After decades in the shadows, O.C. liberal activists take center stage

Dec. 08--It started with the Women's March, the day after Donald Trump was sworn in as president.

The event, which took place in more than 400 U.S. cities, was touted as the country's largest single-day protest. And Orange County was one of many places where crowds exceeded expectations.

The estimated 20,000 people who hit the streets for the Santa Ana demonstration was the biggest left-leaning display in the history a county traditionally known as a conservative stronghold -- a place long dubbed "America's Most Republican County."

"It's was phenomenal," said Bill Honigman of Aliso Viejo.

The veteran activist speaks from the perspective of experience. He recalled pushing his young children in a strollers, going door-to-door in south county to campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis. Republicans then held a 20-point advantage among voters in the county and rallying voters for Dukakis in the Laguna Hills area was like looking for water in the desert.

"Things have been changing in Orange County," said Honigman, now 62. "But I've never seen anything like the Women's March."

The momentum continued from there. An online "Indivisible" guide, modeled after the conservative Tea Party's organizational success in the late 2000s, helped people across the country -- including Fullerton music professor Marian Bodnar -- launch resistance groups for each congressional district.

"I was appalled, depressed, horrified -- you name it -- that Trump was on the ticket, and even more so when he was elected," said Bodnar, a former Republican and first-time activist. "I registered (an Indivisible) group in the beginning of January and thought that if I had 5 people to host in my living room, I would be lucky. When it looked like there would be over 20, I had to find a venue. We ended up with 90 people at our first meeting, Jan. 27."

Soon, there were Indivisible groups in every congressional district in the county, with dedicated Facebook pages, regular meetings and weekly demonstrations at the district offices of Republican House members.

At the same time, typically low-key Democrat clubs began bursting with energy and first-time members. New groups were forming and existing interest groups -- including ethnic, environmental, gay rights and healthcare organizations -- were jumping into the mix. For example, the Action Council for Congressional District 45, which extends from Laguna Hills to Anaheim Hills, now has a list of 112 local groups it works with.

"The phone started ringing and it hasn't stopped," said Fran Sdao, chairwoman of the Democratic Party of Orange County.

"It's on the scale of the Normandy invasion."

Focus on Congress

Initially, many members of the non-partisan Indivisible groups hoped that expressing their concerns to county GOP House members would help build Republican opposition to Trump positions they found most objectionable -- particularlly the Muslim travel ban, rejection of climate change concerns, and crackdowns on undocumented immigrants.

Bodnar said there have been a handful of favorable votes, such as Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa, and Darrell Issa, R-Vista, recently voting against the House version of the tax-reform plan.

"Those are not people who usually vote against their party," she said.

But mostly the activists see the GOP Congress members as enabling the Trump agenda. They have largely unified behind the mission of unseating the county's four Republican incumbents, all of whom have have been targeted by national Democrats as key to flipping the 24 seats necessary to take control of the House.

Already, more than 30 challengers have lined up against those four and raised several million dollars for their campaigns. Multiple candidate forums had been held and more have been scheduled. Activists groups are coordinating voter registration and voter outreach drives aimed at replacing those Republicans.

"Nobody's ever done anything like this, especially at this point in the election cycle," said Lake Forest's Louise Adler, who 22 years ago formed the bipartisan Women in Leadership PAC to help elect women who support abortion rights. The veteran activist -- whose late husband, Howard Adler, served two stints as the county Democratic Party chairman -- is field director for the Canyon Democrats and is establishing precinct-by-precinct voter contact programs.

"Suddenly, people are realizing that Orange County will be responsible for flipping Congress," she said.

'Steep hill'

Fanning Democrats' hopes for winning those four Orange County GOP seats is that fact that Hillary Clinton beat Trump in those districts. They are four of just 23 districts nationwide where a Republican won the House seat even as Clinton prevailed over Trump.

Additionally, Issa won reelection last year by just 0.6 percentage points in his district, which straddles the Orange-San Diego county line. And while Rohrabacher won easily, he's been attracting headlines this year for controversial meetings with Russians and with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Two leading political political prognosticators, Sabato's Crystal Ball and the Cook Political Report, rate both races a "toss-up." They rate the races of Rep. Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, and Mimi Walters, R-Laguna Beach, as "leaning Republican" -- and notch or two down from their usual "likely Republican" or "solid Republican" status. The Roll Call new site rates Issa the most vulnerable House member and Rohrabacher the fifth most vulnerable incumbents in the country.

