Mike Spence has devoted nearly two decades to spreading conservative Republican gospel in California, an often thankless task in a state that has been spurning his wing of the party the entire time.
Now, John McCain's rout in California has set a new low for Republicans. So it was more than a mild understatement when Spence recently summed up the plight of California conservatives by saying, "We're at a difficult point."
As leader of a group that battles abortion, gay rights, illegal immigration and taxes, Spence is accustomed to bucking the tide in California. Shrugging off all the evidence to the contrary, he sees better days ahead for conservatives.
"Too many people look short-term," Spence, president of the California Republican Assembly, said over lunch at a restaurant near his West Covina home. "There are elections all the time. Things change."
They do indeed. Californians may display remnants of their Republican-leaning past -- a law-and-order streak and an aversion to taxes, to name a couple. But for a generation, the state has drifted relentlessly from the Republican Party and its shrinking base of conservative true-believers.
"The California Republican Party is dead," election analyst Tony Quinn, himself a Republican, wrote last week on Fox & Hounds Daily, a political blog. "Call the undertaker, haul away the corpse."
Others apply a less severe metaphor: dismal health. Either way, signs of doom abound.
Starkest of all was McCain's loss to Barack Obama in the presidential contest last month by a staggering 3.3 million votes -- or a margin of 61% to 37%. Since 1900, the only Republican nominee for the White House to be trounced by a wider gap in California was Alf Landon, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's challenger in 1936.
Also alarming for conservatives is the hemorrhaging of Republicans from the state's voter rolls, even in the party's longtime strongholds.
When California's election map was last adjusted in 2002, Republicans made up more than half of the voters in 11 of the state's 173 congressional or legislative districts, and Democrats held 66. Now, Republicans constitute a majority in zero, and Democrats hold 57.
Already, many districts drawn specifically to protect solid Republican seats are no longer safe. Take the 44th Congressional District, which stretches from Riverside to San Clemente. Lawmakers carved it out as a conservative bastion, and Republicans have routinely won landslide victories there. Yet the Republican incumbent, Ken Calvert of Corona, squeaked to reelection last month by just two points, making him a ripe target for Democrats in 2010.
