More than three-quarters of California’s local governments have declined to authorize retail stores to sell cannabis, as permitted by state voters with their 2016 approval of Proposition 64. Opposition has been led by moderate Democrats and conservative Republicans unconvinced that making the drug readily available for recreational use is good for society.

But much of California’s House delegation is supportive of helping the marijuana industry achieve a key goal: access to the banking system. Even with cannabis now legal in some form in 33 states, the great majority of banks and credit unions in the Golden State and elsewhere have declined to do business with marijuana-related businesses because possession and sale of the drug remain illegal under federal law.

Last week, the House passed the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act 321 to 103. Every California Democrat backed the measure and so did four of the state’s seven Republican members: Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, Tom McClintock of Elk Grove, Devin Nunes of Tulare and Duncan Hunter of Alpine.

The passage of the bill after past efforts went nowhere was widely credited to a change in focus in lobbying. Leading the push this time was lobbyists for the financial services industry itself – not the cannabis industry. They argued that making a multibillion-dollar industry use cash only created headaches and safety risks for the many legitimate, longstanding businesses that dealt with cannabis companies.

Bankers say other businesses shouldn’t be inconvenienced

American Bankers Association President and CEO Rob Nichols told Politico, “The most compelling arguments have been centered around these secondary relationships. It’s the local plumber, it’s the local electrician, it’s the attorney, it’s the accountant who are doing business with a cannabis grower or dispensary who are then having challenges associated with getting banking products and services.”

The American Financial Services Association focused its lobbying on McCarthy and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, also emphasizing the need to stop inconveniencing so many established businesses.

The fate of the SAFE bill in the Senate is unclear. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, has said that he will schedule a hearing on the bill, but his aides said that should not be interpreted as support.

California’s Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, are expected to be supportive. After 35 years as a staunch supporter of the drug war, Feinstein reversed course in spring 2018.

“My state has legalized marijuana for personal use, and as California continues to implement this law, we need to ensure we have strong safety rules to prevent impaired driving and youth access, similar to other public health issues like alcohol,” she told a McClatchy reporter.

Harris has also changed her position. In 2010, while running for California attorney general, she opposed an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use. 

“Spending two decades in courtrooms, Harris believes that drug selling harms communities,” her aide told Capitol Weekly. “Harris supports the legal use of medicinal marijuana but does not support anything beyond that.”

But her position softened over the years, and last year she signed on as a co-sponsor of a bill by Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, that would make cannabis legal under federal law.

California High-Speed Rail Authority Chief Executive Brian Kelly sent two letters defending Gov. Gavin Newsom’s January remarks that he would focus on completing a 119-mile segment now being built in the Central Valley – backing away from a promise to state voters in 2008 and to the federal government in 2009 and 2010 to build a statewide bullet-train system. Kelly said the state was comporting with key federal regulations.

The limited segment linking Bakersfield and Merced is expected to cost up to $18 billion. Were it ever built, the costs of the originally envisioned statewide bullet-train system – ranging along the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles to San Diego and inland to Sacramento – could have been 10 times as much or more. The cost of each end of the Los Angeles to San Francisco segment was so extreme that in 2012, the rail authority gave up on true high-speed rail in those links – opting for a “blended” system that relied on regular rail to cover the final 45 miles or so into each of the population centers.

The Trump administration has already canceled a $929 million grant issued to the project in 2010 by the Obama administration. It has indicated it hopes to recover $2.5 billion the federal government has already allocated to California as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package on the grounds that the project is far behind schedule and no longer meets promises of sound planning and financial viability made to secure the $2.5 billion.

But Kelly argued that the Federal Railroad Administration under the Obama administration and for the first two years of Trump’s administration concluded that the project was meeting minimum benchmarks to qualify for federal funding.

“Any clawback of federal funds already expended on this project would be disastrous policy,” Kelly wrote. “It is hard to imagine how your agency – or the taxpayers – might benefit from partially constructed assets sitting stranded in the Central Valley of California.”

LAO questioned project’s finances in 2010

Kelly’s letter hinted at but did not explicitly suggest the DOT’s attempts to recover the $2.5 billion were motivated by President Donald Trump’s two-year-plus war of words with California’s governors, which began under Jerry Brown and has continued with Gavin Newsom. In that span, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed or joined in nearly 50 lawsuits against the Trump administration. Newsom has called the targeting of California’s project politically motivated.

