Trump 2020 campaign manager
Brad Parscale insisted Saturday that the GOP hasn’t given up on California despite setbacks at the polls there in 2018.
“We have the potential to win back eight congressional seats, back to Republicans, here in California,” Parscale said at the state Republican Party’s fall convention in Indian Wells.
“We have the potential to win back eight congressional seats, back to Republicans, here in California.”
— Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager
But
Parscale acknowledged the job won’t be easy – and said the work would
ultimately have to be done by the Golden State's Republicans, not
national party leaders.
“You’re the California GOP,” he said, according to Politico. “There’s
no trick I can do on my laptop that you can’t do yourselves. It takes
hard work, and talking to your neighbors. And with a strong leader with
President Trump at the helm, the sky’s the limit.”
"It
takes hard work, and talking to your neighbors. And with a strong
leader with President Trump at the helm, the sky’s the limit."
— Brad Parscale, Trump 2020 campaign manager
Democrats
hammered California’s GOP at the polls last year, leaving Republicans
with only seven of the state’s 53 seats in the U.S. House. Both
California seats in the Senate also belong to Democrats.
The
state’s Republicans were dealt another harsh blow just last month when
the registrar of voters in Orange County – long a GOP stronghold in
Southern California – reported that registered Democrats there now
outnumbered registered Republicans for the first time since the
Watergate era.
Nevertheless, Parscale told conventioneers Saturday
that the Trump reelection campaign was planning a big effort in
California, with as many as 50 paid staffers, making it one of “the
largest Election Day operations” in state history, Politico reported.
In
addition, the campaign plans to leverage artificial intelligence and
other high-tech tools, in a bid to learn “who the voters are, where they
live, how they consume information – and how to contact them,” he said.
“Many
of you are worried that we have written you guys off – that California
doesn’t matter,” Parscale said. To the contrary, he said, the Trump
campaign views the nation’s most populous state as a key battleground in
“the fight for the future of this country.”
Later
this month, President Trump is scheduled to visit California, with
events planned in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, Sacramento’s FOX 40 reported.
Trump previously visited California in April, making stops in Los Angeles and at the state’s border with Mexico.
Fox News’ Andrew O’Reilly contributed to this story.