Rep. Mark DeSaulnier Says California GOP’s Demise Came By Choosing ‘Short-Term Expediency and Racism’

(Photo by Patrick Semansky-Pool/Getty Images)

In 1994, Republican Mark DeSaulnier – now a Democrat representing California’s 11th congressional district in the San Francisco Bay Area – was working at the restaurant he owned in Concord, California when he took a phone call in the kitchen from Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s office.

The eatery was called TR’s Bar and Grill, named after Teddy Roosevelt, “a good liberal progressive Republican,” DeSaulnier told me.

DeSaulnier said back then he was a “liberal Republican.” When he ran for city council in Concord, the future Democrat was supported by labor groups and the California League of Conservation Voters.

Speaking with me via phone, the congressman recounted how Wilson appointed him to the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors. But soon after, they were at loggerheads on the state’s hot button issue of the year.

“And then within weeks I came out and opposed him on 187, which led to a somewhat comical interaction between me and his people in Sacramento who were mad at me.”

The governor, who would unsuccessfully run for president in 1996, was running for reelection that year. Like most members of his party, he supported Proposition 187. That measure would have implemented a statewide screening system to prevent undocumented immigrants from utilizing certain public services. It also would have allowed law enforcement officers to attempt to verify the immigration status of any arrestees they suspect might be in the country illegally.

“They called me,” said DeSaulnier. “It was lunch. And at the time, I was working at the restaurant.”

A voice on the other end of the line told him, “The governor wants to talk to you. Are you busy right now?”

“I was like, ‘Yeah, actually,’” said DeSaulnier. “’I’m really busy. I can’t talk to the governor. I’m bussing tables.’”

“They were really pissed,” he recalled.

“He was unhappy with me on Prop. 187 and I was unhappy with him,” the congressman explained.

DeSaulnier later connected with Wilson’s people, and two years later the governor even appointed him to the California Air Resources Board.

“I told his appointment secretary, ‘If you appoint me, you’re appointing a liberal Republican,’” said DeSaulnier. “And I remember her saying, ‘We know that.'”

The congressman said Wilson supported Prop. 187 because he was running for president.

“So it wasn’t that I was becoming more liberal,” he said. “Pete Wilson was becoming a national Republican, which required him to become more conservative, particularly on race and immigration.”

Bucking his party on the ballot question didn’t hurt DeSaulnier, who won his election that year. It was one of many Republican victories across the state in 1994: Wilson won reelection; the party picked up eight seats to gain control of the state assembly; it netted three more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives; Democrat Dianne Feinstein, whose name would become synonymous with landslide victories over the next quarter century, eked out reelection for U.S. Senate by a mere 1.9% spread.

And Prop 187 was approved by 59% of voters, but was swiftly killed by legal challenges.

Republicans were surging in California.

Then they weren’t.

The upcoming recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom notwithstanding, Democrats have enjoyed a hammerlock on power in the state. Democrats hold 59 out of 80 seats in the State Assembly, and 31 out of 40 seats in the State Senate. Just 11 of the state’s 53 U.S. representatives are Republicans, and both of the state’s senators are Democrats.

“We could’ve been principled,” said DeSaulnier. “But we chose short-term expediency and racism, which was just a forerunner of what Trump did nationally.”

DeSaulnier, who was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, recalled a time when the GOP was more moderate, namely, when he first registered to vote in the state in the early 1970s.

“I registered as a Republican when I was 18 years old – a long time ago – and I lived in Boston at the time with my father who had been a member of the Massachusetts legislature. And he had been a Republican, but they were different Republicans. They were left of center, and they weren’t fiscally conservative as much as they wanted government to be as efficient as possible, which I still think is a good model.”

I noted that like him, once upon a time I also lived in Lowell, Massachusetts, and now – oddly enough – reside in the same congressional district 3,000 miles away. The congressman told me “there are a few” Massachusetts transplants he’s come across here over the years.

He recalled a time years ago when he was canvassing in the Bay Area. At one house, a woman with a familiar accent greeted him.

“She opened the door and all she did was scream, ‘Mahk!,’” said DeSaulnier, doing his best Boston accent while noting that the woman was a total stranger to him.

“Congressman DeSaulniah,” I joked.

“Yeah, yeah, wicked pissah!” he replied.

After recalibrating our accents, we returned to the matter of California politics.

“Years ago I went to a Lincoln Club event,” DeSaulnier recounted. “I had already decided to leave the party. I was sort of equivocating because I had just got on the Board of Supervisors.”

“They invited me up in front of all these people,” he said. “These people” included Wilson and his fellow Republican governor George Pataki of New York, who were sitting front and center.

DeSaulnier said he was introduced by a Republican state senator as “the future of the Republican Party in the Bay Area.” The senator asked him, “What do you do differently in a Democratic area to get elected?”

DeSaulnier replied, “I try to be open-minded.”

His answer wasn’t exactly a crowd-pleaser. “The whole room was quite uncomfortable,” he recalled.

“You know,” he mused to me, “That was pretty prophetic, that I was the future of Republican Party in the Bay Area.”