Kelly’s argument that the “clawback” of that much in federal funds would be unprecedented appears correct. But the state’s arguments are weakened by the difficulty it will face in asserting it acquired the federal funds while acting in good faith. Despite telling the U.S. Department of Transportation repeatedly, beginning in 2009, that the bullet-train project was in good shape financially, rail authority officials couldn’t persuade state watchdogs that was the case in the same time frame.

In January 2010, the Legislative Analyst’s Office warned the authority didn’t have a legal business plan because it anticipated that revenue or ridership guarantees could be provided to attract private investors to help fund the project. Because such guarantees amounted to a promise of subsidies if forecasts weren’t met, they were illegal under Proposition 1A, the 2008 state ballot measure providing $9.95 billion in bond seed money for the then-$33 billion project.

The LAO and the California State Auditor’s Office have been uniformly critical of the project for a decade.

Rep. McCarthy: Move $ to other transportation projects

If the Trump administration takes steps to recover the $2.5 billion by withholding unrelated federal dollars bound for California, the dispute seems certain to end up in federal court.

Meanwhile, the California congressman whose district has arguably been most affected by early construction of the bullet train on Thursday introduced a bill that would “repurpose” all $3.4 billion in federal funds for the project to water infrastructure projects in California and other Western states. The measure by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, faces long odds in a chamber in which Democrats retook control in January.

The Trump administration has launched a bold effort to up-end water policies in the Central Valley and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, calling for big changes that would favor farmers over endangered species in allocating water.

Helping craft the administration’s new approach: Deputy Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, a former lawyer and lobbyist for the Westlands Water District, which is the nation’s largest agricultural water district with 600,000 acres of farmland in Fresno and Kings counties.

As CalWatchdog reported in June 2017, the prospect of having Bernhardt overseeing the federal government’s California water policies was opposed by nearly all Democrats in Congress because of his history. Meanwhile, to GOP lawmakers from the Golden State, his nomination was seen as confirmation of Trump’s 2016 campaign promises to abandon the old status quo involving Central Valley agriculture.

The Oct. 19 memo signed by Trump reflected Bernhardt’s years of calling for lesser regulatory burdens, specifically including long-lived protections for endangered species. It underlined the determination of the Trump administration to make sure farmers got more water. The memo also ordered that major water projects receive faster environmental reviews.

Trump signed the memo before a campaign rally in Arizona while flanked by three California House members – Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, Jeff Denham of Turlock and Tom McClintock, who represents a wide swath of Central and Eastern California. All have denounced what they see as excessive federal deference to environmentalists – including by the George W. Bush administration, not just the Obama administration.

“This will move things along at a record clip, and you’ll have a lot of water,” Trump assured them.

But veterans of the water wars – including those who back Trump’s new policy – have warned farmers not to get their hopes up for the rapid changes the president predicted. More modest changes in policies by the last Bush administration were fought in both federal and state courts by well-funded environmental law firms. They won not just stays of federal orders but full victories from judges who agreed with their interpretation of Congress’ intent when it adopted far-reaching water laws last century.

Fight over economic impact of rules looms

Bernhardt’s remarks at a May 2017 Senate hearing point squarely to one coming fight with broad implications for all of the federal government. When asked whether the Interior Department would keep its commitment to “scientific integrity” in enforcing federal laws, Bernhardt said, “I will look at the science with all its significance and its warts. You look at that, you evaluate it and then you look at the legal decision you can make. In some instances the legal decision may allow you to consider other factors, such as jobs.”

The idea that governments can consider such economic factors when interpreting laws has been one of the favorite legal arguments of conservative and libertarian law professors since it was advanced in 1973 by Richard A. Posner, who went on to serve 36 years as a federal appellate judge and to emerge as one of the most important and provocative legal thinkers of the 20th century.

If there is any evidence this philosophy is leading to new Trump administration interpretations of federal laws, a strong legal challenge is certain – not just because of what it would mean for water policy but because it would give business interests a powerful new tool to challenge a wide range of laws that create economic burdens.

Posner’s most crucial, basic claim – that the “common law” that is the basis of the legal system holds efficiency as a value – is scoffed at by many legal academics. A Stanford law school analysis that was otherwise sympathetic to Posner’s theories says it is based on “ambiguous” precedents.

