With California’s delegate-rich primary election looming for Republicans as a possible last chance to stop Donald Trump from rolling to the nomination, Trump has established a commanding lead in the polls and a beachhead of support among the party’s California delegation in Congress.

Pollster James Lacy revealed that respondents now hand Trump 38.3 percent support in the state’s closed primary, with Ted Cruz at 22.4 percent, John Kasich at 19.7 percent, and Marco Rubio at 10.1 percent.

“Voters registering an ‘undecided’ opinion were 9.6 percent,” he noted. “Trump’s almost 16 percent advantage over Cruz is statistically significant and well above the margin of error of the poll, which is 4.8 percent. The poll results demonstrate that Trump’s standing among Republicans in the Golden State has grown significantly in the last two months.”

Divided loyalties

A Field survey released in January had Trump and Cruz in a dead heat, 23 percent to 25 percent, as The Hill reported. Cruz has attracted the support of established Golden State conservatives such as former California party chairman Ron Nehring, who Cruz named state chairman of his campaign.

But uneasy Republicans currently holding elective office could shift swiftly to Trump to avoid losing favor with key constituencies. “House majority leader Kevin McCarthy, speaking at a policy event hosted by the Public Policy Institute of California […], said the intensity of support for Donald Trump and depressed excitement among Democrats could boost the chances of other Republican candidates in California and the nation this fall,” the Sacramento Bee observed. Faced with unfavorable long-term demographic and cultural trends, party leaders in California have strained to find ways to bring new voters into the GOP. Although Trump’s capacity to alienate conservatives has been proven time and again, some influential California Republicans could try to leverage his candidacy as a way to make inroads into default Democrats dissatisfied with the state’s Bay Area-centric liberal leadership.

From Arnold to Donald

In fact, Trump’s dominance has served as a potent reminder of California Republicans’ taste for insurgency — and celebrity. Some analysts have drawn explicit parallels between the Trump campaign and former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. “There are differences of circumstance and differences of ideology, but the fact remains: Trump is paralleling Schwarzenegger’s campaign as a heavily branded, made-to-order conservative populist, and he’s succeeding,” wrote Kaleb Horton in Vanity Fair. “He’s succeeding because he knows how to work and persuade huge crowds, because he’s impossible to forget, because he knows how to jump on TV and entertain millions of people, and because he has a persona so intractable that he’ll never have to worry about perception management.”

“There was a lesson in Schwarzenegger’s campaign, if you squinted through the smoke. Politics is a test, but it’s not a standardized one. There is no true-or-false section where you’re disqualified if you don’t know the difference between secretary of state and secretary of defense. The essay is 90 percent of the grade, and it’s a big, broad open question — “What does America mean to you?” — and you can succeed through sheer style. If the crowd likes it when you call people losers, you can do that forever. There is no principal’s office.”

Whereas liberal state Democrats initially viewed Schwarzenegger as someone they could work with, however, their view of Trump has become completely hostile. (Schwarzenegger recently endorsed Kasich, who has deliberately run the least confrontational campaign among the remaining contenders.) At the same time, many have been reluctant even to consider that Trump could win the White House; most polls — but not all — have shown him losing to Hillary Clinton in a head to head matchup.

Gov. Jerry Brown recently captured the anxiety in remarks at a dinner for labor organizers, the Sacramento Bee reported. “If Trump were ever elected, we’d have to build a wall around California to defend ourselves from the rest of this country,” he lamented, adding quickly that he wasn’t being deadly serious. “We don’t like walls, we like bridges,” he added.

Though small, California’s mainstream conservative establishment has a degree of power that appears to be unusual this election cycle, coalescing around Ted Cruz’s insurgent conservative campaign instead of Marco Rubio’s more traditional effort. Ron Nehring, Cruz’s California chairman who previously served as the state GOP chair and ran for Lt. Governor in 2014, touted the California Republican Assembly’s overwhelming first ballot vote in favor of Ted Cruz, noting that Ronald Reagan called the CRA the “conscience” of the party.

