President’s Calif. trip has been a long time coming
Travels take him mostly where he feels at home
WASHINGTON – California, here he comes.
President Trump will make a longoverdue trip to the Golden State next week, ending what had become the longest that any modern president had gone without visiting the nation’s most populous state.
California shouldn’t take it as a snub: Trump is the least-traveled president since Ronald Reagan, according to a USA TODAY analysis.
“He seems to be traveling a lot, but so much of it seems to be traveling to second homes,” said Brendan Doherty, a political science professor at the U.S. Naval Academy who tracks presidential travel. His neglect of California for his first 14 months in office, he said, is a conspicuous departure from past presidents.
In fact, the last president to travel to California so late in his presidency was Franklin Roosevelt, who was inaugurated in 1933 and didn’t visit until he dedicated the Hoover Dam in 1935. (In an era before Air Force One, Roosevelt got there by train, then his motorcade got lost on the way to Los Angeles.)
If there’s a pattern to Trump’s travel 14 months into his presidency, it’s that he seems to favor battleground states — especially those in the Rust Belt — where he can fly in and out in one day.
His most-visited state, outside his home states of New York and Florida, is Pennsylvania, where he’ll go for the fifth time this weekend for a campaign rally in Pittsburgh. He has visited Ohio, Texas and West Virginia three times each.
The USA TODAY analysis, based largely on Doherty’s data, counts only public events and excludes personal visits to his homes in Palm Beach, Fla., and Bedminster, N.J. It also doesn’t include four international trips.
Trump’s focus on battleground states isn’t unusual; many of his predecessors found reasons to hold official events in politically important states. What’s different is that Trump is already in reelection mode, holding campaign rallies in battleground states three years before the next presidential election.
He also has held campaign rallies in a number of “safe” red states such as Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia.
“He seems to like to go places where he’s already very popular or is likely to get a raucous welcome,” Doherty said.
Except for foreign trips, Trump has spent only one night of his presidency at a hotel he didn’t own. Last August, he slept in Phoenix after a rally before leaving for Reno the next morning.
Next week’s visit will focus on his proposal to build a wall along the U.S.Mexican border. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed the trip Wednesday in response to a question from USA TODAY.
“Why it’s taken so long? ... He’s been busy growing the economy, creating jobs, defeating ISIS, remaking the judiciary,” she said. “I’d be happy to name off some other successes.”