The California's GOP Last Gasp
Every Tuesday morning Ellen Montanari gears up her bullhorn, a crowd-funded microphone and a set of rented loud speakers to lead a protest outside Rep. Darrell Issa’s office.
When she started the rallies in January, she imagined it would be a short-term endeavor to convince Issa to vote against the repeal of Obamacare. But to her surprise, here in Orange County — once a stronghold of the John Birch Society and the modern conservative movement — the protests became a hub for California Democratic activists determined to flip control of the House of Representatives in 2018.
In normal election cycles, California voters are far from the action — catching glimpses of federal candidates when they breeze through to raise money. For the first time in recent memory, the Golden State is central to the Democrats’ crusade to win 24 seats that would grant them the House majority.
The party’s chief targets in 2018 are the 23 Republican members who represent districts won by Hillary Clinton last year. Seven of those seats — including Issa’s in the 49th Congressional District — are in California. That unusual political geography is giving first-time activists like Montanari a sense of purpose. The chance to put a Democratic check on the Trump administration is literally in their backyards.
The protesters who gather on the sidewalk here each week loathe Issa, a polarizing flame-thrower who won re-election by 1,600 votes. But they are horrified by President Donald Trump’s baiting of foreign leaders; his cavalier talk about war with North Korea; and the serpentine connections between some members of his administration and Russia.
Democrats face plenty of hurdles in their bid to retake the House and haven’t won any of the special elections they sank money into this year. But there’s a certain energy in these districts that is unusual from previous years.
That seething contempt for Trump, coupled with the sense that Issa does not represent the increasingly diverse composition of his district, has drawn as many as 400 people to the Tuesday rallies.
Rally attendees in Issa’s district, as well as Democratic groups across Orange and San Diego counties, are already organizing and walking precincts, hoping to change the makeup of the midterm electorate (which is typically older, whiter, and more conservative than in presidential years).
When Montanari announced one Tuesday that she planned to end the rallies at outside Issa’s office at Trump’s 100-day mark, the crowd shouted her down: “Nooooooooo!”
“People were grabbing me saying: ‘Please don’t stop. You are keeping us sane,’” Montanari told me on a recent Tuesday. An email from one of the protesters convinced her to keep going.