California Republicans packed the Sheraton San Diego Resort last weekend for their annual convention, four weeks out from the June primary and deep inside a tension they haven’t solved yet: how to hold together a base that worships Donald Trump and a candidate class that can’t afford to be seen doing the same.
Assemblymember Leticia Castillo is the clearest illustration of that bind. In 2024, she won a Riverside County Assembly seat that nobody expected her to win, knocking out Democrat Clarissa Cervantes, who happened to be the outgoing assemblymember’s sister, despite getting outspent by something in the neighborhood of ten to one. Now she’s running again in 2026, same district, same math, and she’s betting the same approach works twice.
“I’m accessible to my constituents and they like that,” Castillo said at a reception outside the resort Saturday evening.
What she didn’t say, but what shapes every decision she’s making this cycle, is that her path runs directly away from Trump’s shadow. Candidates competing in districts that can actually flip can’t afford to have the president’s name define them. California Democrats have shown they’ll turn out in volume the moment they see a viable target.
Walk the convention floor, though, and you’d never guess any of that mattered. Bedazzled sweaters. Cardboard cutouts. Delegates who don’t talk about Trump so much as they testify about him. The Republican Party base in California isn’t cooling off. It’s the opposite.
Los Angeles delegate Mary Boston didn’t soften anything. “I love what he’s doing. I love all the s, he’s saying,” Boston said, talking about Trump and his choice to enter a war with Iran that’s pushed national gas prices to record levels. She kept going: “The whole establishment, all the Democrats, all the judges, they just hate him because he’s trying to make a difference for you and me.”
Party officials kept their distance from that framing all weekend. Very deliberately. Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff running for governor in 2026, worked hard to draw California’s political problems as something separate from Washington’s. “I think people here are tired of California,” Bianco said. “They know that the federal government is doing nothing to harm or help California.”
That’s a tricky position for Bianco specifically. Trump passed over him last week when the president endorsed Steve Hilton, the former Fox News host, in the governor’s race. So Bianco’s pivot toward California-first messaging isn’t just ideological positioning. It’s also survival.
The broader picture isn’t comfortable for the California State Legislature candidates working the same rooms this weekend. Trump’s approval ratings have dropped nationally, squeezed by the Iran conflict and by inflation that won’t quit. In California, he was already unpopular. The slide just makes the math worse for anyone whose name appears below his on a ballot.
CalMatters first reported on the strategic split playing out among legislative candidates at the convention, where the gap between what happens on the floor and what candidates say in interviews couldn’t be wider. Swing-district Republicans aren’t running against Trump. They’re also not running with him. They’re doing something more careful: saying nothing at all and hoping the base doesn’t notice.
That silence is getting harder to hold. When your most motivated donors and volunteers treat the president as a cause instead of just a politician, studied neutrality starts to feel like a slight. It doesn’t read well in a room full of bedazzled sweaters.
California Democrats, watching all of this, don’t appear worried. They’ve spent two cycles learning how to weaponize Trump’s name in competitive districts, and the Iran war has handed them fresh material heading into the June primary. The state party didn’t need a convention to know which direction the wind’s blowing.
What the Sheraton San Diego weekend made clear is that California Republicans know it too. The optimism in the room was real. So was the calculation underneath it.