The fight over the Posner-Bernhardt view of the law is in some ways the reverse of normal fights over the extent of judicial authority. Democrats say the claim that “efficiency” is part of how laws should be interpreted was invented out of whole cloth, with no evidence it reflected the wishes of the nation’s founders. 

This is the line of argument often made by conservative strict constructionists, who reject the idea that the Constitution and other long-standing laws are “living documents” subject to new interpretations because of changing circumstances.

The current MID – which allows taxpayers to deduct interest on up to the first $1 million of mortgage debt – has been a boon to the state’s homeowners. The median price of a California home is home nearly $510,000, according to Zillow. In Los Angeles County and Orange County, it’s even more: $574,400 and $691,600, respectively. However, the median price in the booming Inland Empire remains significantly lower: $347,700 for Riverside County and $314,000 for San Bernardino County.

The state and local tax deduction disproportionately benefits those with higher incomes in states with higher tax burdens. According to the Tax Foundation, with an average gross income (AGI) of $73,938, 33.9 percent of filers in California take advantage of the deduction, which amounts to almost 8 percent of AGI.

Meanwhile, the median value of this deduction is less than 4.5 percent, and, per the Tax Foundation, California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Texas and Pennsylvania “claim more than half of the value of all state and local tax deductions nationwide.”

As to be expected, many of California’s political representatives have chimed in. Here are a few of their responses:

Jerry Brown penned a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista: “I implore you to vote NO or to ask for more time so that Californians can have a chance to find out about the real impact of this proposal. Getting rid of an individual’s ability to deduct his or her California taxes is a horrible idea, but it is made far worse when you preserve – at the same time – the right of corporations to take those same deductions. Can you tell me how much your neighbors and fellow citizens will have to pay because of this proposal?”

Darrell Issa defended himself and the GOP plan in a letter of his own: “It seemed only fitting to take this opportunity to highlight your expertise on – as your letter states – ‘horrible ideas’ on tax policy. I recognize the role of the state and local tax deduction to reduce the tax burden on many Californians, but let’s be clear: it has only become of such importance as a direct result of the tremendous weight that your misguided policies have put on California taxpayers.” Issa concluded, “Rather than sending contrived letters pretending to care about the burdens placed on taxpayers in our state, I implore you to turn away from the era of ever-increasing taxes that have continued under your administration and instead seek policies that actually lower the tax burden on all Californians.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, defended the plan: “Today, we moved closer to enacting reform that will encourage American companies to bring American jobs back to American towns, allow people to spend minutes, not days, doing their taxes, and help increase wages by $4,000 for the average family because of faster economic growth. We’re moving forward at a fast pace because America has so much to gain when we get this done.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, in a press release published on Halloween, stated, “The GOP plan to double tax middle class families’ incomes shows the fundamental rottenness at the core of their tax bill. Middle class families get tricked, billionaires get treats. Republicans should abandon their broken middle-class tax hike bill, and work with the Democrats for real bipartisan tax reform that puts the middle class first and delivers A Better Deal to the American people.”

Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, decried, “The GOP tax plan is absurd. Their proposal to eliminate the state and local tax deduction will lead to a massive tax hike for middle class families in California.” He also “double dare[d]” the state’s moderate Republicans – who “should know better” – to vote for “this ridiculous tax plan.”

With a seeming vote of confidence from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California – the giant agency that supplies water to about half the state’s 38 million residents – Gov. Jerry Brown appears set to soldier ahead with his $17 billion plan to build two 35-mile-long tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Brown’s view that the tunnels are crucial both to stabilize the Delta ecosystem and to shore up the state’s water distribution system was rejected last week by the board of the Westlands Water District, which voted 7-1 against joining in the “California WaterFix” project. Westlands – the nation’s largest agricultural water district with 600,000 acres of farmland in Fresno and Kings counties – had been counted on to cover about $3 billion of the project’s total cost.

But Westlands officials voted “no” after expressing concern both about the high price-tag they’d have to pay and about whether WaterFix truly would make water supplies more consistent and reliable. The water district was the first in the state to decide on whether to sign up for the project, and its decisive early opposition appeared to stun some supporters.

This led to reports that Brown’s legacy project could be all but dead by Oct. 10, when the MWD is scheduled to vote on whether to participate. The agency is expected to cover $4 billion of the project’s cost.

