party-preference voters eclipsed registered Republicans to become the\n state\u2019s second-largest cohort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The electoral results have followed. In 2016, Hillary Clinton crushed\n Donald Trump in Orange County by more than 100,000 votes; in 2018, \nnow-Gov. Gavin Newsom became the first Democratic gubernatorial \ncandidate in decades to take the county when he edged out Republican \nJohn Cox by a few thousand votes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two related trends are driving the shift, said Fred Smoller, a \nprofessor of politics at Chapman University in Orange County: an \nincrease in liberal-leaning blocs like young and Latino voters on the \none hand, and the diminishment of \u201cold white males who came here from \nthe Midwest\u201d who are moving elsewhere or dying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he argued that Trump\u2019s ascension has exacerbated the party\u2019s \nwoes. And he said political trends there should offer a cautionary tale \nfor national Republicans, as with the suburban, white Orange County \nwomen who followed counterparts in other states by electing Democrats in\n 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has implications for places like Texas, with a growing Latino \nelectorate,\u201d he said. \u201cOrange County is a microcosm of the United States\n in many ways, particularly with suburban women. It is a bellwether in \nthis regard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there\u2019s no shortage of GOP challengers hoping to claw back Orange County congressionalseats\n next year, the likelihood of elevated 2020 turnout \u2014 with California \nliberals energized by widespread animus toward Trump \u2014 means Republicans\n had their work cut out for them even before they were surpassed by \nDemocrats. Some Republicans viewed as strong contenders have passed on \nrunning, including Baugh, the former county party chairman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republican Party of Orange County Executive Director Randall Avila \ntold POLITICO that the registration flip was a \u201clong time coming,\u201d \nciting both changing demographics and California shifting its voting \nsystem with initiatives like automatic registration, but he said \nRepublicans could win back a \u201cpurple county\u201d by turning out Republicans \nand prying unaffiliated voters away from Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a fight for no-party-preference voters now,\u201d he said, \nand that means \u201cwe\u2019ve got to change a few things on the way we outreach \nto voters,\u201d including doing \u201ca better job of reaching out to more folks \nlike me,\u201d a 29-year-old Latino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Republicans will be vying with energized and cash-flush Democrats\n who are working to expand their already-overwhelming majority in the \nLegislature by pushing into Republican terrain \u2014 including multiple \nOrange County state legislative districts. After opening an Irvine \noffice for the 2018 midterms, the Democratic Congressional Campaign \nCommittee has deployed field managers to shore up the party’s gains by \nregistering voters and organizing activists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local Democrats aren\u2019t just focused on protecting vulnerable first-term House members like Reps. Harley Rouda<\/a> and Katie Porter<\/a>,\n Democratic Party of Orange County Chairwoman Ada Brice\u00f1o told POLITICO.\n She said party activists are working to make inroads on the local \nlevel, down to school boards, as part of a larger effort to sustain \ntheir 2018 gains with a bench of new leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI believe that the 2018 victory really paved the way for us to \ncontinue transforming Orange County,\u201d Brice\u00f1o said, eyeing the bigger \npicture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to move this momentum, as we did in Orange County,\u201d to \u201cplaces like Texas and Arizona,\u201d she said. \u201cWe want to work in collaboration with other spaces and say this is possible, doing it one red voter at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeremy B. White co-writes the California Playbook and covers politics in the Golden State for POLITICO. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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by Jeremy B. White It’s official: California’s Orange County is Democratic territory. Punctuating a political sea change, registered Democrats now outnumber card-carrying Republicans in a onetime bastion of the withering California Republican Party. The shift, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[83,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-13184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13186,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13184\/revisions\/13186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}