Left-leaning voters in increasingly liberal Orange County, California, are debating how far to push the party down a liberal path, mirroring a national trend highlighted by the 2020 Democratic primary race for president.
“The old guard needs to realize that change is coming,” Claudio Gallegos, a staffer for Democratic U.S. Rep. Lou Correa, told the Los Angeles Times. “This isn’t your grandpa’s Orange County, and we need to bring [progressives] in. But to progressives, I say beware of tribalism. They seem to stick to their own clique and freeze out people who may have potential, but because they started under moderate politicians, they cut them off. That helps no one.”
The Southern California county, historically regarded as a bastion of conservative ideals in an otherwise liberal state, has been voting for Democrats in large numbers in recent local, state, and national elections. Former President Ronald Reagan famously called Orange County “the place all good Republicans go to die.”
In 2016, Hillary Clinton was the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Orange County since the 1940s, and 2020 Democrats have seized on the area as an opening to appeal to more moderate voters. Andrew Yang, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar have all held well-attended campaign events there.
Thank you Orange County California Democrats for hosting me last night. That was a lot of people! Now I know how you turned the tide from red to blue in 2018 and we expect great things in 2020! Keep it up! @DPOC pic.twitter.com/nFsP8o1NuO
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) August 5, 2019
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has campaigned in Southern California with socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, opened a field office in Santa Ana over the weekend.
“Progressives are starting to work within the political system. It’s time,” Andy Lewandowski, a local organizer for Sanders said.
“The new left of the Democrat party will not win with such unreasonable arguments,” columnist Ron Hart wrote in the Orange County Register. “And they will not stop Trump. But libs can take comfort in that California liberated the world from plastic straws.”
Political experts say in Southern California, like other areas in the country, changing social dynamics, discomfort with an impeached Republican president among suburban women, and other factors have changed the political makeup of a county where the median household income is more than $85,000.
President Trump and his allies have brushed aside suggestions that an energized liberal caucus poses a threat to his reelection chances. He has mentioned homelessness and crime epidemics in areas like Southern California to take shots at prominent congressional Democrats who represent those districts. A united Republican base, especially in key states like Michigan and Ohio, will propel the president to a second term, the president and his supporters say.
“It’s energized my base like I’ve never seen before,” Trump said about impeachment. “My base is much bigger than people think.”