The Trump factor

But Donald Trump has reason to be confident that he will come out on top in California. “Earlier in the season, polls already showed him doing well,” as Fox and Hounds recalled. “A January Field survey showed him running about even with Ted Cruz, and he has surely gained strength since then. Cruz is pitching his appeal to evangelical voters, who are much scarcer in California than in the South. As the Nevada entrance polls confirm, Trump has a broader base, and he is attractive to voters who worry about illegal immigration. California Republican voters are especially passionate about that issue.”

And California recently handed Trump one of his first endorsements from a sitting member of Congress — Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter. “We don’t need a policy wonk as president. We need a leader as president,” Hunter told Politico, joking that Trump’s indifference toward shows of support from current officeholders made him more inclined to announce his own backing. Hunter, Politico added, “sponsored legislation last year that became known by its opponents as the Donald Trump Act, which would have forced local law enforcement in sanctuary cities to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement if they had an undocumented immigrant in custody.”

Losing voters

New figures on party affiliation offered another unnerving sign for California Republicans turned off by Trump. A new report released by Secretary of State Alex Padilla “finds that 24 percent of California voters now officially have ‘no party preference,’ the term used by elections officials to describe independents,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “That’s up almost three percentage points since the last presidential election in 2012.” Eric McGhee, elections researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, told the Times that the GOP has been losing significant numbers of voters to the bloc declining to state a preference. “The Democratic share of registrants has been flat, the independent share has been climbing fast, and the Republican share has been sinking just as fast,” he said.

“In the January 2008 report, almost one in five California voters were unaffiliated with a political party. In the last open presidential election, 2004, only 16 percent of voters were counted in the category of independent. Republicans have suffered the greatest blow from the shifting allegiances of California voters. No statewide GOP candidate has been elected since 2006, and the party’s share of the electorate since then has plummeted by 7 percentage points.”

A March surprise?

The trend has led some observers to game out implausible but potentially effective strategies for tearing delegate-rich California from Trump’s hands. On NBC’s Today Show, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd raised the prospect of a surprise entrant anti-Trump voters could rally behind. “If Trump is blowing through March and then the panic really sets in, […] it’s all a simply denying him a majority of delegates, doing whatever it takes,” Todd said. “There is still a filing deadline to make in the California primary. Maybe a Mitt Romney” would jump in, he ventured.

“This is a scenario someone outlined to me a couple days ago. Mitt Romney would file late, you may get favorite sons and daughters to file late, simply to try to beat Trump, deny him delegates and create another way for a brokered convention. I have to tell you, it’s the most farfetched.”

Romney recently made waves on Twitter by going public with concern that Trump’s tax returns might show him to be boastful or misleading about his actual net worth.

After a momentary surge wherein she cast herself as a corporate leader who could wrest America back from the “political class,” former California Senate candidate and HP CEO Carly Fiorina ended her bid for the White House.

The news came as a blow to supporters beguiled by Fiorina’s unusual mix of mainstream credibility and insurgent fervor, which she underscored in several prominent debate performances with ringing attacks on the country’s abortion laws and its established party leaders.

“We must fix our festering problems by holding our bloated, inept government bureaucracy accountable,” she said in a statement on Facebook suspending her campaign. “Republicans must stand for conservative principles that lift people up and recognize all Americans have the right to fulfill their God-given potential.”

But she also took a parting shot at Hillary Clinton, who has sought to make up a surprising deficit against Bernie Sanders among young women voters. “To young girls and women across the country, I say: do not let others define you. Do not listen to anyone who says you have to vote a certain way or for a certain candidate because you’re a woman,” Fiorina wrote. “That is not feminism. Feminism doesn’t shut down conversations or threaten women. It is not about ideology. It is not a weapon to wield against your political opponent. A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses and uses all her God-given gifts. And always remember that a leader is not born, but made. Choose leadership.”

