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After flipping three seats in the state Legislature last fall and increasing President Donald Trump’s vote share in nearly every county, California Republicans are seeking to capitalize on the momentum this year as they try to win back congressional seats and claw their way out of superminority status in the state capital.

Jubilant off their November gains, their next to-dos are clear but not undaunting:

• Seize the moment.
• Don’t blow it.

And they have precious little time to do it, especially in the U.S. House where Republicans enjoy only a slim majority, as they were reminded at the state party’s spring convention in Sacramento this weekend. The last time Trump was in office, the party suffered steep losses in California, including half its congressional seats in the 2018 midterm. The next midterm elections are in 2026.

“California is going to make the difference” in whether Republicans in Congress have the numbers to enact Trump’s agenda, Texas Rep. Tony Gonzalez told party members on Saturday.

Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher of Yuba City said Republicans could target as many as eight Assembly districts in the Central Valley and Southern California to flip next year. Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, of San Diego, proclaimed they’ll break the Democrats’ supermajority in his chamber next year.

The Republicans need to pick up seven seats in the Assembly and four in the Senate to avoid the superminority status, which gives them little say in budget and other decisions.

The road to get there? Expect a lot of the same ground game the party has played over the past six years: Showing up in communities where Republicans have traditionally neglected to grow its ranks of Latino voters; messaging that blames Democrats for crime and the state’s cost-of-living crisis; and campaigning on ballot initiatives, where voters in the deep-blue state have at times been willing to side with Republicans.

Attendees cheer during the nominating session at the CAGOP Spring 2025 Organizing Convention in downtown Sacramento on March 15, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

In particular, the party backed Proposition 36, which raised criminal penalties for some drug and theft charges, and pushed back on Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to keep it off the ballot. Voters ultimately approved the measure overwhelmingly, while also rejecting progressive measures to raise the minimum wage, expand rent control and prohibit forced prison labor.

“Voters are clearly with the California Republican Party on the ideas,” outgoing party chair Jessica Millan Patterson said.

She said voters were shifting because they desire improvements in school performance, homelessness, housing affordability and crime.

Republican registration in California ticked back up slightly to 25% of registered voters in 2024, but is still far behind the 46% who support the Democratic Party. About 22% are registered as independents.

Newly elected party chair Corrin Rankin said Sunday that the GOP will be “going on the offense” and expanding efforts to convert voters in Democratic strongholds like Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

A central challenge for the party remains the man in the White House. Only one in three Californians approves of the president’s job performance.

Avoid overt associations with Trump

As the national GOP increasingly remakes itself into the party of Trump, California Republicans have made their steady recent gains in large part by avoiding overt associations with him, said longtime GOP consultant Mike Madrid.

He warned that associating the California party with Trump will be even more detrimental during a period of economic uncertainty, with the president’s threat of sweeping tariffs causing stock market slides and consumer confidence to dip. (At the convention, the economic sentiment among party activists, officials and GOP lawmakers was overwhelmingly that of a shrug, and a “wait-and-see.”)

On the other hand, Patterson acknowledged the party will also need to keep Trump loyalists engaged if it wants to win any statewide seats in the future. About two million California Trump voters from 2020 stayed home during the unsuccessful Republican-backed recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom the next year, she noted.

“We need to make sure we are motivating those Trump voters and I don’t know that anyone has found that secret sauce yet,” she said.

At the convention, newly elected GOP lawmakers who have not said if they voted for the president mingled with hardliner activists pushing resolutions for the party to declare Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement “the Greatest Movement.” The measure failed on Sunday.

But Rankin brushed aside suggestions of intra-party division. She sought to distinguish the California GOP from national politics, pitching it more as a referendum on the Democratic supermajority.

“We welcome all voices,” she said. “We’re focused on California and Californians … People are desperately looking for options.”

A new California Republican chair ascends

Rankin is the party’s first Black chairperson. She was backed by much of the party establishment and many of those new faces, including several of the younger and more diverse new GOP lawmakers elected in recent years.

CAGOP chair nominee Corrin Rankin speaks during the nominating session at the CAGOP Spring 2025 Organizing Convention in downtown Sacramento on March 15, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters

She ran as a pragmatist against former state Sen. Mike Morrell, who was backed by hardline conservative party activists. Rankin boasts her own longtime conservative credentials, backing Trump since 2015, and Morrell acknowledged having little difference from her ideologically. But hardliners, frustrated with how long it’ll take to flip a blue state, have accused the party establishment of not spending enough on long-shot contenders.

Though party activists were excited about the possibility of having a competitive statewide contender in 2026, few have announced runs.

Steve Hilton, an ex-Fox News host currently on a book tour, is considering a run for governor but hasn’t made an announcement. Chad Bianco, the conservative Riverside County sheriff, on Friday urged hardliner activists to seize a “window of opportunity” to consolidate support behind his gubernatorial run after voters approved tough-on-crime policies in November.

“It’s great that we have choices in everything else, but we have to make the choice based on what’s best for the California party,” he said. “Let the nine Democrats that are out there running right now, let them all destroy themselves, and we can sit back.”

Still, some officials acknowledged it’s a long shot.

“I think we’re going to be able to make greater strides,” Gallagher said. “We know there’s still a bit of an upward climb when it comes to statewide, but we haven’t given up on it.”