SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) – With a landmark climate change program collapsing, California’s Democratic governor was stuck. Needing just a handful of votes to save a sunsetting but lucrative emissions tax, Jerry Brown shrewdly appealed across the aisle to an up-and-coming Republican assemblyman to help rescue the staple of California’s global warming agenda.
Breaking with his party’s aversion to passing taxes, Southern California Republican Chad Mayes delivered seven Republican votes to extend the current cap-and-trade program through 2030.
Brown’s party called the 2017 deal a “legislative unicorn” and said Mayes’ bipartisanship was courageous.
But the rare show of cooperation in the Legislature didn’t sit well with California conservatives. Party traditionalists quickly turned against Mayes, and a month after the deal with Brown forced him to step down as Assembly Republican leader.
Nearly a year later, Mayes stands by his controversial vote. He says the California Republican party, which hasn’t won a statewide election in over 10 years, must transform to reach voters in the nation’s most progressive state. With fellow Republicans challenging his seat, the 41-year-old Mayes paints himself not as a candidate spurned by his party, but as a man who can stop the GOP’s “death spiral.”
“The old way hasn’t been working; [Republicans] have to accept the fact that what we’re doing isn’t working,” Mayes said during an interview at a Sacramento coffee shop. “We’re continually losing voters, not gaining.”
Mayes and numerous congressional Republican candidates suddenly find themselves scrambling to defend their seats in traditionally conservative districts, largely due to President Donald Trump’s unpopularity in the Golden State. Opportunistic donors prop up fresh Democratic candidates in various congressional districts. Emboldened Democrats have ventured into Republican strongholds, hoping to flip control of the U.S. House in November.
Democrats have targeted over 60 Republican-held congressional seats nationwide in the midterm elections, seven in California. They’ve put on notice GOP incumbents like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Orange County, Rep. Jeff Denham from the Central Valley, and Rep. Duncan Hunter of San Diego, while chasing empty seats in two other congressional districts.
Republicans used to hold great political power in the nation’s most populous state, producing presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The recent list of two-term Republican governors includes George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But after an extended stretch of declining party registration, Republicans represent just 25 percent of the state’s registered voters. The miserable numbers has the party bracing for the chance that the November ballot won’t have a Republican gubernatorial or U.S. Senate candidate.
Voter turnout in the various congressional races would surely dwindle without a Republican candidate at the top of the ballot and could prompt a “blue wave” in Congress, according to Republican strategist and author Tony Quinn.
“The Republican party in California has pretty much collapsed since Schwarzenegger left office,” Quinn said in a phone interview. “There’s just not any room anymore for the hard-right in California, it just isn’t there.”
Republican dysfunction took center stage last weekend at the party’s state convention in San Diego. Delegates split on who to endorse in the state’s governor’s race, giving little guidance to GOP voters deciding between San Diego businessman John Cox and Orange County Assemblyman Travis Allen in the June primary.