Although Fiorina attracted her fair share of political foes on the campaign trail, as the only woman in this year’s Republican field, she has now also attracted curiosity over her next moves. She has already returned, for instance, to the lecture circuit, freshly available for booking through her speaker’s bureau. “Fiorina’s pitch to clients appears designed to feature both her business and political backgrounds,” as Michael Hiltzik noted at the Los Angeles Times. “She could do well occupying the niche of an articulate conservative with extensive experience in business. Beyond that, the lessons of Fiorina’s rapid return to the ranks of paid speakers are murky,” he added. “But they do point to a reality of modern presidential campaigning: It can be a path to a lucrative post-political business career.”

It has also proven to be a good way to recover from the costs of a campaign while maintaining a relatively public profile. Hillary and Bill Clinton were famously able to turn around their financial fortunes with the help of big paydays on a packed speakers’ schedule, although it seemed unlikely that Fiorina would follow Clinton in delivering six-figure speeches before Wall Street banks.

One lingering question facing California Republicans was whether Fiorina might eventually turn her sights back on the state. Some Golden State conservatives could welcome her as an anti-establishment woman offering an alternative to Donald Trump’s brand of insurgency, currently popular among a significant slice of the GOP electorate in California. Fiorina distinguished herself as one of the few candidates to deal Trump an early and significant blow, openly criticizing his treatment of women on the debate state in Simi Valley. “‘I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,’ she pronounced, humbling Trump as no other candidate had to date,” as Bloomberg Politics recalled.

But that window may close depending on Ted Cruz’s performance this cycle. The Texas Senator has secured the endorsement of Rep. Tom McClintock and lined up former state party chair Ron Nehring as his California campaign chairman. Cruz also recently held a fundraiser in Beverly Hills hosted by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, as Variety reported. Still, “Jerry Perenchio, one of the most prolific of all GOP donors, has invested heavily in a SuperPAC backing the candidacy of Carly Fiorina,” Variety noted, tallying Perenchio’s support at over $3.5 million.

Many high-profile California Republicans have shown a strong inclination to leave the state altogether to pursue their political fortunes in the wake of a major defeat. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, recent departures have taken their toll on the party’s ability to field prominent candidates across the range of statewide offices, with former Orange County Assemblyman Chuck DeVore relocating to Texas, onetime gubernatorial hopeful Neel Kashkari shifting gears to run the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, and current presidential candidate Carly Fiorina moving her home base to Virginia.

In a painful indication of how limited GOP ambitions can be on the west coast, all three have won praise and a higher profile outside the Golden State than within it. MayKao Hang, the incoming chairwoman of the Minneapolis Fed’s board of directors, underscored the impression that California is often little more than a proving ground for political talent to the right of center, calling Kashkari “an influential leader whose combined experience in the public and private sectors makes him the ideal candidate to head the Minneapolis Fed,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Meanwhile, some who stay behind have left the bounds of party orthodoxy entirely. Perhaps the state GOP’s most famous resident Californian, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has accompanied Gov. Jerry Brown to the United Nations climate talks in Paris, posting an open letter on Facebook that declared, “I don’t give a [expletive] if we agree about climate change.”

The lack of leadership has exacerbated the party’s recent tendency toward disunity. In an effort to soften the language of its stance on unlawful immigration, the state GOP changed its platform to indicate that members “hold diverse views” on “what to do with the millions of people who are currently here illegally” — phraseology that has been criticized as fodder for Democrats without marking out a principled position.

Business trouble

At the same time, the state GOP has been unable to effectively pivot away from social issues that divide it and toward economic issues that have traditionally reaped reliable dividends. Recent trends suggest that big business has come to view Republican candidates as risks not worth taking where electable corporate-friendly Democrats are to be found.

Cathleen Galgiani

“At a time when GOP power in Sacramento has been on the wane, many business interests — which have traditionally skewed Republican and wield considerable clout in the party — are throwing their weight behind centrist Democrats,” the Times reported separately, such as state Sen. Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton, whom GOP favorite Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen, R-Modesto, wants to defeat. “A year from election day, groups such as the California Assn. of Realtors and Chevron have told the candidates and other political players that they’re for Galgiani,” the Times added, “a show of support from entities that routinely spend big to back their choices.” The state GOP has refused to support Olsen, preferring to sit the race out entirely.

