Few corners of the U.S. may be less hospitable to Donald Trump than California, where he lost by more than 5 million votes in the 2020 election. But as the former president seeks to return to the White House, the state may give him an unlikely boost.
A state GOP rule change has opened the possibility that Trump could sweep each of the state’s 169 delegates on March 5, when California is among more than a dozen states participating in the so-called Super Tuesday contests. With Trump already leading his rivals in many state and national polls, a dominant performance in California could move him much closer to the GOP nomination.
“This race is quickly consolidating,” said GOP fundraiser Charles Moran, a Trump delegate in 2016 and 2020. With a win in California, he added, “I truly think Trump could take the nomination on Super Tuesday — then this is over.”
With less than four months before the Iowa caucuses officially kick off the GOP nomination process, the dynamics of the race could still change. But Trump is keeping a close eye on the state. While Trump is skipping the debate, he has made sure to be in California on Friday to appear at the state’s GOP convention, where many of the people who will ultimately serve as delegates will be in attendance.
In what would be an ironic twist, the state where the former president is widely loathed outside his conservative base could help him tighten his grip on the Republican White House nomination.
Trump, who is facing criminal charges in four separate cases, has long had a conflicted relationship with California, the nation’s most populous state, where Democrats haven’t lost a statewide election since 2006 and outnumber registered Republicans by about 2-to-1.
California was home to the so-called Trump resistance during his time in office, and Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. As president, he called the homeless crises in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other big cities disgraceful, and threatened to intercede — faulting the “liberal establishment” for what he described as a “terrible situation.”