SACRAMENTO, California — First a Democratic gerrymander pushed California House Republicans to the brink of extinction. Now they’re fighting each other for scraps.
In a state where Republicans had long counted on congressional races to exert some influence in Washington, just four of California’s 52 House seats are now safe for the GOP. And a decades-long slide for the party has reached a new nadir as Republicans surveying the landscape use words like “demoralized,” “massacred” and “obliteration.”
“I’m sure Gavin Newsom and the Democrats are sitting back laughing and enjoying the havoc they’ve wreaked on the Republicans in California,” said Dave Gilliard, a veteran consultant who represents several House Republicans. “It’s going to be crazy next year, no doubt about it.”
The infighting began almost immediately. Less than 24 hours after Proposition 50 passed, Rep. Ken Calvert announced he’d run for one of the few remaining red seats, after his own Southern California district was redrawn to favor Democrats. He was followed quickly by Rep. Young Kim, who announced a $3.5 million ad buy that would begin in April of next year — an unusually long runway that looked like an effort to dominate the airwaves and drive up ad rates before Calvert could.
In recent cycles, Kim and Calvert were two bright spots for Republicans: They repeatedly fended off well-funded Democratic challengers, holding swaths of Orange and Riverside counties for Republicans even as other incumbent GOPers succumbed. But now they have been drawn into a conflict that no one in their party wanted.
“I was really hoping there’d be some type of agreement worked out that we wouldn’t have Republicans pitted against Republicans,” said Rep. Doug LaMalfa. “That’s counterproductive and all it does is waste resources.”
LaMalfa has a different problem on his hands. He has long represented the state’s vast rural north, a redoubt of anti-Democratic sentiment where conservative secession dreams thrive. Now he’ll be up against a former Democratic state legislative leader from wine country, Sen. Mike McGuire, who helped oversee the Legislature’s efforts to craft new maps.
It’s possible neither he nor Calvert will survive.
“If Ken Calvert goes away, there goes a very powerful Californian on water issues who’s also an appropriator — that’s a big deal,” said Rob Stutzman, a longtime Republican consultant. “Rural California does lose its voice if they lose LaMalfa.”
Other incumbents are still weighing their fates. Rep. Darrell Issa, who was already driven into one brief retirement by unfavorable maps, contemplated relocating his career to Texas but could see it end in California as a bevy of Democratic challengers seek his blue-tinted district. Rep. Kevin Kiley, his district shattered into six shards, will have to either plunge into a Democratic-favoring district or run against Republican Rep. Tom McClintock.
“People are obviously demoralized at the moment about the results,” Kiley said. “We never would’ve seen something like this coming, but we just have to figure out how to move forward.”
It’s a far cry from the beginning of the year, which Republicans here began on a hopeful note. While out of power in Sacramento, they flipped several state legislative seats in 2024, celebrated a burst of new registrants and took partial credit for voters passing an anti-crime ballot initiative opposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and many Democrats. President Donald Trump improved on his 2020 margins in every county.
Now, Republicans are pointing fingers. Consultant and fundraiser Anne Dunsmore lamented the splintering she observed as Republicans turned on each other even before Prop 50 passed, condemning the “RINO bullshit” of Republicans questioning one another’s bona fides.
“I don’t want people to lose hope, but everyone needs to wake up and deal with this,” Dunsmore said. “Everyone needs to go back to their corners and reassess. We can’t go back to the battlefield in the same way — we’re almost completely gone.”
Consultant Tim Rosales described a similar soul-searching process as the party struggles with a deeper sense of resignation.
“Amongst the consultants and professional class, the mood is pretty somber at this point,” Rosales said. “For the average Republican voter in California, with Prop 50, it really is — we feel like we get kicked in the teeth year after year after year just being Republicans. We don’t expect anything different.”
The House has been the party’s final bastion of influence. Even as an increasingly Democratic state pushed the governor’s office and electoral votes out of reach, California’s size made it key to control of Congress and a perennial hub of campaign activity. California is still home to nearly 6 million Republican voters.
As the Legislature prepared to draw new House lines in 2001, President George W. Bush’s adviser Karl Rove reached out to Republican Senate leader Jim Brulte to say the GOP could retain the House if California supplied 19 seats, Brulte recalled in an interview. In an era when Republicans had more sway in the Legislature, Brulte cut an incumbent-protection deal that saw California Republicans retain their 20 seats as the GOP held the House — a source of national relevance that persisted even if Republican presidential candidates no longer bothered.
“Bob Dole waited until September (of 1996) to pull the plug on California,” Brulte said. “Now they don’t even plug us in.”
More recently, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy helped keep his home state in the picture by recruiting candidates and bringing in national money. A cluster of contested races in California have helped swing House control over the last decade.
But now McCarthy is out of office and proved unable to thwart Prop 50. His early pledge to raise $100 million in opposition fell flat as a blue electorate rallied behind an anti-Trump campaign. And the future looks bleak.
“We’ve got four seats that are Republican and five that are massacred,” said Cathy Abernathy, a longtime McCarthy political adviser. “We have a governor and a Legislature at war with us.”
Many Republicans were already skeptical of the independent commission that’s drawn lines since 2011, noting their share of the state’s House delegation trails their share of the electorate. Now, despite language in Proposition 50 stipulating that the redistricting will revert to the panel in 2031, it’s an article of faith among Republicans that Democrats will find a pretext to undo that trigger and scupper the commission. Brulte argued that once a party has enacted a partisan gerrymander, it has little incentive to return to the way things were.
“I think this is like losing your virginity,” Brulte said.
Republicans haven’t given up hope. The National Republican Campaign Committee plans to continue defending frontline members like Rep. David Valadao, who has held his seat in recent cycles despite registration deficits, and targeting Democrats like Rep. Adam Gray, with NRCC spokesperson Christian Martinez saying in a statement that “no map can shield” Democrats.
“California is always a challenge for Republicans, but our incumbents have already proved we can win tough seats when our candidates are better, work harder, and talk about the issues that matter most to voters,” California Republican Party Chair Corrin Rankin said in a statement.
Abernathy is circulating a proposal for a ballot initiative that would create a new redistricting commission with rules she believes would be more favorable to the party. Trump’s DOJ has backed a lawsuit from state Republicans challenging the constitutionality of California’s maps, although a Supreme Court ruling upholding Texas’ lines buoyed California Democrats hoping for a similar victory.
“We could have three sets of lines in nine months — wouldn’t it be exciting?” said Republican National Committee member Shawn Steel.
But if the lines hold, Steel acknowledged, 2026 is “going to be an unexciting year.” Rosales noted that Republicans in California — “always one of the most expensive and hardest places to run congressional races” — could see less help than usual if the party decides its money is better invested elsewhere.
Still, it’s hardly the first time the party has had its back against the wall. In a state with serious cost-of-living and homelessness issues and a huge trove of Republican voters, the faithful still believe there’s a way back.
“The obituary for Republicans in California has been written many times,” Rosales said, “and it’s never come to fruition.”
