In blue California, conservatives count their victories

As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House four years after a tumultuous, defiant departure, Bay Area Republicans are feeling galvanized and rejuvenated, not just by their party’s presidential victory but by what appeared to be a rightward lean on key down-ballot races in the famously blue Golden State.

At the Back Forty Texas BBQ Saloon in Pleasant Hill on Tuesday night, jubilant Contra Costa County Republicans started claiming victory by 9 p.m.

“I’m verklempt,” said Gloria Pope, a 69-year-old Pacheco resident. “We’ve been suffering so much for the last four years. This is a chance to climb out of the hole and go back to being humans.”

Andrew Armen arrived at the watch party straight off a plane from Philadelphia, where he spent the last two months canvassing for a pro-Trump political action committee.

“Up three points in Pennsylvania — that’s game,” the 26-year-old Orinda resident said.

Armen figured that his efforts were best spent in the swing state rather than in California, which predictably voted Democratic in both the presidential and Senate races, though early returns suggest by declining margins.

“California is an overwhelmingly blue state, but that doesn’t mean people vote blue rank and file,” said Bill Whalen, a political analyst and fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. “There are nuances here, especially in the battle of ideas, and Republicans are making some gains on those fronts.”

The lack of a highly competitive race at the top of the ticket in California may have led to lower voter turnout than in 2020. And the certainty that California’s 54 electoral votes were destined for Harris may have created an opening for the state’s GOP.

“If you’re a Democratic voter in Michigan or Arizona, the import of your state’s outcome may have kept you motivated,” said Dan Schnur, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. “In deep blue, those voters might not have felt the same motivation.”

While California Republicans may not have delivered the state to Trump, conservatives here still had plenty to celebrate as voters pushed a number of Republican congressional candidates to victories in swing districts, blocked progressive ballot measures and ousted a progressive Oakland mayor and Alameda County district attorney in recalls.

Early results show California voting overwhelmingly conservative on ballot measures this year. Proposition 36, which increased penalties for theft- and drug-related crimes, passed with 70% of the vote. They shut down Proposition 33, the measure to expand rent control, with just 38% of voters in favor. And they appear to have rejected Prop. 5, which would have lowered the threshold needed to pass future bond measures from a two-thirds majority to just 55%.

In the down-ballot races, Republicans seemed to be inching ahead in the six competitive U.S. House districts that could decide the balance of power in Congress, though it is still too early to call.

“California voters are sending a clear message to Democrats: they are fed up with failed, radical policies that have taken our state and nation in the wrong direction — from the never-ending homeless crisis to failing public schools, rising crime, and surging costs,” state GOP chair Jessica Millan Patterson said in a statement.

But Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College, cautioned that Republicans’ strong performance on down-ballot races isn’t the start of a “Republican revival” in the state. “It’s just the absence of Democratic mobilization,” he said.

A greater get-out-the-vote effort in California — though it would not have changed the race for Harris — could have added steam to down-ballot races.

“There was really no presidential campaign in California on the part of Harris,” Whalen, the political analyst, said. “She did not come out and get involved with candidates down the ticket.”

Though she won her home state easily, Harris doesn’t appear to be faring as well against Trump as Biden did in 2020 — in fact, Trump has continued to make gains in the Golden State since he first ran in 2016. With 54% of the votes counted as of Wednesday, Harris led California by 17.2 points. In 2020, President Joe Biden won by a margin of 29.2 points. In 2016, Clinton won by a 30-point margin.

Though he lost the U.S. Senate race, early results suggest Republican Steve Garvey also performed better against Democrat Adam Schiff — with 43% of the vote compared to Schiff’s 57% — than the most recent Republican to run for California Senate, Mark Meuser, who garnered 39% of the vote when he lost in 2022 to Sen. Alex Padilla.

At a downtown San Jose pub, Silicon Valley GOP chair Shane Patrick Connolly watched results roll in Tuesday with fellow Republicans.

“I think our Republicans in office have a really good record of being good stewards of people’s money, of having very common sense, not being extreme,” he said. “We just don’t feel that the Democrats in office have been doing as good a job of being good stewards of the funds.”

In Pleasant Hill, there was really only one Republican anyone at the watch party there wanted to talk about: Trump.

Pope chalks up his strong showing to inflation and affordability concerns — she’s frustrated with inflation from the last few years, with gas and groceries growing ever-more expensive. She blames much of that on Biden.

Trump’s message of restoring America to a romanticized past version of itself resonated once more.

“We have a grandson, and we want to make sure that he has the same America we do,” said Pope’s husband, Vernon.

Nolan Chen, a Contra Costa County GOP member and one-time candidate for an East Bay congressional seat, estimates that Democrats, like Republicans, may have perceived Harris as inauthentic, especially in the last few weeks of the election as she tried to appeal to conservatives — like promising to appoint a Republican to her cabinet and repeatedly mentioning that she owns a gun.

“She’s pretended to be more conservative than she is,” Chen said.

Though Trump’s personality can be off-putting to some, Chen concedes, he figured many were willing to look past it and focus on the conservative values Trump has promised to restore in America.

While Democrats were left with questions about where the United States would head under a second Trump presidency, his victory to some of the supporters there represented something else entirely.

“It means peace and quiet for the next four years,” said Armen. “It means justice for 2020.”

Harriet Blair Rowan and Sana Dadani contributed reporting.