LOS ANGELES (AP) — Why should the presidency be at stake in battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania? Donald Trump company to Californiaone of the most solidly Democratic states just weeks before Election Day?
Trump will almost certainly lose California, and that won’t change after his planned Saturday stop in Coachella, a desert city east of Los Angeles best known for the annual music festival that bears his name. Still, there are practical reasons for him to visit, despite the Republican candidate’s prospects on Nov. 5 in the most populous state.
The former president lost California in a landslide in 2020. He received more than six million votes, more than any Republican presidential candidate, and his margins exceeded 70% in some rural counties where conservatives are typically favored in the ballot.
That’s a huge pool of potential volunteers to work state races and participate in phone banks to the most contested states. And Trump is likely to receive extensive media attention in the Los Angeles market, the nation’s second largest.
Trump visits Coachella between stops in Nevada, during a roundtable outside Las Vegas for Latinos earlier Saturday, and Arizona, for a rally Sunday in Prescott Valley. He narrowly lost those two swing states to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
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Going to California gives Trump the “opportunity to penetrate and leverage this large population of Trump supporters,” said Tim Lineberger, communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign in Michigan who also worked in the former president’s administration . He “comes here and activates that.”
Lineberger recalled that Californians had called Michigan voters on Trump’s behalf in 2016 and said the campaign’s decision to tread on safe, Democratic ground at this point was “an aggressive, offensive play.”
California is also a source of campaign cash for both parties, and Trump will raise money. Photos with the former president at Coachella cost $25,000, including special seating for two. A “VIP experience” cost $5,000.
With congressional races in play in California that could determine which party controls the House, the Coachella rally is “a kind of get-out-the-vote vote that motivates and energizes California Republicans when they are not so close what’s going on in the national campaign,” said Republican consultant Tim Rosales.
Rosales also said he would look for Trump to continue his long feud with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
For Republicans, it’s motivating if you can pick a little on California and the governor … will take the bait, Rosales said.
Newsom predicted Wednesday that Trump would denigrate the state at the meeting, ignoring its strengths as the world’s fifth-largest economy. The governor said that for the first time in a decade, California has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state.
“You know, that’s not what Trump is going to say,” he predicted.
Jim Brulte, a former chairman of the Republican Party of California, said he thinks Trump is looking for something that has eluded him in previous campaigns: winning more votes than his Democratic opponent.
“I believe Donald Trump is coming to California because he not only wants to win in the Electoral College, but also because he wants to win the popular vote. There are more registered voters in California than residents in 46 of the other 49 states,” Brulte said.
The Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles is located on the Pacific coast, south of the city. But Trump has long had a conflicted relationship with California, where a Republican hasn’t held the state since 1988 and Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about two to one.
California was home to the so-called Trump resistance during his time in office, and Trump often portrays California as representative of everything he sees wrong with America. As president, he called the homeless crises in Los Angeles and San Francisco shameful and threatened to intervene.
He will likely spend time Saturday linking California’s problems to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee and a San Francisco Bay Area resident who served as California’s attorney general and represented the state in the Senate.
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His campaign released a statement claiming that under Harris, “the infamous ‘California Dream’ has turned into a nightmare for everyday Americans.”
Jessica Millan Patterson, chair of the state GOP, said she looked forward to hearing Trump compare his agenda to a Democratic White House that has “left Californians less safe and with less money in their pockets.”
Republicans, she promised, “will do our part to secure a majority in the House of Representatives.”