Nowhere Left to Go but Up

The party began the year with around $1 million in the bank. Republicans last fall beat back the Democrats’ supermajority in both chambers of the legislature with a delegation that’s grown increasingly diverse. They won in blue districts, creating inroads in traditional Democratic strongholds—like Los Angeles County and the outskirts of the Bay area.

Democrats still have dominant majorities in the legislature and hold every statewide office and major advantages in voter registration. Ambitions were kept in check at the convention. There wasn’t a lot of talk about winning the retiring Barbara Boxer’s U.S. Senate seat in 2016. Republicans will certainly take a shot—Rocky Chavez, an assemblyman from San Diego County, has already announced his candidacy. But it will be a costly, uphill battle.

What was discussed frequently at the convention? Success, and how to create more of it.

I met Brulte at a Panera Bread in Fontana, just days before the convention. He walked up with the sartorial splendor of a southern Californian—camp shirt, jeans, and black cowboy boots. He towered over me like the San Gabriel Mountains over the city. He was finishing up his campaign for a second two-year term as chairman. He seemed to be in a good mood and offered to pay for lunch, which I declined. He joked that a reporter won’t accept lunch during a one-on-one interview, but eating the free food in the press room at a convention is done with no remorse. Touché. 

Brulte doesn’t speak with the media often. He shies from ideological disputes, and prefers that candidates and elected officials do the talking. He is more comfortable doing the “nuts and bolts” work, and tries to be a sobering voice. “I’m not going to be the happy talk guy, who tells you everything is great and leads you into an election cycle and loses,” Brulte says. “Which, by the way, we’d been doing for a number of years.”

Since becoming chair in March 2013, he’s focused on rebuilding from the ground up. “You start by diagnosing accurately where we are as a party,” Brulte said. “We are a party that for the last 35 years, 37 years has been in a rather significant decline.”

Brulte, a former Republican leader of both chambers of the legislature, became chair when the party had hit bottom. It was in debt—owing between $800,000 and $1.3 million—voter registration had dipped to 28 percent statewide, all statewide offices were blue, and the Democratic grip on the legislature was about to become a supermajority stranglehold.

“Triage” is how Brulte described his first year. Few records had been kept, technology was outdated, and even simple data entry was performed multiple times. “We had to put systems in place,” he said. “They weren’t tracking anything. But we track everything. Goals have to be measurable .  .  . otherwise they’re just ideas.”

The party started tracking its own demographics, showing almost an even split between men and women, with a slight advantage to the fairer sex. Latinos are the largest minority group at approximately 14 percent, and about one-third of the party is of minority status. That meant more work with party allies like GROW Elect and the California Women’s Leadership Association, which cultivate Latinos and women, respectively, for public office and other leadership positions.

Women were elected as Republican leaders in both chambers of the legislature: Kristin Olsen in the assembly and Jean Fuller in the senate. Janet Nguyen became the first Vietnamese American to serve in the state senate, while a Taiwanese-American woman and a Korean-American woman were both sent to the assembly. In Orange County, long the conservative bastion of southern California, Republican Asian Americans hold a majority on the County Board of Supervisors.

“Winning elections is not all that difficult,” Brulte said. “In a neighborhood election, the candidate who most looks like, sounds like, has the shared values and shared experiences of the majority of the people in the neighborhood tends to win. One of the problems facing Republicans in California is that they haven’t noticed the demographics of California have changed.”

Possibly the most significant move at the convention came when the LGBT group, the Log Cabin Republicans of California, was overwhelmingly approved by party delegates as a chartered volunteer group, giving them a seat on the executive committee and a few delegates at the convention.

Over the next year, Brulte and other party leaders will push to empower county parties, training them to communicate their message effectively, to recruit volunteers, and to raise money. Success will be gauged by “more Republican elected officials in California than there are today,” Brulte said.

Republicans held the governorship for most of the 20th century. Brulte said that donors got used to Republican executives, but when Democratic governor Jerry Brown was elected in 2010, the money dried up. County parties had become dependent on the state party for funds and then fell on hard times, so they needed to be weaned off state party support.

“We are the conservative party in America,” Brulte said. “We’re the party that believes welfare should be a temporary state, not a permanent lifestyle. When you do something for someone that they are capable of doing themselves, you run the risk of creating a dependency.”

Brulte and other leaders point to the success of certain counties. In Ventura (home of the Reagan Presidential Library), all six countywide offices are held by Republicans, despite a five point voter registration deficit.

Mike Osborn, the county chairman, credited their success to simple technological advancements and voter engagement. “We turn our people out in droves,” Osborn said. “We make up for a lack of registered voters in turnout.”

In San Diego, Kevin Faulconer is the relatively new mayor, despite a 13-point deficit in voter registration. San Diego County chairman Tony Krvaric said they are focused on registering voters, raising money, recruiting volunteers, running and endorsing candidates, and getting out the vote. They try to abstain from fighting over issues. Like Brulte, he believes it’s for candidates and elected officials to do.

“We’re not the platform police,” Krvaric said. “A Republican on their worst day is better than a Democrat on their best day. We have a platform, we know what it says, and people can disagree. If you’re willing to walk a precinct, you’re welcome in San Diego.”

But neither county has escaped the erosion of enthusiasm for political parties by the state’s voters. Both parties have suffered, but Democrats have dropped only four points since 1998, while Republicans have dropped eight.

Conventions produce distractions: Floor fights on whether the term “immigrant” is too PC, young women in dresses that appear to be oversized belts, or a guy in a chicken suit and an Obama mask demanding “we turn Barack Obama into a lame duck.”

Instead, the biggest takeaway from the convention was that the party has its swagger back. Republican assembly leader Kristin Olsen spoke of a recent McClatchy article that cited a Democratic task force calling Democrats a “confused” party with a “muddled message” and an “inability to turn out enough of its loyal voters.” She reveled in the fact that Democrats, for once, were the ones being called out.

And even the press seemed happy— with the snacks in the press room. “Democrats need to get on board,” said one reporter. As I washed down a red velvet cupcake with yet another cup of coffee, I recalled what Brulte told me at Panera. It was Brulte’s idea to feed the press in the first place. Fortunately for California Republicans, that wasn’t his only good idea.

Matthew Fleming is a reporter in Los Angeles.