In 1968, California voters elected Ronald Reagan governor. Twelve years later, Reagan was president of the United States.
In 1978, California voters passed Prop 13, a referendum amending the state constitution to lower property taxes and require a 2/3 vote of the state legislature to raise any taxes. By 1990, the national Republican party split when Pres. George H. W. Bush’s broke his “No New Taxes” campaign pledge to sign a budget deal to reduce the federal deficit. In 1993, Pres. Clinton’s budget passed without a single Republican vote—because it raised taxes (and eventually led to budget surpluses).
That’s why if Republicans are really interested in confronting the challenges they face as a national party, they should venture onto the (very liberal) website of The American Prospect and read Harold Meyerson’s commentary on the results from last Tuesday’s election in the Golden State—because what happens in California is often a harbinger of what will happen in the rest of the country.
First, the cold hard facts:
“Now, the Democrats…have become the first party with two-thirds representation in both houses (of the state legislature) since 1933. Their victories Tuesday in legislative races were just the most surprising of a string of successes. Democrats also appear to have picked up four congressional seats, extending their margin in the state’s 53-members congressional delegation to a 38-to-15 lead over the Republicans. President Barack Obama and Senator Dianne Feinstein each won re-election by roughly 20 percentage points, and the party prevailed in its main initiative battles–for Governor Jerry Brown’s Proposition 30, which levies tax increases on the rich to forestall further cuts to the state’s schools, and against Proposition 32, which would have curtailed unions’ ability to fund their election-season campaigns.” […snip…]
“The Democrats’ domination of America’s mega-state is now nearly total. All the statewide elected officials are Democrats; the federal and state legislative delegations are overwhelmingly Democratic; all the state’s major cities have Democratic mayors (retiring Democratic congressman Bob Filner wrested San Diego from Republican hands on Tuesday).”
Second, the fundamental political facts that changed California over the past two decades:
“What changed the state, of course, was immigration….It took a couple of decades before these changes were registered in the state’s electorate, but the latest election figures are little short of stunning. According to the networks’ exit poll of Tuesday’s election, the state’s share of Latino voters rose from 18 percent to 22 percent between 2008 and 2012, while the share of Asian voters nearly doubled, from 6 percent to 11 percent, between those two elections. For the past decade, California has been a state with a minority-white population, but it’s close to becoming a state with a minority-white electorate. This year, the white share of state voters, which stood at 65 percent in 2004 and 63 percent in 2008, fell to just 55 percent.” […snip…]
“That’s only half the story of California’s transformation, though. The other half is what one party did to attract support from these new Californians and what the other party did to repel it.
California’s transformation goes back to 1994, when Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican running behind in his re-election campaign, began to promote a ballot measure, Proposition 187, which would have denied all public services–including even the right to attend public schools–to undocumented immigrants and their undocumented children….A court soon struck down most of 187’s provisions. The state’s Latinos turned with vengeance against the California Republican Party. And, just as the ad predicted, they kept coming–into the Democratic ranks.”
Meyerson concludes by posing the dilemma faced by the national Republican Party today:
“In theory, Republicans around the nation, brooding over their defeats, could learn some things from their California brethren’s descent into oblivion. Whether the lesson they take to heart is how to avoid the Golden State’s GOP’s fate or how to replicate it remains to be seen.“
Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/
