Consultants are finding themselves trying to appeal to these newly relevant voters without simultaneously alienating the more familiar Democratic voting blocs. It’s a tough line to walk: “In L.A., you hardly had to give a hoot what the Republicans thought,” says Eric Hacopian, a Democratic political consultant from Southern California. “Now, you really do.”
But not necessarily enough to seek out a GOP endorsement: When I ask one consultant if he would accept Republican support, I’m met with an uncomfortably long pause. “Ah, I wouldn’t,” he says. “I think that would be so damaging to your Democratic base.” As Hacopian says succinctly, “You might talk about small business, which appeals to Democrats but also Republicans, so you find things that are central to your message...but you don’t go out and say, ‘Hey, I love guns after all!’”
If Democratic consultants are, in effect, driving a car without lights along a cliff at midnight, unions are doing the same—with a cliff on both sides. In elections past, life was pretty easy for labor. They poured money into the campaign of the Democrat they favored in the primary and then sat back and watched him or her beat the tar out of the Republican candidate in the fall. Now they find themselves in an entirely different place, making a new set of calculations as they deploy their money across the state. A local pollster puts it best: “Labor is more split right now in California, which is why the far left is losing their shit.”
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