President Donald Trump is coming to California this weekend, and plans to speak near Coachella. The question is why, given that no Republican presidential candidate has won the state in more than three decades, nor will he.
The answer is that there are several close congressional races in California that could determine control of the House of Representatives. Plus, there is lots of fundraising cash in California, even among the remaining Republicans.
In 2018, during the midterm elections that were held while Trump was president, Democrats won seven seats in California, using a hitherto-unknown practice called ballot harvesting, which the state first legalized in 2016.
In 2020, Republicans took back four of those seats, partly by playing the Democrats’ own game, putting ballot collection boxes in places that conservative voters were likely to trust, such as churches and Republican Party offices.
In 2022, the GOP managed to defend each of those four seats, in somewhat redrawn districts. But there will once again be close contests throughout the state. The most closely-contested areas will be Orange County; the inland areas of Southern California; and the Central Valley. Each of these areas has large numbers of Latino voters, whom the Democrats once considered a reliable voting bloc, but who have been trending towards Republicans in recent years.
The Cook Political Report rates ten California seats as competitive. The site for Trump’s rally on Saturday is in California’s 25th district, which is not one of the competitive seats. However, it is near the 41st district, where the race for the seat held by incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) is considered a “toss-up.” It is also a short drive from Orange County and San Diego County, where there are several competitive seats, each of which could make the difference.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.