But on Tuesday, MWD leaders indicated that at least for now, they were still supportive. Board member Larry McKenney said it was in MWD’s interest to try to promote confidence in the project going forward, according to a Sacramento Bee report. MWD shares Brown’s view that the project is crucial for long-term water distribution reliability.

Brown’s would-be successors cool to his plan

Yet the MWD reprieve might not save the day for WaterFix. For months, Sacramento insiders have noted that Brown appears far more enthusiastic about the project than other significant players in state politics – including those running to succeed him as governor next year.

Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton reported Tuesday that Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Treasurer John Chiang and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had each expressed doubts about the project. Newsom and Chiang worried about its environmental impact on the Delta and beyond, while Villaraigosa suggested bold new conservation programs should be tried to see if they could save enough water to make the tunnels unnecessary.

But even if the Westlands district, Newsom, Chiang and Villaraigosa were all on the WaterFix bandwagon, its future would hardly be assured. Environmentalists have a long history of suing and winning over California water policies. In June, they filed the first two of what could be several federal lawsuits targeting Brown’s project in response to a preliminary go-ahead given by the Trump administration.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, the Defenders of Wildlife, the Bay Institute and the Golden Gate Salmon Association alleged that the project would wipe out salmon, smelt and other fish and would worsen water quality not just in the Delta but the San Francisco Bay.

While the Trump administration gave initial approval to WaterFix, it too could prove a wildcard. House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield and other GOP lawmakers from California have urged the White House to challenge water allocation policies they have long argued favor Delta fish over human beings.

While it didn’t register as significant news in California, Trump’s nomination of David Bernhardt to the No. 2 job in the Interior Department this spring suggested changes in how the federal government deals with water in the Golden State could be in the offing.

As CalWatchdog reported in June, Bernhardt is a Colorado-based partner in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, a law firm which has represented the Westlands Water District in federal lawsuits targeting Interior Department policies. This background and other concerns led 43 Senate Democrats to vote against his confirmation in July.

The chief executive of the California High-Speed Rail Authority – former Caltrans director Jeff Morales – is resigning in June from the agency after five years overseeing the state’s $64 billion bullet train project.

The announcement Friday prompted Gov. Jerry Brown and others to praise Morales for leading the authority during a contentious period in which it managed to break ground on the bullet train’s system initial 118-mile segment but struggled to find funding that would actually allow for construction of a statewide network. That’s what voters were promised in 2008 when they approved Proposition 1A, which provided $9.95 billion in bond seed money to a project then estimated to cost $43 billion.

But the timing of Morales’ departure could lead to a melancholy final two months on the job for the rail executive if House Republicans get their way. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, and the other 13 California House GOP members have launched a several-pronged front to try to get the Trump administration to prevent already-committed federal dollars from ever being spent on the project.

Their most visible effort came in February. That’s when their lobbying was seen as prompting Transportation Secretary Elaine Chow to put on hold a promise made late in the Obama administration to provide $647 million to electrify tracks in Silicon Valley leading to San Francisco – a crucial part of the governor’s plan to have a “blended” system of high-speed and regular rail.

Key Obama administration decisions could be rolled back

But California House Republicans also want to “claw back” some of the funding and procedural decisions in Washington made related to the project. This push received an unexpected boost in the final weeks of the Obama presidency when a confidential Federal Railroad Administration report was leaked to the Los Angeles Times. It predicted the first segment of the bullet train that the rail authority had long said would cost $6.4 billion could instead cost $9.5 billion to $10 billion.

Based on this evidence of dubious management and on the rail authority’s inability to attract investors – raising questions about financing – the U.S. Transportation Department appears to have grounds to rescind decisions made in 2009 and 2012 that enabled the project to end up getting about $3 billion in federal funds.

The 2009 decision was the original DOT move to make the California bullet-train project eligible for federal funding from the massive omnibus stimulus bill adopted soon after President Obama took office. The decision required an analysis concluding the project was properly funded and had responsible and thorough planning that substantiated expectations of success.

The 2012 decision was in the form of an agreement that allowed California to bypass the tradition of state and federal infrastructure projects being jointly funded on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Instead, California was allowed for at least three years to get an advance on federal dollars in return for guaranteeing eventual matching funds – totaling $200 million as of June 2015. The federal government has the authority to demand the state match what it has already spent before allowing another dollar to go California’s way.

