CA Republicans Warn the Nation About a Harris Presidency

At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week, “Biden replacement theory” was still that—a theory. By Sunday, President Joe Biden had announced via social media that he would not be seeking reelection. Less than 48 hours later, Vice President Kamala Harris had secured enough pledged delegates to become the presumptive Democratic nominee without a single vote cast for her in a primary contest. As rumors wafted from Capitol Hill to the convention floor in Milwaukee before Biden’s exit, The American Conservative spoke to California delegates at the RNC about the prospects of California Democrats, Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom in a matchup against Trump.

In Washington, DC, northeasterners and southerners working in right-of-center politics often think of the archetypal California Republican as weak-kneed, country-club moderates, more keen to call themselves libertarians than conservatives. Yet Republican voters in California, the home of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, have seen their state rapidly decline under the stewardship of Harris’ and Newsom’s Democratic party; they are now anything but moderate. Open-border and sanctuary-state policies have upended communities from San Diego to San Francisco, Bakersfield to Stockton. Weak-on-crime prosecutors have put California’s major cities, once the envy of the world, in a frequent state of upheaval. Now the Golden State’s Republicans are sounding the alarm of what could be coming for the rest of the country if Harris and Newsom are the future of the Democratic party.

“To get where he is, [Newsom] went from a moderate, pro-business Democrat in San Francisco when he was the mayor to the extreme far left,” RNC Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon told TAC on the convention floor in Milwaukee. “So did Kamala Harris, by the way. She was a tough-on-crime prosecutor when she became the district attorney. Each of them to rise in the Democratic Party of 2024 tried to keep tacking to the far left. They had to be the most extreme on crime, on abortion, on DEI, on the open border, on economic policy and confiscation level taxation. That really doesn’t play well in most of the country.”

Also on the floor of the convention was Timothy O’Reilly, chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County. “I couldn’t think of a worse candidate to play. You look at what’s happened in California—Newsom and the Democrats have literally caused millions, and I mean millions, of Californians to leave the state,” he said. “It has been the policies of Newsom and Kamala Harris, the left-wing, Marxist policies that Democrats have been pushing that ran people out of the states. The problem that Newsom or Harris is going to have is that those millions of Californians who have fled the state are going to fight against them in their new home states like Arizona.”

While Harris has called DC home for the past few years, California Republicans are not keen on making distinctions between her and California’s governor. “There’s no policy differences between them,” Dhillon told TAC. “I like to call the Bay Area the utopian petri dish of America. What’s growing there is not pretty in those petri dishes, and people don’t want that in their states.”

“I don’t know how you sell that; you have to cheat and steal an election,” Dhillon continued. “I’d be surprised if [Democrats] are that stupid.”

“[Harris and Newsom] are absolute losers,” one California RNC delegate who requested anonymity told TAC. “I don’t think they can win with either of them.”

“Americans don’t like inside Washington politics that hide the truth,” Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committeeman from California, wrote to TAC after Biden dropped out. “Moreover the Democrats look chaotic and the palace coup against Joe Biden is all too obvious.”

“Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, and Gavin Newsom have destroyed what was once the most prosperous, beautiful place on earth,” another anonymous delegate said. “And Kamala Harris has already taken this ideology nation-wide as vice president, because no one thinks Biden is actually running the country. Kamala Harris has been by Biden’s side through it all—through the open borders, through the inflation, through the wars abroad. She’s done nothing to help regular Americans.”

“The border is wide open in California compared to the other states,” another delegate concurred. “As governor, Newsom could call out the largest state’s National Guard and defend the border like Texas did. We’re 20 percent bigger than Texas, and we could actually defend the border with our National Guard.”

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, millions have left the state of California. “The exodus is only starting,” says O’Reilly.

“It takes years for somebody to say ‘I’m finally abandoning the state of my birth. I can’t live here anymore because we have these woke policies,’” O’Reilly continued. “Those millions of people have not now gone out to every other state in this country, and they’ve spread the word of what is coming for them; and if it’s Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris, they will know they have to do everything they can to mobilize against them.”

For political refugees fleeing California, the stakes of the 2024 election couldn’t be higher. “If these policies are exported,” O’Reilly said, “the people who’ve already left are basically the canaries in the coal mine for their new states, and they will know what’s coming for them.”

“California’s most vulnerable families will never forget that and everyone needs to know that’s what [Newsom] or Harris will do to America if he gets a chance,” Dhillon said. “Democrats won’t say it, but every Democrat I know with a family who has been mugged by reality in California, they want a return to border security and safety.”

“How do you spread that word?” O’Reilly asked. “The beauty is that we can show what Newsom and Harris [have] done. We know her record. We’ve lived with it. It’s only because Biden was able to pick her and get her out of the need to actually run in a competitive race. When she ran for president, she did nothing. Zero delegates, zero support. She looked like she was going to be a great superstar coming up, and she flamed out within two weeks once she opened her mouth and everybody started realizing who she was. I can only hope that the word is going to get out from the Californians that have fled.”

When TAC asked a group of delegates how Newsom or Harris would do against a resurgent Trump, one replied, “Very badly.” Another added, “Very, very badly.”

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