Fury at Donald Trump was the coin of the realm, as thousands of California delegates, activists and elected officials gathered in San Francisco this weekend, emboldened by a string of victories and confident the Golden State would help deliver a power check on the president in the upcoming midterm elections.
On Saturday, Democrats streamed through the Moscone Center convention complex, sporting lanyards emblazoned with Gavin Newsom’s name and tote bags adorned with one of Nancy Pelosi’s favorite aphorisms: “We don’t Agonize, we organize” – symbols of a party in transition as the former speaker approaches retirement and the term-limited governor eyes a presidential campaign.
“Trump’s reign of terror must end,” declared Pelosi in her remarks, whose long legacy Democrats honored throughout the weekend with tributes and speeches to their “forever speaker”.
Adam Schiff, the California senator and a longtime Trump antagonist, invoked the grizzly bear on the state flag as a warning to the current administration: “When you poke the bear, the bear rips your fucking head off.”
Come November, he declared to a packed hall, “there will be a reckoning”.
Across hours of fiery speeches and caucus meetings, speakers touted the resounding success of Proposition 50 last year – the state’s redistricting counterstrike to a Republican gerrymander in Texas. This, they argued, was a testament to California’s role both as a “blueprint” for the national party and a bulwark against the Trump administration.
Democrats nationwide are furious with the president after more than a year of sweeping policy changes – massive healthcare cuts, a sprawling deportation campaign and the use of federal power to target political opponents and blue states. But in California, the clash has felt personal.
The state, long cast by Trump as a liberal “hellscape”, is governed by some of his most prominent political adversaries – leaders who champion environmental protections, immigrant rights, abortion access and expanded healthcare access. In June Trump deployed the national guard and troops to the streets of Los Angeles – a preview of what would to come in Chicago, Minneapolis and other blue cities.
With California on the vanguard of the national resistance to Trump 2.0, Democrats embraced a new crop of rising stars. In the hall, Representative Robert Garcia was treated like a celebrity. The ranking Democrat on the House oversight committee, Garcia has become a leading voice in investigating the Trump administration and pushing for a release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. At a progressive caucus meeting, Congressman Ro Khanna was cheered as he pushed for accountability for the “Epstein class”.
Trump’s return to power also opened the door to a new, more combative rhetorical posture with plenty more swearing and trolling, a nod to Newsom, whose all-caps, no-holds-barred mockery of Trump and his administration has catapulted him to the national stage.
The contest to succeed Newsom loomed large over the gathering, as convention-goers fretted that California’s sprawling field of candidates had yet to produce a frontrunner, with only a handful of months left before the June primary.
California’s jungle primary system, in which the top two vote-getters advance regardless of party, has heightened anxieties that two Republicans could slip through a fractured field, locking Democrats out of the governor’s office in the country’s biggest blue state.
Emphasizing the Democratic National Committee’s commitment to remain neutral in a contest between Democrats, DNC chair Ken Martin urged the party to “unify as quick as possible behind a candidate” in the governor’s race.
“We do have to just make sure that we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot, so to speak,” Martin said.
In several recent opinion polls, conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside county sheriff Chad Bianco – both Republicans – lead the pack, followed by the congressman Eric Swalwell, billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer and former congresswoman Katie Porter, with a sizable share of voters still undecided.
None of the Democratic candidates for governor won enough of the delegates to secure an endorsement, according to results posted on Saturday night. Swalwell clinched roughly a quarter of the delegates, followed unexpectedly by Betty Yee, the former state controller, with 17% and former health and human services secretary Xavier Becerra with 14%.
In their speeches to the convention hall, the gubernatorial candidates took turns assailing Trump and pledging to shield Californians from the “chaos” and “cruelty” that his administration has unleashed on the Golden State.
Porter flipped her trademark whiteboard toward the hall and asked the delegates to repeat the message scrawled in black marker. “Fuck Trump!” they chanted. Swalwell, meanwhile, vowed to use the office to “keep Donald Trump and ICE out of our streets and out of our lives”.
In an interview, Yee argued that Sacramento needed more than an anti-Trump crusader – the state needed a governor with the experience to “fix” its chronic budget deficits.
“I think the price of admission to this race is that you have to fight Trump,” Yee said in an interview. “But I think we have to do more than that.”
At the Moscone Center, the backdrop of San Francisco only underscored the party’s competing impulses over how to counter the Trump administration and take on Silicon Valley billionaires who have forged a stronger relationship with the president in his second term.
The growing divide between Democrats and Silicon Valley is especially fraught in California, a state that is heavily dependent on the tech sector and where political leaders have long cultivated ties with industry executives. But as the politics of Silicon Valley shift right and leading executives pump money into local and state races, many Democrats are sounding the alarm about the unchecked power they say these companies hold.
In a speech at the convention, Lorena Gonzalez, who leads the president of the California Labor Federation union, warned Democrats that it was time to stop “bending the knee” to the same tech titans who had helped put Trump back into power.
“There’s an enemy here and it’s not just Trump,” she said in an interview. “The reason we’re back with Trump again is because we didn’t take on the structural issues that were really affecting working-class people.”
As the party wrestles with these internal divides, the internal tug-of-war over how Democrats win back power is playing out in districts like Randy Villegas’s.
Villegas, a progressive political newcomer endorsed by Sanders, is running against Jasmeet Bains, a moderate Democratic state senator who frequently bucks her party, including on the redistricting plan that made Republican congressman David Valadao’s district more Democratic-friendly. “Our race is very much a fight for the soul of the Democratic party,” Villegas said.
Outside the convention, the party’s ideological – and tactical – fault lines were on full, theatrical display. A group of young activists dressed as snails and other spineless sea creatures demanded Democratic leaders “grow a spine and use it” to protect trans kids and immigrant families. As delegates left the venue, a costumed mollusk passed out business cards that warned: “Trumpism thrives when Democrats rush to meet cruelty in the middle.”
