She’s the first Black woman to lead California’s GOP and a Silicon Valley native. Can she give Republicans a boost?

Growing up in Menlo Park, Corrin Rankin’s politics were like most of her neighbors. She supported former President Barack Obama, energized by the Democrat’s message of “hope and change.”

But when he and California Democrats embraced criminal justice reforms reducing prison and jail populations, Rankin, whose family has deep roots in the bail bonds industry, was done with them. Then, Donald Trump rode down his Trump Tower escalator in 2015 and announced his run for president.

“Everything he said in that speech resonated with me,” Rankin told the Turning California Red podcast last month. “And I just resolved myself, I said, ‘I’m going to do everything I can do, whatever I can do to help, to get this man elected to president.'”

After her election last month as California’s Republican Party chair, Rankin, 50, of Stockton, is banking there are more folks like her out there disillusioned by Democratic politics — even in liberal strongholds like the Bay Area, where she met last week with the party’s San Francisco central committee in a city where GOP registration is in single digits.

“Be happy warriors,” Rankin told them of her party’s persuasion plan to find common ground with voters of different stripes and push Republican talking points in the media. “Talk about why people should vote for Republicans.”

The former party vice chair’s mission is to capitalize on the GOP’s recent inroads and restore the power of the beleaguered party, which once sent Ronald Reagan to the Oval Office but hasn’t elected a candidate statewide since former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.

But Rankin is offering few concrete details on her strategy. Nor does she see much significance in her status as the first Black woman to lead California’s Republican Party.

In an interview, Rankin said she’ll continue the chair’s typical responsibilities of registering more Republicans — who Democrats outnumber statewide by a whopping 5 million votes — and recruiting candidates. The California GOP will continue to stand for its longtime values under her tenure: low taxes, cheaper staples like gasoline, support for small businesses, and less bureaucratic red tape in government. Those issues have renewed appeal to disaffected Democrats, she said.

Mostly, Rankin said she embodies a “different vibe” for the party at a time when California Republicans are enjoying a moment of optimism.

Although she’s a veteran of Trump’s campaigns, she’s well familiar with progressive territory. Rankin, 50, is a Silicon Valley native with experience in tech who has spent years whipping up support for Republicans among Black voters.

Locally and nationally, support for Trump surged in November among people of color and working-class voters, sending Democrats into a tailspin of worry and self-reflection. Republicans also picked up several seats in the California Legislature, chipping away at the supermajorities held by Democrats in both chambers.

On Wednesday, Rankin spent most of her remarks advising committee members on how to present themselves to the media and voters across the aisle. They should be more constructive and conciliatory, and they shouldn’t expect her to spend much time dragging Democrats, she said.

It’s an approach Rankin said she honed during her years working to broaden Trump’s appeal to fellow Black voters throughout the U.S. in appearances on the ground in swing states and on TV.

“I don’t like to go on the attack. … My preferred style was to talk about how great of a businessman Donald Trump was,” she told the committee on Wednesday, “to talk about the big things Republicans want to do and why people should vote for him.”

But when an attendee asked her how far she should compromise when seeking common ground with more liberal voters, Rankin responded vaguely.

“I don’t see anywhere we have to compromise,” she responded. “Again, I just think it’s finding common ground.”

Democrats aren’t buying her message.

“California Republicans claim to be in search of ‘common ground’ with California voters but the truth is they’ve pledged fealty to the destructive politics of Donald Trump and his minions,” said Rusty Hicks, chair of the California Democratic Party since 2019.

Despite their poor showing nationally in November, California Democrats still hold a tight grip on state politics, controlling all statewide offices and both chambers of the Legislature with supermajorities, meaning they can bypass Republicans entirely. Democrats also hold an enormous voter registration advantage statewide.

“The question is, how do Republicans win in California when they are outnumbered two-to-one at the ballot box?” said Bill Whalen, a former consultant for Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and longtime fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

As chair, Rankin will continue the party’s fundraising efforts. A former employee of dot com-era firms Hotmail and Excite@Home, where she worked in tech support, she wants to tap the tech sector that has shown willingness to embrace the Trump administration.

She is charged with helping defend vulnerable congressional seats held by several Republicans and recoup three swing districts flipped by Democrats in November. Those seats will be critical if Republicans want to keep their control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

She didn’t rule out the possibility that Elon Musk, who just unsuccessfully spent $21 million to flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court and helped propel Trump to the Oval Office, will campaign for local candidates.

“I don’t like to speculate too much,” she said. “I think he may. He has a path. It depends on how much he wants to continue to stay involved.”

And Rankin is tasked with assisting a successful Republican campaign to replace Newsom as governor in 2026. So far, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is the only prominent Republican to officially declare his candidacy, though others are expected to. Eight major Democrats have jumped into the race.

“We have one person so far,” Rankin said. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Whalen, the Hoover Institution fellow, said it’s unlikely that a viable Republican candidate will emerge.

“You look around the state right now, there’s just not an individual who fits that mold,” he said.

Whalen said that Rankin and the state GOP should focus less on the governor’s office — they will certainly lose that race, he said — and push ballot initiatives instead. He cited the success of Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime measure that 68% of voters approved in November, while quashing progressive proposals on rent control and prison labor.

Rankin worked in the bail bonds industry for 15 years and entered politics to oppose what she calls soft-on-crime policies pushed by Democrats in the 2010s, such as Assembly Bill 109, a 2011 law that sent people convicted of some lower-level felonies to jail or probation instead of prison. She then ran unsuccessfully for City Council in Redwood City.

That Rankin chose to give an early pep talk to Republicans in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s deeply Democratic San Francisco, where they long have been badly outnumbered, put a smile on the faces of party leaders there.

“No doubt, that’s because of San Francisco’s overwhelming Republican majority,” joked committee chair Bill Jackson as the room burst into laughter.

©2025 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at mercurynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.