Orange County Dems hope anti-Trump energy will mean wins in cities where GOP has dominated for decades

In a roundabout way, it was President Donald Trump’s rise to power that prompted Democrat Beatriz “Betty” Valencia to run for city council.

Within a few months of Trump’s 2016 victory, the 47-year-old protested in the streets of Los Angeles with the Women’s March. Soon after, she began attending council meetings in her home town, Orange, for the first time.

And it was there, on April 10, 2018, the night that city leaders passed a resolution opposing California’s sanctuary state law – and supporting local law enforcement’s cooperation with ICE – that something in Valencia shifted. Speaking loudly enough for meeting attendees to hear, she suddenly addressed the majority-GOP city council and said:

“You’re in my seat.”

“That night, I told the people around me, ‘I’m going to run,’” said Valencia, an executive in a local lending institution who emigrated from Mexico to Orange when she was 6.

“We felt deflated that night. But I began to think about local politics in a personal way; what I can do about it.”

Valencia isn’t alone.

This year, as the county has found itself in the national spotlight due to its freshly-competitive and consequential congressional races, the Democratic Party of Orange County has tried to harness liberal activism by convincing potential leaders to run in local contests – races for city council and school board that for decades have been dominated by the GOP.

As a result, Democrats all over Orange County are running for elected office for the first time, many spurred by the actions and policies of the Trump administration.

The number of Democratic hopefuls running for local office this cycle is up 20 percent from just two years ago. That increase has inspired the party to set lofty goals, starting with flipping four GOP-controlled city councils – Anaheim, Buena Park, Costa Mesa, and Fullerton – on Nov. 6, and then doing the same with five more councils in 2020.

This election also has presented Democrats with their best shot in years to land a party member on the county Board of Supervisors, which has been all-Republican since 2008.

“This year is just so different,” said Fran Sdao, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Orange County. “After the Women’s March…  the message was starting to get around that if you really want to make an impact, run for local office.

“If you get elected to Congress, you’re one of 535 people,” Sdao said. “On a city council, you’re one of five.”

Ground games

But in a county that has been a bastion of conservatism and Regan-era politics, the Democrats are playing catch-up. For years, Republicans have cultivated first-time candidates to take on less glamorous offices, and in the process the party has developed a strong political farm system.

Today, even though county voter registration data shows the Democrats trailing the GOP by just 2 percentage points, Democrats control only one of Orange County’s 34 city councils, and just three other councils are evenly split.

What’s more, Republicans hold three-quarters of all city council seats in the county, and GOP officials control eight councils in cities where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans. In Anaheim, a city where Democrats hold a 13 point voter registration over Republicans, six of seven members of the city council are registered with the GOP.

Valencia, if elected, would be just the second Democrat ever to serve on the Orange city council.

Jodi Balma, a political scientist at Fullerton College, said she thinks Democrats have been slow to capitalize on their voter registration growth partly due to disorganization within the local party and partly because they’ve sometimes been too intimidated to run.

She noted that local Republican leadership has mastered the practice of finding candidates to backfill open elected positions when one of their politicians advances to higher office, creating a pipeline. Democrats, meanwhile, haven’t gained a foothold in many cities to begin that process.

“Having established candidates to help newcomers is really nice,” Balma said. “It builds on itself.”

The lack of a Democratic farm team was particularly evident in the June congressional primary, as was the GOP’s deep bench.

National Democrats are targeting four Orange County Republican-held House districts that favored Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and which could help the party take control of the U.S. House of Representatives. But of the 55 candidates competing for those seats in June, none of the competitive Democrats had ever held public office.

Meanwhile, nearly all of the top Republican candidates in those contests boasted significant elected experience. In the race for CA-45, incumbent U.S. Rep Mimi Walters (R-Irvine) is the most prominent of a number of South County GOP women who matriculated from city council to higher office. Walters began her political career as an appointed member of a Laguna Niguel city committee, before becoming mayor, then winning state office, then Congress.

Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County, acknowledged that he has seen county Democrats become more organized and active this cycle. But he said he said he thinks liberal activism has produced local candidates “too far to the left of where the typical no-party-preference voter is.”

Whitaker also said he doesn’t think it’s inevitable that Democrats’ city council representation will eventually increase to match their voter-registration share. He pointed out that in 2004, when the GOP held an 18-point voter registration advantage countywide, Republicans held around two-thirds of all local offices in the county. Today, despite a slimmer registration lead, Republicans hold essentially the same portion.

