LOS ANGELES (AP) — With the presidency on the road in battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, why would Donald Trump enterprise into California, probably the most solidly Democratic states, simply weeks earlier than Election Day?
Trump is nearly sure to lose California, and that gained’t change after his scheduled Saturday cease in Coachella, a desert metropolis east of Los Angeles greatest recognized for the annual music competition bearing its title. Nonetheless, there are sensible causes for him to go to, regardless of the Republican nominee’s prospects Nov. 5 in essentially the most populous state.
The previous president misplaced California in a landslide in 2020. He did get 6 million-plus votes, greater than any GOP presidential candidate earlier than, and his margins topped 70% in some rural counties that sometimes favor conservatives on the poll.
That’s an infinite pool of potential volunteers to work on state races and take part in cellphone banks into essentially the most contested states. And Trump is probably going to attract in depth media protection within the Los Angeles market, the second-largest within the nation.
Trump is visiting Coachella in between stops in Nevada, at a roundtable outdoors Las Vegas for Latinos earlier Saturday, and Arizona, for a rally Sunday in Prescott Valley. He narrowly misplaced these two swing states to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
Justin Sullivan by way of Getty Photos
Going to California offers Trump the “capacity to swoop in and leverage this massive inhabitants of Trump supporters,” mentioned Tim Lineberger, who was communications director for Trump’s 2016 marketing campaign in Michigan and likewise labored within the former president’s administration. He’s “coming right here and activating that.”
Lineberger recalled Californians making calls to Michigan voters in 2016 on Trump’s behalf and mentioned the marketing campaign’s choice to enter secure, Democratic turf at this level was “an aggressive, offensive play.”
California can also be a fountain of marketing campaign money for each events, and Trump can be fundraising. Pictures with the previous president in Coachella have been priced at $25,000, which comes with particular seating for 2. A “VIP Expertise” was priced at $5,000.
With congressional races in California in play that would decide which occasion controls the Home, the Coachella rally “is a get-out-the-vote kind of factor that motivates and energizes Republicans in California, when they don’t seem to be as near what’s going on within the nationwide marketing campaign,” Republican marketing consultant Tim Rosales mentioned.
Rosales additionally mentioned to search for Trump to proceed his long-running spat with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
For Republicans, “It’s motivating when you possibly can decide at California somewhat bit and the governor … will take the bait,” Rosales mentioned.
Newsom on Wednesday predicted Trump can be denigrating the state on the rally, overlooking its strengths because the world’s fifth-largest financial system. The governor mentioned that for the primary time in a decade, California has extra Fortune 500 corporations than another state.
“, that’s not what Trump goes to say,” he predicted.
Jim Brulte, a former chairman of the California Republican Occasion, mentioned he thinks Trump is angling for one thing that has eluded him in earlier campaigns: profitable extra whole votes than his Democratic opponent.
“I imagine Donald Trump is coming to California as a result of he needs to win not solely within the Electoral Faculty, however he needs to win the favored vote. There are extra registered voters in California than there are residents in 46 of the opposite 49 states,” Brulte mentioned.
The Trump Nationwide Golf Membership Los Angeles sits on the Pacific Coast, south of the town. However Trump has lengthy had a conflicted relationship with California, the place a Republican has not carried the state since 1988 and Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about 2-to-1.
California was house to the so-called Trump resistance throughout his time in workplace, and Trump typically depicts California as representing all he sees improper in America. As president, he referred to as the homeless crises in Los Angeles and San Francisco disgraceful and threatened to intercede.
He’s prone to spend time on Saturday linking California’s issues to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee and a San Francisco Bay Space native who was California’s lawyer common and represented the state within the Senate.
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His marketing campaign issued an announcement alleging that beneath Harris, “the infamous ‘California Dream’ has became a nightmare for on a regular basis Individuals.”
Jessica Millan Patterson, chairwoman of the state GOP, mentioned she regarded ahead to listening to Trump distinction his agenda with a Democratic White Home that “has left Californians much less secure and with much less cash of their pockets.”
Republicans, she promised, “will do our half to safe a Home majority.”