[Fiji Hill]

California hasn’t been solidly Republican since the 20’s.

Many Republican leaders in California were what we now call RINOs. Governors included:

• After winning the governorship in the "Democratic year" of 1934, Frank Merriam pulled a George Bush and established a state income tax. He also jacked up the sales tax.
• Earl "Rabbit" Warren was to the left of many Democrats.
• Goody Knight, a liberal Republican, joined the "Dump Nixon" campaign in 1956, making a brief run for Vice President. Then he switched parties in the next decade.
• Petie Wilson was a militant pro-abort who pushed through massive tax increases that sent the state into a four-year-long recession.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger made a half-hearted effort to push some conservative reforms and then gave up.

On the other hand, Gov. George Deukmejian, California's last conservative governor, did a fine job.

[Pelham]

“Many Republican leaders in California were what we now call RINOs.”

You left off one of the worst of the breed, Thomas Kuchel, who was a US Senator from California in the 1960s.

In the 1962 election for California governor Kuchel refused to endorse GOP candidate Richard Nixon.

In the 1964 Presidential election Kuchel not only refused to support GOP candidate Barry Goldwater, Kuchel openly endorsed Lyndon Johnson.

When Ronald Reagan ran for Governor in 1966, Kuchel had this to say about Reagan’s conservative supporters:

“A fanatical neo-fascist political cult of right-wingers in the GOP, driven by a strange mixture of corrosive hatred and sickening fear that is recklessly determined to control our party or destroy it!”