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Trump’s California supporters celebrate victory & turn to 2018

Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times  •  February 25, 2017

Hundreds of California supporters who worked to get Donald Trump elected president gathered Saturday afternoon to celebrate their victory — and to try to turn their energies toward improving the GOP’s relevance in their home state.

“Our job is to build a structure that wins elections and wins elections right here,” said Tim Clark, Trump’s California campaign manager who is now serving as a liaison between the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services. “We’ve done our job nationally. Now we have to focus on our state in 2018.”

No Republican has won statewide office in California since 2006, and the party’s voter registration is at a historic low. But Trump had more than 300,000 volunteers and donors in the state. Tens of thousands of them called voters in battleground states.

“There was a lot of criticism from some that we as a party didn’t do enough to win our state in November. You don’t understand, we did,” Clark said, pointing to victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin and North Carolina that were critical to winning the White House. “We won our states.”

Clark said many of the donors and volunteers are “fresh faces” who were not previously engaged with politics. They and the pro-Trump organizations that have sprung up around California could be integrated with state party efforts to work on the 2018 election, when every statewide office will be on the ballot and Sen. Dianne Feinstein will either run for reelection or leave her Senate seat open.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-trump-s-california-supporters-celebrate-1488063375-htmlstory.html

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