grant while campaigning in the district, which has a sizeable
Asian-American population.
Jessica Millan Patterson was just elected party chair for
the California GOP. She says finding candidates like Kim, who
truly match the district and can be a “new messenger” for the
GOP brand and policies, will be essential as the party moves
forward in “super localizing our message when it comes to can-
didates.” And women play a fundamental role in that shift.
“People want elected office that looks and feels and sounds
like they do, and so I think it is important to have more women
[elected],” Patterson says. “We think this is an important thing
for the Republican Party in California to focus on.”
HOW WE GOT HERE
The women problem in the California Republican Party hasn’t
always been this pronounced. For years, women like Mari-
lyn Brewer, an Orange County assemblywoman from 1994 to
2000; Rep. Mary Bono Mack, the state’s sole GOP congress-
woman from 1998 to 2013; and former-Rep. Mimi Walters, a
fixture in California politics who served two decades in state,
local and federal office, were trailblazers and role models for
future candidates on the right. In 2010, the party nominated
high-profile female candidates Meg Whitman and Carly Fiori-
na for high-stakes gubernatorial and U.S. Senate race. And in
2014, Republicans actually slightly outperformed Democrats
when it came to the percentage of women in their respective
state legislative caucus.
But in recent years, things have gotten worse. Some of the
slide is chalked up to broad demographic and political shifts.
Experts say the trend is also partly due to the party’s challeng-
es to hold on to voters and relevancy in an increasingly blue
state. Democrats control all statewide elected offices and hold
large majorities in the Legislature and congressional delega-
tion, as GOP voter registration plummeted to 25 percent of all
registered voters.
“There are fewer women in politics than men, and there are
far fewer Republicans than Democrats in California in gener-
al,” Jessica Levinson, a political commentator and professor
at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles says. “It’s really not that
shocking. Their numbers are shrinking.”
Some argue that Trump’s election has made things even
more difficult for the GOP, especially when it comes to female
candidates. The party’s troubles in the state are so dire that
some former female stars, including Kristin Olsen, a former
Assembly leader and county supervisor, are considering leav-
ing altogether. In an op-ed published in late 2018, Olsen argued
that the California GOP “is dead — partly because it has failed
to separate itself from today’s toxic, national brand of Repub-
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March 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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