California GOP Power Couple Quits Party
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The hits just keep on comin’ for the California Republican Party. Driven by tea party forces, it has become radically out of synch with the state’s left-leaning electorate. As a result, the California GOP is penniless, leaderless and bleeding registrations — today, barely 30 percent of California voters are registered Republicans, compared with 44 percent registered Democrats and 21 percent independents.
Democrats hold every statewide office and, thanks to a new redistricting system once favored by the California GOP — despite its near-bankruptcy, the party funded not one but two rounds of ballot initiatives to get it passed but is now underwriting lawsuits to have the redistricting plan overturned — the party is on a glide path to devastating losses in U.S. House and state Legislature races in November.
The latest casualty in the party’s death spiral is the defection of one its few — maybe even its only — young power couples. Assmb. Nathan Fletcher, a candidate for mayor of San Diego, and his wife, the former Mindy Tucker, who served in high profile positions in the George W. Bush administration, the Republican National Committee and the Schwarzenegger administration, announced last week that they had abandoned the Republican Party for good and registered as independents.