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A UC Berkeley poll conducted in August and released earlier this month found 55% of likely California Republican primary voters plan to back Trump, up 11 points from the spring. DeSantis appears to be the main casualty of that surge of support for the former president. The same poll shows the Florida governor’s support falling from 37% in February to just 16% in August, among GOP voters.
Trump’s growing support is even more important because of recent changes the state Republican Party made to the way it awards its delegates at next year’s national convention — changes pushed by the former president’s campaign. Under the new system, any Republican presidential candidate who receives more than 50% support in California’s March primary will lock up all 169 state delegates — the most of any state in the nation.
Under the previous system, used by the state’s GOP for about two decades, three delegates were awarded for each congressional district won in the primary — giving lower-tier GOP candidates more incentive to campaign here but also diluting the state’s influence in helping to pick a nominee.
Republican National Committee Chair Harmeet Dhillon, from California, a staunch Trump ally whose law firm represents his campaign, said the energy around the former president shows that the other Republican candidates should step aside.
“I think it’s time for some of them to call it quits,” she said, adding that Republicans need to unify against Democrats.
“California is really the poster child of what’s wrong with America right now, with our rampant crime and high unaffordable rates of gasoline, food, housing, you name it, and terrible educational system.”
While Trump’s speech was a big draw, the party is not actually taking any action to endorse a presidential candidate at its convention. Instead, the state GOP will consider adopting a new party platform — essentially a statement of principles. Even though most voters don’t even know about party platforms, the process is dividing the party and mirroring national fissures within the GOP over how to handle hot button issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, which has contributed to Republicans’ ballot-box losses — even in conservative states like Kansas and Ohio.
Under the proposal adopted by a California GOP party committee in July, the platform would drop language spelling out opposition to a federally protected right to abortion. Instead, it states “we value protecting innocent life and want to see the number of abortions reduced.”
The proposed changes also remove language saying the party defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, swapping it out for a more benign statement — that the party supports “traditional family values” and “the family unit as the best environment for raising children.”
The proposed platform, approved in July, runs four pages, but delegates have submitted over 200 pages worth of changes, which they will debate Saturday in meetings scheduled for the morning and afternoon. Among those opposing the change to the party’s definition of marriage is Dhillon, the RNC chair.
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