Nevada Republicans whip up fears of California’s influence
LAS VEGAS — The Republicans running in Nevada’s hotly contested races for governor and U.S. Senate are taking aim at a common target as they try to maintain GOP control of the seats: California.
As more Californians have poured across the state line over the past few years, many of them escaping sky-high housing costs, some Nevada Republicans fear a state that already has become a political battleground will begin to resemble its deep blue neighbor.
GOP candidates are appealing to conservative voters with warnings about life in California: sanctuary cities, crippling business regulations, outof-control housing prices and a worsening homeless crisis.
Republican Sen. Dean Heller, who is in a tight re-election battle against Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, has highlighted his opponent’s support from California billionaire Tom Steyer and Hollywood celebrities, while warning on Twitter that the state could become “CaliforNevada” if Rosen is elected.
Politicians on the right have for years demonized California as a conservative’s worst nightmare. In 2003, as a joke, a Republican state lawmaker in Nevada requested a bill be drafted to rename the state “East California,” along with making The Beatles’ song “Taxman” the official state song.
The California-bashing takes on added weight in Nevada, which has seen a greater-than-normal wave of Californians recently as housing prices and rents have soared in the Golden State. At the same time, transplants from Silicon Valley have followed Tesla, Apple and other California-grown companies as they have expanded in the Reno area.
This year, with California emerging as a political bulwark against the Trump administration, the state has become a political bugaboo for conservatives around the country. They paint it as a cautionary tale of taxes, regulation, environmentalism and illegal immigration run amok.
In Georgia, Republican candidate for governor Brian Kemp has cast his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, as a tool of “billionaires and socialists who want to turn Georgia into California.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this summer declared that “California appears to have raised the leadership in the United States of America for socialism.”
The Republican State Leadership Committee, which works on electing Republicans to state offices around the country, declared in a campaign email that California has turned into a “liberal wasteland” of “garbagestrewn streets, never-ending tax increases, and lax immigration laws” that Democrats would replicate if they took control of state legislatures.