Still, the county GOP has been preparing for the upcoming fight.

“We knew the challenge was coming, so we started our precinct operations almost a year ago and opened up 10 field offices around the county,” Whitaker said. “We’re doing what we know how to do, and we’re just putting on the afterburners.”

Yet recent communications from top GOP officials and candidates suggest that party members are worried, even threatened, by Democrats’ newfound organization. In late August, Republicans Walters, congressional candidate Young Kim, and Assembly candidate Alexandria Coronado jointly wrote a letter to the county’s GOP Central Committee, saying that “petty squabbling” between Republican Anaheim city council candidates was endangering top-of-the-ticket races in the face of Democratic ardor.

“The Democrats are united behind formidable candidates in every Anaheim seat,” the GOP politicians wrote. “The Republican civil war in Anaheim is endangering our important Congressional and legislative seats… We need a united Republican team in Anaheim to be able to defeat this unprecedented unity by the Democrats.”

Changing rules

The recent Democratic surge comes as at least 15 cities and school districts in Orange County are set to hold their first elections using geographic voting districts rather than at-large bids – meaning voters will choose a single representative from their part of town rather than voting for several candidates citywide. Whitaker said he couldn’t predict how the change will affect the local partisan composition. But Sdao said she thinks it will encourage more first-time Democratic candidates to run, especially in South County, where Democrats comprise a much smaller portion of voters.

Recently, local Democratic clubs began sprouting up in greater number throughout Orange County, including in areas that historically have been viewed as solidly Republican, such as Dana Point and Placentia. When Trump took office, there were 17 local Democratic clubs in the county. Today, there are 27.

Tiffany Ackley, 39, an environmental law attorney and Democrat-endorsed first-time city council candidate in Aliso Viejo, formed one of those post-Trump organizations – the Aliso-Niguel Democratic Club, which covers her hometown and Laguna Niguel. A previous attempt to found a Democratic club in those cities fizzled in 2010 for lack of interest. This time around, 60 party faithfuls attend the group’s monthly meetings.

Like Valencia, Ackley’s interest in local politics kindled following Trump’s election and the Women’s March. It piqued further when she saw that no women were serving on the Aliso Viejo City Council. Though many Orange County Republicans are women and non-white, county Democrats have highlighted that 90 percent of their endorsed candidates this cycle are women, people of color, under age 40, or LGBTQ.

“There’s no woman on the Aliso Viejo city council, and there’s no one with small children – that’s a problem,” Ackley said. “It’s a lack of representation. And people recognize it regardless of party.”

“Part of the tipping point for me was, I’m a victim of a sexual assault,” Ackley said. “When you see somebody get elected (president) who doesn’t embody basic beliefs of respect, and in particular toward women, it’s easy to see how a lot of us got motivated to run.”

While Democrats are running for local office in greater numbers, they’re still the underdog party in Orange County: twice as many Republicans countywide are running for city council seats this election. Local Republicans also are quick to point out that the national topics that inspired many of the fresh-faced Democrats to run – women’s issues and immigration policy – aren’t typically addressed in local government. Instead, city leaders deal mostly with public safety, maintaining infrastructure, approving developments and permitting businesses.

“I think what matters most in Orange is your love and involvement with the community, and what matters second is your political affiliation,” said Chip Monaco, 46, a GOP-endorsed first-time candidate running for Orange City Council who has worked for prominent local politicians.

“I think that the political environment has energized both parties. I don’t see the left as any more excited than the right.”

But Ackley and Valencia both think that city council politics has become too factional, saying they’ve seen firsthand how partisan issues have infiltrated local meeting agendas.

“Our city councils have been bringing in these national issues, but I’m focused on local issues,” Valencia said. “In Orange, some neighborhoods will get their sidewalks repaired, and others won’t. A simple fix could really change someone’s life.”

The question now for county Democrats is if they can sustain this energy, or if they’ll lose steam when Trump eventually leaves office.

But Sdao said the party is building for the long-run: hiring more outreach staff, beefing up its grassroots canvassing program, and hosting new candidate-training classes, which have attracted 180 attendees in the past few months.

“This cycle, we’re going win some – not everything – but we’re going learn a lot,” Sdao said.

“We’re going to keep this thing going.”