Republicans in California suffered a devastating loss in the 2018 midterm election -- and are admitting the historic implications of the loss they suffered under President Donald Trump.
Democrats flipped at least six congressional districts in the most populous state -- and possibly a seventh. Every single statewide Republican lost as Gavin Newsom was elected governor.
“This is the death of the Republican Party” in California, Republican consultant Mike Madrid told Politico.
“There’s no coming back from this for at least a generation, if not more," he added.
RNC committeeman Shawn Steel called the California election results “a nuclear political holocaust for Republicans."
Trump was a leading source of trouble for Republicans, who lost every single congressional district in the former Ronald Reagan stronghold in Orange County.
"The nightmare results were the end result of a toxic brew of overconfidence and presidential unpopularity, as some Republicans failed to recognize and reckon with the unprecedented negative reaction to President Donald Trump in districts from Orange County to California’s agriculture-heavy Central Valley," Politico explained.
“If Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016, these seats would still be Republican,” UC Irvine politics professor Matthew Beckmann told the LA Times.
Longtime GOP strategist Stuart K. Spencer said, "it’s a sign to me that things are going south for Republicans and if they don’t change the way they do things, they’re going to go even further south.”
