California’s Republican caucus is growing and more diverse, but it’s a long way from power

by Ryan Sabalow via the CalMatters Network
November 27, 2024

A ballot is dropped into one of the official ballot drop boxes at the County of Riverside Registrar of Voters office in Riverside on Nov. 5, 2024. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters

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The Republican caucus in California’s Legislature is growing more diverse as Latino and Asian American candidates apparently flipped three Democrat-held seats, including unseating an incumbent Democrat senator for the first time in a presidential election since 1980.

When new legislators are sworn in next week, Democrats will still control a supermajority in the Legislature. But the three flipped seats have Republicans hopeful that California’s reputation as a liberal enclave state may be shifting. They point to Latino and Black voters helping send Donald Trump to the White House for a second term.

“As Californians grow increasingly frustrated with the failures of Democrat leadership, they are shifting toward Republican solutions,” Senate Republican Leader Brian Jones said in a statement. “Senate Republicans are not only growing in numbers but also diversity.”

The Republican caucus is on pace to have at least 50% non white members for the first time, according to the CalMatters Digital Democracy database. As it stands, based on unofficial results, 13 of the 27 legislative Republicans are not white. The caucus could become more than half non white, depending on the outcome of two pending special elections in solidly Republican districts. Two Asian American Republicans, Sen. Janet Nguyen and Assemblymember Vince Fong, won election for other offices earlier this month, leaving their seats vacant.

Jones’ statement noted that six of the Senate’s 10 Republicans are women and three of the women are Latino.

Jones sent out his statement Monday, the same day Orange County Democrat Sen. Josh Newman conceded his seat to Republican Steven Choi, a Korean-American former Assemblymember. It was the first time since 1980 that Republicans ousted an incumbent Democratic senator in a presidential election.

The other two flipped seats were in the Assembly. In California’s Latino-majority Imperial and Coachella valleys, Republican Jeff Gonzalez beat a Democrat to win in the 35th Assembly District where Democrats had a 14-point registration advantage and the population is 70% Latino.

And in the state’s closest legislative race, Republican Leticia Castillo had a 568-vote lead on Tuesday over Clarissa Cervantes for an Inland Empire seat vacated by Cervantes’ sister, Sabrina Cervantes, a fellow Democrat who won a state Senate seat. The Associated Press has not officially called the race.

If the results hold, it will be an impressive victory for Castillo. Thanks to her sister, Cervantes had substantially more name recognition than Castillo in her sister’s former district. Cervantes also raised more than $1 million for her campaign compared to Castillo’s $78,000.

Democratic leaders, however, say the results are hardly a groundswell or a referendum against their party, which continues to hold every statewide elected office along with the supermajority in the Legislature. They note that aside from Newman, none of the dozens of other Democratic incumbents up for reelection this year lost.

“In a challenging year for Democrats nationwide, our members fought and won some extremely competitive races,” Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said in a statement. “It is clear that Democrats have maintained our supermajority and the caucus has maintained its historic diversity and strength.”

Experts such as election analyst Paul Mitchell said it’s also worth keeping in mind that the party that lost nationally in a presidential election almost always surges back in the midterms. If that happens in 2026, he said Republicans could see the legislative gains they made this election vanish.

Will Republicans regain power in California?

Nonetheless, experts say Democrats would be wise not to brush off Republican victories as anomalies, and they expect California’s GOP to continue to make inroads with non white voters, even if Republicans have a long way to go to retake political power in California.

“It’s not like (the Legislature is) crossing over to being majority Republican, or even close to it,” Mitchell said. “They’re probably not going to do that in our lifetimes. But if you’re a Latino Republican, and you can capture votes from Latino voters as a complement to a maybe diminishing Republican base … then that’s a powerful combo.”

Part of the change is that Republican-dominated districts are becoming more diverse, reflecting California’s population as a whole. Whites make up just 35% of California’s 39 million residents.

And there are other signs that a shift may be occurring.

Christian Grose, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, said surveys of non white voters in urban areas of California still show they are solidly Democratic. But in rural or suburban areas, he said there’s been a shift toward the Republican Party from non white voters, particularly men and people without college degrees, that could have a noticeable impact on future elections.

“In California, the winning strategy for a Republican in these districts would be to run candidates who are ethnically diverse and represent their communities,” he said. “But the coalition for the Republicans is actually probably a white-voter majority in many of these districts like the Central Valley, plus some Latino voters.”

Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican consultant with expertise in Latino politics, took it further. He has called the election a “five-alarm fire” for Democrats. He sees the election as a sign that the racial-identity politics that defined the previous generation’s political affiliations are fading away.

“The idea that race and ethnicity are cornerstones of our political beliefs will become an outmoded concept,” Madrid said. “It was definitive for the past generation, and now it will be a relic of the past. … The bigger issue here that the Democratic Party has to understand is there’s a class problem, and that … a multiracial, (multi)ethnic working class is emerging in the country.”

For their part, legislative Republicans say California’s voters – of all races – made a clear statement during the election that they were fed up with Democratic policies. They rejected progressive ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage, allow cities to block rent increases and to prohibit unpaid inmate labor. And they resoundingly approved a ballot initiative to impose harsher sentences for crimes, despite Gov. Gavin Newsom and progressive leaders opposing it.

But fresh off his victory in the Imperial and Coachella valleys, incoming Republican Assemblymember Gonzalez believes his victory mostly came down to the state’s high costs.

He said his district is close enough to the Arizona border that it’s easy for voters to see that gas is cheaper on the other side of the state line. Voters, he said, are smart enough to realize that Democratic policies are what makes California more expensive.

“California has become unaffordable for not only the Latino, but the average person,” Gonzalez said.

Assemblymember Kate Sanchez, a Republican from Rancho Santa Margarita, said the election proved that Latinos like her “feel unseen and unheard by the current majority in the state.”

She said it’s no coincidence that Gov. Newsom has been touring majority Latino counties since the election, touting his economic policies.

“I think he sees the writing on the wall and he realizes, ‘California, this is a new dawn,’ ” she said. “This is a new chapter in California history and California politics, and he’s wanting to get in good graces. However, we’ve all had to deal with the fallout of his administration and the extreme policies, and so I don’t think people are buying it.”