Outside energy

In a strange irony, presidential politics has offered California Republicans a glimmer of hope for better organization, inspiration and leadership. While they have often been looked upon by barnstorming candidates as little more than a source of campaign cash, the unusually fluid and uncertain presidential primary season has led some White House hopefuls to pursue the kind of ground game in California that can be the lifeblood of state and local parties.

“If the nominee is not obvious by the June 7 primary, which is unlikely, Republican candidates would need to compete in San Francisco, Berkeley and Democrat-dominated downtown Sacramento, as well as in Reps. Tom McClintock, Doug LaMalfa and Dana Rohrabacher’s red districts,” the Sacramento Bee noted. Ron Nehring, the former nominee for lieutenant governor, has found a fresh mission in-state as Ted Cruz’s California campaign chairman. “We are preparing for California to matter,” he told the Bee.

“California elections would be radically retooled, with neighborhood polling places replaced by ‘voting centers’ serving much larger swaths and a vast expansion of early voting,” reported the San Jose Mercury News.

Big changes

Spearheaded by Secretary of State Alex Padilla, the overhaul took shape in a bill advanced by two influential lawmakers from the Los Angeles area — state Sens. Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, and Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys. As the Sacramento Bee explained, “Senate Bill 450 would have county election officials mail ballots to every registered voter. Voters could then mail them in or drop them off at new kiosks that Padilla said would ideally be open beginning 10 days before elections, eight hours a day.”

“The new legislation incorporates ideas previously included in other bills,” as the Los Angeles Times noted. “A pending bill by Allen also calls for voting centers to be open before Election Day. A measure by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, would create secure drop-off sites where ballots could be left before Election Day.”

Another effort to increase vote totals also recently gained traction in Sacramento. “Padilla has sponsored another bill that would register to vote everyone who gets a driver’s license in California, unless they opt out,” the Times reported.

Principles and ideology

The push for reform owed its energy to two complementary, yet competing, factors. On the one hand, voter turnout in California has hit extreme lows in recent election cycles, prompting a general outcry about the importance of broad-based civic participation to the government’s legitimacy. On the other, Democrats have made no apologies for their partisan interest in making ballots as easy as possible to cast. Historically, voters who supported Republican candidates tended to turn out more reliably than those who would be more likely to pull the lever for the other party.

Given their dominance, state Democrats had little to worry in rolling out the new proposal. Purple states often experience razor-thin electoral margins that would make even a small shift in turnout potentially significant. In the absence of that pressure, the bill’s sponsors have been able to play up the value of easy voting. “We’ll probably never see another election in California where more voters go to the polls than vote by mail,” said Allen, according to the Bee. “This is about expanding options and convenience for voters.”

Nevertheless, Republicans have been quick to emphasize the bill’s partisan upshot. Former state party chairman Ron Nehring, now vice chairman of San Diego County’s GOP, said state Democrats “have a turnout problem,” U-T San Diego noted. “Republican voter turnout rates are already high,” he said, suggesting that “more competitive elections” could better mobilize voters than fresh legislation.

Other critics have pointed to studies that suggest expanded early voting programs may fail to increase participation, or actually lead to a decrease. Additionally, the prospect of increased costs may strengthen some resistance to Padilla’s plans.

Early results

SB450 drew its inspiration from a new scheme rolled out in Colorado, where Democrats do not enjoy the advantage they do in California. Padilla himself swung through to confirm the state’s measurable growth in turnout. “In the first year Colorado increased voting options, the state saw 319,225 more ballots cast in 2013 compared with 2011,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “despite both elections lacking a presidential, gubernatorial or congressional race to drive people to the polls.”

Last year, the Chronicle noted, Colorado cracked the top three of states in voter turnout, while California hit all-time lows during its most recent general and primary elections. Oregon and Washington have also boosted turnout with similar schemes of their own.