Is new state law a tweak or a ‘material’ change?

A revocation of these bullet-train-friendly decisions isn’t the only possible twist that Morales faces in his final two months on the job.

Central Valley farmer John Tos, Kings County, the city of Atherton and several other Central Valley groups – the same coalition that previously filed, with some success, legal challenges against the state project – may have their first hearing this week on a new lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court. (A previous hearing scheduled for last week was delayed, so another delay is possible.)

The lawsuit challenges the legality of the December vote of the California High-Speed Rail Authority to authorize the selling of $3.2 billion in state bonds for the project under the authority granted it by Assembly Bill 1889, a measure by Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, that was enacted last year. It loosened bond-spending restrictions in Proposition 1A, the 2008 measure funding the rail project.

Mullin and other Democrats depicted the change as a routine tweak in the law. Attorneys for Tos, Kings County and Atherton will seek an injunction against any sale of the bonds on the grounds that there is no provision in Proposition 1A allowing for it to be subsequently “materially” altered by the California Legislature.

Central California residents, long hoping for federal water reform, have begun to see some movement from Washington. 

Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., has rolled out language designed to “build on last year’s legislation that was loved by farmers and loathed by environmentalists,” as McClatchy reported. “The bill scales back an ambitious San Joaquin River restoration program, speeds completion of California dam feasibility studies and locks in certain water deliveries to Sacramento Valley irrigation districts, among other things. Parts of the bill would not have been accepted by the Obama administration, but the Trump team is different.”

But the larger war over how California’s limited water resources are used seems far from over. The compromise’s approval is sure to spur new court battles. It could also embolden House Republicans like McCarthy and Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, and conservative think tanks to seek further changes in federal policies.

Environmental groups are expected to sue over new rules which allow federal authorities in charge of water supplies in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to deliver more water to farmers in periods of drought.

The Endangered Species Act has been a potent weapon for environmental groups, which have often succeeded in getting judges to adopt broad interpretations of provisions that have been used to protect the delta smelt and Chinook salmon in Northern California waterways. This thinking is reflected in a lawsuit filed in March by green groups, which say even the strong environmental stances of federal and state regulators under Democratic President Barack Obama and Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown don’t go far enough in providing fresh water to the delta.

Such tactics awaited George W. Bush after he became president in 2001. His administration was stymied in efforts to shift environmental policies by legal action and effective lobbying in Congress. By one tally, environmentalists won 27 of their 38 suits against the two-term president.

Endangered Species Act long a Republican target

But the same attitude seen in Natural Resource Defense Council lawsuits against Democratic administrations — why settle for a good result when more is possible? — could soon animate Republicans, especially those who have chafed at how much control the federal government has over land-use decisions in the West. Nunes in particular has long railed against federal indifference to the concerns and needs of Californians.

The Washington consensus is that Feinstein cut a deal because of the fear that a Trump administration would go much further in revamping interpretations of existing water and endangered species laws. This led her to make a major concession to McCarthy: Allowing the secretary of commerce and the secretary of interior to play a key role in determining in how water is allocated between the Delta and farmers.

That provision alone could turn California water policies upside down.

Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, doesn’t have high-profile views on land-use issues. His nominee for interior secretary, Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, is open to the federal government allowing much more of its land to be used for oil and gas drilling, but has spoken of the importance of preserving public lands.

There is also the possibility that the Trump administration could target the Endangered Species Act itself — either through executive orders reinterpreting the law or by encouraging congressional action.

Conservative think tanks have long faulted the species act for far more than denying water to Central Valley farmers. It’s viewed as the California Environmental Quality Act is seen by business groups and conservatives in the Golden State: as a blunt, coercive tool to win land-use battles.

A 2007 report by the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis offers a framework for the sort of policies the Trump administration could pursue.

The most decisive — and most controversial — would simply be for the secretaries of commerce and the interior to make it more difficult to a species to be designated as endangered and easier for a species to be taken off the protected list, reducing the authority now wielded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Conservatives have long argued that designations of 1,300-plus native species and plants are excessive and arbitrary.

The House Republican chair position is not yet vacant, but with Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers reportedly close to being selected to head the Interior Department in the Trump administration, Walters is locking up support for the #4 spot.

Walters lauded McMorris Rodgers’ “tireless” work on behalf of both her constituents and fellow Republicans, confirmed her own intentions to run for the post if and when it becomes available and said she’d already been seeking support.

“I am humbled by the support I have received in preliminary conversations, and I look forward to speaking with all the members of our Conference,” Walters said.

Walters was elected to Congress in 2014 and was quickly picked as freshman representative to House Republican leadership — an honor aided by her generosity to other members during the campaign. At the time, the Orange County Register reported Walters had given 10 percent of her campaign funds to others, which the paper noted as “unusual for a freshman.”

No longer a freshman, Walters was recently elected as the sophomore representative to leadership. 

Prior to Congress, Walters served in the California Legislature from 2004 to 2015. During that time, she formed a close relationship with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, while both were sitting Assembly members.

Walters’ actions were first mentioned in Politico Playbook over the weekend.

Thanks to Donald Trump, California’s role at the Republican national convention in Cleveland has been dramatically expanded — out of proportion, some critics have suggested. The changes belied a calculated effort to shift the center of GOP gravity away from its more traditional areas of regional support, where many anti-Trump conservatives and moderates continue to hold influence.

To begin with, Californians have been given prominent speaking slots during the Trump-dominated event. “Sabine Durden, of Moreno Valley, is slated to speak in Cleveland. She’s been a well-known critic of illegal immigration since her son was killed by an undocumented immigrant in 2012, and she’s testified on the issue before Congress,” as the Los Angeles Daily News reported. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., a Trump delegate and nearly Speaker of the House, will also address the convention. “McCarthy’s speech is expected to focus on the House GOP’s ‘Better Way’ agenda and on building party unity,” the Washington post explained.

Topping off the speaking schedule, Silicon Valley titan Peter Thiel will deliver one of the event’s most anticipated and prominent speeches. “Peter Thiel is speaking because he knows Donald Trump, and he’ll be speaking about the Donald Trump, the man he knows,” said campaign chief Paul Manafort. “And as a successful entrepreneur, he can speak from a standard that we think is important for the American people to hear.”

Symbolism vs. substance

Underscoring the Trump campaign’s favor for the west coast, Golden Staters will be up front and personal for the climactic moment receiving the biggest — and likely most enduring — media coverage. “Californians will be in the front row when Donald Trump accepts the nomination at the Republican National Convention this week, according to seating charts released by the party,” the Los Angeles Times reported. 

“California is one of a handful of states where all of the delegates support the presumptive nominee. Because the state’s primary took place after the race was decided and per the state GOP’s rules, all 172 California delegates support Trump and were chosen by his campaign. Placing them in the front of the convention helps Republicans avoid images of disunity.”

But the Trump campaign, notoriously light on staff and improvisational in its strategy, has not given California Republicans much more than uncharacteristically prominent exposure. The state GOP, facing a daunting election year, has been left to forge a path ahead largely on its own. “California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte is leading his party’s fight for down-ticket races,” the Daily News noted, but “Brulte said the national GOP’s slow, seemingly reluctant response to demographic change hurts his party in California.” 

“Brulte said Southern California candidates like Young Kim, the first Korean-American elected in Orange County for an Assembly seat, and Ling Ling Chang — who is running for the state senate seat that used to be occupied by Bob Huff and spans portions of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties — are critical to reversing the top-of-the-ticket misfortune that has befallen his party.”

Down but not out

While Trump’s campaign and its supporters have refused to dispel the impression, first created by the candidate himself, that they could put California in play, polls have not given much substance to the outsized ambition. According to a recent Field Poll reported by the Washington Examiner, Trump “currently trails his Democratic presidential opponent by 30 percentage points in the Golden State,” 58 to 28 percent, with 14 percent undecided. “Clinton loses 8 percentage points to Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson when he is added to the mix, while Trump loses 2,” the paper added. 

Hoping perhaps to take whatever advantage they can of their newfound status, California’s delegates have nonetheless described themselves as Trump’s firewall in the event that a long-brewing convention-floor insurrection actually bursts out into the open. “We are the backstop,” Brulte told the San Francisco Chronicle. “If you want to mess, bring it on,” said Trump state director Tim Clark. “This delegation was built for a fight. If the Never Trumpers want to start something, they have to go through us.”