Los Angeles — With the presidency at stake in battleground states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, why would Donald Trump venture into California, one of the most solidly Democratic states, just weeks before Election Day?
Trump is almost certain to lose California, and that won’t change after his scheduled visit Saturday to Coachella, a desert city east of Los Angeles best known for the annual music festival that bears its name. Still, despite the prospect of the Republican candidate visiting the most populous state on November 5, there is a real reason for him to visit.
The former president won a landslide victory in California in 2020. He won 6 million votes, more than any previous Republican presidential candidate, and his margins exceeded 70% in some rural counties that typically favor conservatives in the polls.
This is a huge pool of potential volunteers who can participate in state races and phone banks in the most competitive states. And Trump is likely to receive extensive media coverage in the Los Angeles market, the nation’s second-largest.
Trump is scheduled to visit Coachella for a rally in Nevada on Saturday morning at a Latino roundtable outside Las Vegas and in Arizona on Sunday in Prescott Valley. He narrowly lost both swing states to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
Tim Lineberger, communications director for Michigan’s 2016 presidential campaign and who worked in the former president’s administration, said going to California gives Trump “the ability to swoop in and leverage these large numbers of Trump supporters.” He is “coming here and activating it.”
Lineberger recalled Californians calling Michigan voters on Trump’s behalf in 2016 and said the campaign’s decision to go into safe Democratic territory at this point was an “aggressive, aggressive play.”
California is also a source of campaign funding for both parties, and Trump plans to raise money there. A photo with the former president at Coachella costs $25,000 and comes with special seating for two. The “VIP experience” was priced at $5,000.
With California congressional races underway that could determine which party controls the House of Representatives, the Coachella rally is “the type of get-out-the-vote event that motivates and energizes Republicans in California at a time when they are nowhere near progress.” We are participating in a national campaign.” said Republican consultant Tim Rosales.
Rosales also said she was seeking out Trump to continue her long-running debate with Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
For Republicans, “there’s an incentive to pick on California a little bit and the governor will take the bait,” Rosales said.
Newsom predicted Wednesday that Trump would denigrate the country at a rally and overlook its strengths as the world’s fifth-largest economy. The governor said that for the first time in a decade, California has more Fortune 500 companies than any other state.
He predicted, “Trump won’t say that.”
Jim Brulte, former chairman of the California Republican Party, said he thinks Trump is aiming for something that eluded him in previous elections. That means getting more total votes than his Democratic opponent.
“I believe Donald Trump is coming to California because he wants to win not only the Electoral College but also the popular vote. There are more registered voters in California than there are residents in 46 of the other 49 states,” Brulte said.
Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles is located on the Pacific coast south of the city. But Trump has long had a conflicted relationship with California. In California, where Republicans haven’t carried the state since 1988, Democrats outnumber registered Republicans by about 2 to 1.
California has been a stronghold of the so-called Trump resistance during his time in office, and Trump often portrays California as representing everything he sees wrong with America. As president, he condemned the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles and San Francisco as a shame and threatened to intervene.
He will spend time Saturday connecting California’s issues with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee and California attorney general and a San Francisco Bay Area native who represented the state in the Senate.
His campaign claimed in a statement that under Harris, “the infamous ‘California Dream’ has turned into a nightmare for Americans.”
State Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Milan Patterson said she looks forward to hearing Trump contrast his agenda with a Democratic White House that will “make Californians less safe and have less money in their pockets.”
She promised that Republicans “will do our part to secure a majority in the House.”
