How California conservatives are fighting back

Republican power in California has been waning for decades. The party hasn’t elected a candidate to statewide office since 2006, and it now represents a superminority in the Legislature.

Though there are still millions of conservative voters, Democrats are so dominant they can dismiss the cultural grievances that have come to animate the political discourse in red states — election fraud, illegal immigration, corporate support for gay rights, transgender athletes — without so much as a debate.

That has left conservatives to target local governance for protests against liberal California, using the relative autonomy of city councils, county boards of supervisors and school boards to assert a competing vision for their communities — perhaps even a new state altogether — and sometimes, to settle ideological scores with the state’s progressive values.

“It almost feels like you have to overcompensate for some of the damage being done,” said Gracey Van Der Mark, a Huntington Beach council member who proposed a library book review committee. “The more radical they got to the left, the more I felt myself pulling to the right.”

California lawmakers have, in turn, moved quickly to squash most of these uprisings. As they advance legislation to ban parental notification policies for students’ gender identity, stop voter identification requirements, and prohibit restrictions on library books, they contend they are defending the rights of marginalized groups.

This pitched battle tracks with a growing repolarization among California voters. After decades of steady gains in independent registration, the trend has undergone a sharp reversal over the past five years as more voters embrace the Democratic and Republican parties again. Surveys find an increasing number have a favorable view of their own party and an unfavorable view of the opposition, heightening the stakes of these culture clashes.

CalMatters has been exploring the rebellion in conservative California — how it is testing the state’s reputation as the leading edge of liberal politics and the limits of local control, but also how it is roiling the very communities that Republican politicians say they are seeking to better represent.