The state GOP has responded by opening a field office in Vista -- in the San Diego County portion of Issa's district -- while the county Republican Party has opened an office in Royce's district and plans to open another on the Orange County side of Issa's district.

"We know they're throwing a lot of money at us," said Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Orange County GOP. He pointed to Issa's opposition to the tax-reform plan as an indication the congressman was heeding his constituent's concerns and noted Issa was spending more time with district voters than in the past. The Vista multimillionaire is the only GOP congress member to hold a town hall in the county since Trump's election.

"I think Congressman Issa realized he wasn't in the district as much as he needed to be," Whitaker said.

But Whitaker expressed confidence that all four Republican Congress members would win reelection. He said Issa would be buoyed by Republicans' typical advantage over Democrats in voter turnout for mid-term elections and disputed the notion that Clinton's victory portended doom for the incumbents. He pointed to data showing that while unaffiliated voters favored Clinton last year, they also backed the GOP incumbents.

Activist Honigman didn't disagree, pointing to additional data indicating that many Republicans left the presidential part of the ballot blank but otherwise supported GOP candidates. While registration data shows that Democrats are now within 3.2 percentage points of Republicans in the county, overall, they trail by 7 points in Issa's district, 8.5 points in Walter's district and 10.9 points in Rohrabacher's district. Royce's is more competitive in terms of voter registration, with the GOP's edge less than 2 points.

"I think it's still a very steep hill to climb for us," said Honigman, a retired emergency room physician who was a Bernie Sanders delegate to the 2016 national convention and is county chapter leader for Progressive Democrats of America.

Broader trends

Both Whitaker and Bodnar noted that attendance at weekly protests have tailed off a bit. But key events -- such as a Newport Coast fundraiser in October featuring Vice President Mike Pence and conservative provocatuer Steve Bannon's Anaheim appearance the same month can still draw dozens of demonstrators or more. And while weekly demonstrations outside Royce's office now sometimes find less than a dozen activists on hand in recent weeks, Wednesday's protest focused on the tax reform attracted about 40 opponents of the plan.

"Tax reform -- plus all of the awful 'extras' tucked into it -- have angered people," Bodnar said.

Next month's reprise of the Santa Ana Women's March, which is non-partisan, will provide another measure of the momentum -- and perhaps a hint at whether Democrats can overcome their traditionally lackluster turnout for mid-term elections.

But the county's broader shift away from the GOP transcends a single-election cycle.

Republicans' share of county's registered electorate has been shrinking since 1990, when the GOP had a 22-point advantage over Democrats. One reason is the growth in Latino voters, who are twice as likely to register as Democrat as Republican and who now represent nearly 20 percent of all county voters. Another is that voters under 35, who in 2002 were far more likely to register as Republicans than Democrats, have been changing. By last year's election, the under-35 registered voting cohort was 36 percent Democrat, 26 percent Republican and 32 percent unaffiliated.

The trend has accelerated since Trump won the GOP nomination. In May 2016, county Republicans' advantage in voter registration was 7-percentage point. It's now less than half that.

Based on turnout at public demonstrations and activist meetings, women are now also playing an outsized role in the push to the left.

"I think some of that comes from how offended women are by Trump," said Linda May, the county Democratic Party's director of grassroots organizing. "There are more women, although there are also a lot of men working hard."

While protests tend to attract the most attention, there is a growing effort to focus on registering new voters and to engage with others who who might otherwise sit out the election.

"There is the type of activism that is about letting people know what is wrong. And then there are those who are doing the ground work in terms of registering voters, canvassing and letting people know who the candidates are," May said.

Democrats have yet to target state legislative seats, city councils and school boards -- all areas where Republican candidates in O.C. outperform their share of registered voters -- with the same passion that they've gone after the congressional posts. While Democratic candidates are flocking to challenge incumbent GOP Congress members, there's no parallel rush of candidates for races farther down ticket -- seats that have long served as a GOP farm system for higher office.

"There's a sea change in Orange County -- but sea changes don't happen over night," said Honigman, who also sits on the state and county Democratic Parties' governing central committees. "I hope people stay engaged. It's probably going to take more than one or two more election cycles.

"You can't just go to one march a year."

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