Despite Election Wins, California GOP Needs a Makeover

Before you lash out at me for picking on the California GOP, please keep in mind that most of my writing over the past 22 years has chronicled the myriad ways that the state’s union-controlled Democratic Party has destroyed the California Dream. We desperately need a healthy Republican Party to provide political competition.

Thanks to one-party control, California has the highest poverty rates in the nation, crummy schools, crumbling infrastructure, absurdly high housing prices, and high taxes and punitive regulations that send our residents fleeing to other states. These crises are the result of policy choices, not happenstance.

Despite Joe Biden’s overwhelming victory in California, Republicans scored significant victories in down-ticket legislative and congressional races. Those wins, however, do not signify the party’s sudden resurgence, as some Republican leaders would like us to believe.

Instead of developing a new strategy to recruit better candidates and promote more-appealing ideas, the party is likely to double down on its current approach because it worked (sort of). In this regard, winning may be more problematic in the long run than losing.

The fundamentals haven’t changed. The GOP no longer is competitive in statewide constitutional races (governor, treasurer, secretary of state, etc.). Democrats control super-majorities in both houses, thus leaving Republicans with virtually no influence in Sacramento.

Not all of the Republican Party’s problems are of its own making. Democrats widely outnumber Republicans and out-gun them financially, too. But Republicans can do a better job crafting a message to our state’s increasingly nonpartisan and surprisingly libertarian-ish electorate.

California voters made remarkably sensible choices in statewide ballot measures. They rejected a massive property tax increase and rent control, said “no” to racial quotas, and gave Uber and Lyft exemptions to a draconian anti-contracting law. That shows that voters aren’t incorrigibly progressive—and could be won over by a properly positioned GOP.

Nevertheless, after its interviews of Democratic and Republican candidates, this Editorial Board often found itself surprised by the overall quality of the local Democratic candidates even though it strongly disagreed with their viewpoints. Republican contenders often underwhelmed the board even though their views more closely aligned with its positions.

One example jumps to mind. This newspaper endorsed Greg Raths for the 45th congressional district race against Democrat Katie Porter—not because he seemed particularly thoughtful in his old-school Orange County conservative approach, but because Porter’s progressive views were too far to the Left for what has become a politically competitive district.

Not long after Raths received the endorsement, he blasted the Orange County Register in a campaign email, say