Associated Press
With the presidency on the line in battlegrounds like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, why would Donald Trump venture into California, one of the most solidly Democratic states, just weeks before Election Day?
Trump is almost certain to lose California, and that won’t change after his scheduled Saturday stop in Coachella, a desert city east of Los Angeles best known for the annual music festival bearing its name. Still, there are practical reasons for him to visit, despite the Republican nominee’s prospects Nov. 5 in the most populous state.
The former president lost California in a landslide in 2020. He did get 6 million-plus votes, more than any GOP presidential candidate before, and his margins topped 70% in some rural counties that typically favor conservatives on the ballot.
That’s an enormous pool of potential volunteers to work on state races and participate in phone banks into the most contested states. And Trump is likely to draw extensive media coverage in the Los Angeles market, the second-largest in the country.
Trump is visiting Coachella in between stops in Nevada, at 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.
Going to California gives Trump the “ability to swoop in and leverage this big population of Trump supporters,” said Tim Lineberger, who was communications director for Trump’s 2016 campaign in Michigan and also worked in the former president’s administration. He’s “coming here and activating that.”
Lineberger recalled Californians making calls to Michigan voters in 2016 on Trump’s behalf and said the campaign’s decision to go into safe, Democratic turf at this point was “an aggressive, offensive play.”
California is also a fountain of campaign cash for both parties, and Trump will be fundraising. Photos with the former president in Coachella were priced at $25,000, which comes with special seating for two. A “VIP Experience” was priced at $5,000.
With congressional races in California in play that could determine which party controls the House, the Coachella rally “is a get-out-the-vote type of thing that motivates and energizes Republicans in California, when they are not as close to what is going on in the national campaign,” Republican consultant Tim Rosales said.
Rosales also said to look for Trump to continue his long-running spat with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
For Republicans, “It’s motivating when you can pick at California a little bit and the governor … will take the bait,” Rosales said.
Newsom on Wednesday predicted Trump would be denigrating the state at the rally, overlooking 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 California Republican Party, said he thinks Trump is angling for something that has eluded him in previous campaigns: winning more total votes than his Democratic opponent.
The Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles sits on the Pacific Coast, south of the city. But Trump has long had a conflicted relationship with California, where a Republican has not carried the state since 1988 and Democrats 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 and San Francisco disgraceful and threatened to intercede.
He is likely to spend time on Saturday linking California’s problems to Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee and a San Francisco Bay Area native who was California’s attorney general and represented the state in the Senate.
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Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
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The Sage "E"
October 12, 2024 at 12:24 pm
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yew oweme
October 12, 2024 at 6:12 pm
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Michael K
October 12, 2024 at 2:34 pm
Republicans have not won the popular vote in 20 years. Good luck with that.
A Day without Mexican Voting For Trump
October 12, 2024 at 4:35 pm
Should Trump tell them he gonna deport their Hispanic relative
Michael K
October 12, 2024 at 5:11 pm
Interesting report in Politico today about how increasingly dark and racist Trump’s rallies have gotten. Basically he is conditioning people to accept rounding people up in what amounts to concentration camps.
2much truth
October 12, 2024 at 5:35 pm
That’s right, and the maga types haven’t thought it through.
Their fantasy of temporary tent cities, of an orderly process of deportation, evinces naivety.
Scenarios of desperation, hostage situations and collateral injury and death are far more likely.
60 minutes is fake
October 13, 2024 at 8:48 am
You live in an alternative world with your BS. Now do you honestly believe that and if you do seek help.
Jojo
October 13, 2024 at 7:10 am
It’s beyond me why any woman, black or young voter would cast their ballot doe the orange lying misogynist. A minimal amount of research would show they are voting against their own self interest
60 minutes is fake
October 13, 2024 at 9:34 am
So who are you voting for when you cast your ballot for Ka Mana Wana? Is she really for fracking now or not? Is she serious about closing the Southern Border or not? Will she still refer to Border Patrol agents as KKK or not? Is she or isn’t she in favor ord single payer medical insurance? Is she or isn’t she in favor of defunding the police?
Tom
October 14, 2024 at 7:50 am
Who are you voting for? The person who’s name is not trump and the party to which he does not belong. Pretty easy really.
Michael K
October 13, 2024 at 12:30 pm
It’s very telling that the Republican mayor of Aurora, CO, called Trump out on his hateful lies and inflammatory BS about his city. The “uneducated” as DJT calls them, eat up the vile racist hate, but the leaders getting death threats from Trump’s lies just wish he would go away.
He’s not just getting more senile, but as Mark Milley, Trumps former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said, Trump is fascist to his core and is the most dangerous person in this country.
Military officers don’t say those things lightly.
Bot Buster
October 14, 2024 at 10:56 am
Is 60 Minutes a Iranian bot?
TRUMP 20 to 25
October 15, 2024 at 3:55 pm
I liked how he left all his supporters stranded in the desert because he didn’t pay the bus company.
See Trumpers? He doesn’t give a single flying PHUCK about you.
Comments are closed.