SACRAMENTO, California — Labor unions and establishment Republicans fought tooth and nail to keep firebrand conservative activist Carl DeMaio out of the California Assembly. It didn’t work.
The talk-radio host and former San Diego city councilmember is shipping up to Sacramento next month after handily dispatching fellow Republican Andrew Hayes in the race to fill outgoing GOP state Rep. Marie Waldron’s seat in northern San Diego County.
He comes bearing a risky proposition for other Golden State Republicans: embracing President-elect Donald Trump.
“I’m going to be pushing the Republican Party in a whole different direction when it comes to environmental issues, housing issues, social issues,” DeMaio said in an interview with POLITICO’s California Playbook. “If we want to be a majority in California, which is absolutely possible, we have to transform.”
State Republican leaders have long attempted to distance themselves from the president-elect in hopes that a more moderate image will earn them swing votes in deep-blue California. Take Steve Garvey, for example: The former baseball star was so eager to separate himself from Trump during his unsuccessful Senate run this year against Sen.-elect Adam Schiff that, at one point, he wouldn’t even rule out voting to reelect President Joe Biden.
That calculus is showing signs of shifting now that Trump has won another term: Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher in a letter to Trump on Thursday implored the president-elect to “tackle issues that have plagued California for too long.
It’s good timing for DeMaio, a longtime Trump acolyte who has built his political brand by advocating controversial anti-tax and anti-labor policies despite criticism from both sides of the aisle. His Assembly campaign leaned into Trump’s hardline immigration stances, even running ads declaring that former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson “was right” to back a controversial 1994 ballot measure that sought to deny public services to undocumented immigrants.
Just last month, DeMaio told former Fox News host and British government policy adviser Steve Hilton that California’s GOP leaders have “Stockholm syndrome” after two decades stuck under Democrats’ thumb.
“He’s exactly the kind of fighting spirit that I think you need in Sacramento,” Hilton told California Playbook.
But you can’t ruffle feathers without making a few enemies — or in DeMaio’s case, a long list of them. Chief among them are firefighters and police unions, which deeply resent DeMaio for his efforts to slash public pensions and pay during his time on the San Diego City Council. A committee sponsored by California’s largest firefighters’ union spent nearly $1.5 million this year to oppose DeMaio’s campaign.
That’s part of why the state Republican Party and prominent GOP figures like Rep. Darrell Issa backed DeMaio’s competitor, Hayes, ahead of Election Day. Even the powerful California Labor Federation, which usually focuses on electing allies to battleground or safely Democratic seats, weighed in to support Hayes.
“We just really disliked [DeMaio] and wanted to give him a pound of flesh rather than give him a free ride,” said federation President Lorena Gonzalez, who’s sparred with DeMaio on labor issues for years. “His harebrained ideas and his approach cost the city of San Diego millions and millions of dollars.”
Yet, come December, DeMaio’s Trump train will come roaring into town. DeMaio said he plans to hire an “intergovernmental affairs” staffer whose primary role will be connecting with the Trump-led federal government, and he hopes the Department of Housing and Urban Development will “come down like a load of bricks on California’s dysfunctional and failure-ridden homeless policies.”
DeMaio added he’s planning to make a trip to Washington early next year to ask that federal agencies like the Interior, State and Homeland Security departments take a stronger role in beating back California’s liberal majority. He has yet to iron out specifics but said he plans to discuss border policy and Tijuana River sewage pollution.
“The Trump administration needs to hold California accountable for the billions of dollars that they’re wasting,” DeMaio said. “Stay tuned — we are working with our lawyers and coming up with policy proposals that we want to present.”
DeMaio also wants to start a Golden State version of the House Freedom Caucus: the “Reform Caucus,” a not-so-subtle nod to his conservative policy group Reform California.
He has at least one potential ally so far: Republican Assemblymember Bill Essayli, who has a similar reputation for tussling with Sacramento Democrats, told California Playbook he’s “seriously considering” joining DeMaio’s caucus.
“A lot of new members come up to Sacramento thinking they’re going to be the ones to change it, and very quickly they get eaten up by the machine,” Essayli said. “I’m confident that he’s going to be able to withstand that pressure.”
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