Anderson has said little, but maneuvering by county GOP chairman Tony Krvaric and former state GOP chief Ron Nehring has made clear much is being done of his behalf. San Diego County Republicans took the unusual step of endorsing Anderson’s undeclared candidacy on Monday. This came after county supervisors voted to limit how much political parties could give in local campaigns, the plainest sign imaginable that the majority Republican board is at odds with Krvaric and Nehring and know what they are up to.

The Filner-DeMaio hangover

In conventional political circumstances, the San Diego GOP establishment’s attempt to oust a well-liked, generally conservative six-term incumbent would seem bizarre. Jacob has been a steady advocate of smart, restrained government and has been part of a long-standing GOP majority on the county board that has steered it to great credit ratings and to a better reputation for delivering services than is enjoyed by most of America’s other most populous counties.

But San Diego’s dynamics are not conventional. Krvaric and Nehring are not reticent at trying to throw their weight around, and they despise Jacob’s campaign manager for helping later-disgraced Democratic Congressman Bob Filner get elected mayor of San Diego in 2012. U-T San Diego politics editor Michael Smolens details this story behind the story:

The firm Revolvis has been the preferred agency by GOP leaders and that’s who many of their candidates hire.

The company certainly has been the choice of Republicans at City Hall, working for Mayor Kevin Faulconer and council members Chris Cate, Mark Kersey and Scott Sherman. Revolvis also consulted for an independent committee that supported Councilwoman Lorie Zapf. (Jason Cabel Roe at Revolvis said the company “won’t be involved in Joel’s race.”)

It’s a different story at the county. Supervisors Greg Cox, Bill Horn, Ron Roberts and Jacob — all Republicans — have relied on longtime San Diego consultant Tom Shepard, despite pressure from some party leaders to drop him.

Shepard was a political adviser to Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders, who clashed mightily with Councilman DeMaio. Shepard had worked to elect Fletcher mayor in 2012 and then shifted to Democrat Filner, further earning him the enmity of Krvaric and others GOP officials.

GOP maneuvering’s checkered record

But as Smolens points out, maneuvering by the county Republican establishment …

… hasn’t always worked out.

During the 2012 San Diego mayoral campaign, the party endorsed Councilman Carl DeMaio over Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, who also sought the endorsement and then later left the party to become an independent (and eventually a Democrat). DeMaio and Democrat Bob Filner knocked Fletcher out in the primary, but the Democrat went on to win in November.

Polls showed that Fletcher likely would have defeated either man in a runoff, possibly becoming mayor as a Republican had the party not endorsed DeMaio.

Also in the 2012 election, many GOP leaders lined up behind Steve Danon, a congressional aide who entered the race against longtime Republican Supervisor Pam Slater-Price in a North County district. Slater-Price decided against running for re-election, but Danon lost to Solana Beach Councilman Dave Roberts, who became the first Democrat on the Board of Supervisors in nearly a generation.

Given Jacob’s popularity and the impression that San Diego County conveys of being well-run — even though it is an impression that arguably isn’t merited — it is difficult to imagine her losing to Anderson. But that result wouldn’t be all bad for Anderson, who would still have two years left as a state senator.

Much like their nationwide counterparts, for moderate-to-liberal Republicans in the Golden State, Latinos have come to represent an essential outreach opportunity. Unlike some grassroots Republicans and conservatives, centrist Republicans have broadly agreed that a pro-business message focused on the promise of upward mobility can attract a significant and growing slice of the Latino electorate.

Former state party chairman Ron Nehring, currently running for Lieutenant Governor, explained the problem in a recent op-ed in the Sacramento Bee, “House Republicans seen daily on television defining the party brand, increasingly hail from districts where winning the support of Latinos, Asians and African Americans is not essential for their own re-election.”

Nehring underscored how poor the fit has become regarding Latinos. Taking Iowa Rep. Steve King to task for remarks on immigration, Nehring warned that when such comments reach “Spanish-language media such as Univision and Telemundo, they serve to define the Republican Party — and not in a way that does any members of his party in the Southwest any favors. In fact, such comments move many Latinos more firmly into the Democratic camp.”

