Yeah, but Reagan deserves some of the blame for California becoming such a Democratic state because he wasn’t any good on immigration. The effects of the disastrous 1965 Immigration Reform Act were obvious by the 1980s, yet Reagan signed an amnesty and never called out Ted Kennedy for all of the false promises about the 1965 Act (that’s a little unfair I admit, since no other Republican did so, or has done so).
Just 6 years after Reagan left office, the GOP won its last significant, statewide race in California when Pete Wilson rode Prop 186 to a landslide reelection (Schwarzenegger does not count). The GOP couldn’t even knock off an unpopular Barbar Boxer last year in a huge Republican year. It’s just too bad that Reagan couldn’t see what was happening to his home state.