The state GOP has managed to field a new wave of minority candidates, drawing especially from Asian-American and Latino talent. Nevertheless, without a corresponding upsurge in minority votes, the strategy will likely continue to draw fire. Party members sympathetic to the Tea Party have not been persuaded that a more big government and big business message is worth only marginal increases in minority support.

Competing poll data

Amid that tension, a new raft of polls has attracted heightened attention. One survey, according to the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro, suggested a generational opportunity for California Republicans. He observed, “Deep in the data, the poll shows that native-born, third-generation Latinos tend to be better educated, more likely to be middle-class, more skeptical about illegal immigration, and more likely to vote GOP. In contrast, recent immigrants and first generation Latinos are locked into the wealth-redistributing and diversity-boosting Democratic Party.”

Those conclusions map broadly onto similar judgments pollsters have begun to draw about divides among younger voters in general. Reporting survey results in the Orange County Register, Emily Ekins noted millennials’ overwhelming support for president President Obama’s re-election effort has masked important changes in the way younger voters view their political choices going forward.

Millennials, she concluded, “don’t like Democrats so much as they view them as the least bad of two bad options. Across 15 salient public policy issues, such as privacy, government spending and drugs, millennials say they trust ‘neither’ party to handle 12 of the 15 issues.” Ekins pointed to the rise of young nonwhite libertarians in California Republican politics that was captured in a recent Reuters report.

A different picture is painted, however, by a fresh poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, PPIC president and pollster Mark Baldassare put it bluntly. “All of the trends are working against the Republican Party in California,” he said. Residents under 35 made up just 11 percent of likely Republican voters, and only 18 percent of likely-voter Latinos identified themselves as Republicans.

California Republicans, experts concluded, do have some time to determine the best way forward. As yet, Latinos haven’t thrown their full weight into politics. The PPIC poll found less than a quarter are likely voters, even though they have now accounted for over a third of the statewide population.

Nehring, in only-somewhat tongue-in-cheek remarks Monday, said he’s even willing to accept a debate moderated by liberal MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow or Ed Schultz. If the left-leaning cable channel can’t accommodate the request ahead of the Nov. 4 election, Nehring said in a statement, then he could be talked into appearing on Russian government-funded RT or North Korea’s KCNA, “although with that last one we can’t find a bureau for them in the United States.”

Newsom’s campaign is exceedingly unlikely to oblige. Spokesman Sean Clegg said flatly that he doesn’t anticipate the incumbent participating in any debates. In an email, Clegg cited Nehring’s recent salty email to state party leaders in which he bemoaned the disunity among GOP statewide candidates.

“Ron Nehring, who just attacked his own GOP members in a profanity-laced tirade, is out-of-control, reckless, desperate, and we have no intention of promoting him,” Clegg said.

But what about the future? It’s well known Newsom likely will run for governor when Brown’s fourth term ends in 2018; or for one of the U.S. Senate seats that could open up in 2016 or 2018. Possible opponents for any of these seats include California Attorney General Kamala Harris, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.

Wouldn’t debate practice now be preparation for the future?

Even the best debaters fumble on occasion, as Ronald Reagan did in his first debate with Walter Mondale in 1984.

The Gipper more than fully recovered for the second debate. When a reporter questioned Reagan about his age, 73 at the time, he quipped, “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” He won every state but Mondale’s Minnesota home.

Before that year, Reagan took part in memorable debates with President Jimmy Carter in 2000 and over the Panama Canal in 1978.

The point is you can’t get enough practice in debates. Given that he’s likely to win easily, Newsom should be eager for a dozen debates with Nehring.

By the way, instead of the usual campaign platform, why doesn’t Nehring just campaign on one plank? The plank: Get rid of this pointless post.

Anyway, without practice, in the future Newsom could be surprised the way Carter was by Reagan in the most memorable reply of the 1980 debate: