The problem in California is that the conservatives are either totally ineffective or they compromise away all of their potentially winning conservative principles.
California has a terrible climate for business, a large sales tax plus an income tax, plus wacky environmental laws plus even when they tried to set up a free market to deal with their self-created energy crisis they completely ignored the basic laws of market economics and only succeeded in making the crisis worse.
Conservatives may be a numerically significant minority in California but they only represent a POTENTIALLY (as opposed to an effectively) significant POLITICAL force. In some ways their position is a lot like that of the ethnic minorities in the Democrat party.
BTW, pointing to success in kicking Davis out of office is hardly an indication of any effective influence. Davis was so self-destructive, his success in getting elected in the first place only points to the lack of polictally significant power of conservatives there.
well yes it is an uphill battle here at times but some folk here trash the whole state and don't know a thinga about Calif and given enough time to research I could come up with a host of problems in all the states......I've been to 43 states but would not presume to know those states like those who live there.....Calif also provides a hell of alot of opportunity and even though Gray Davis fu**ed up the state, it still holds the higher percentage of Fortune 500 companies than any other state.....quoting just negative stuff doesn't not negate the positive things.....it is still the 7th largest economy in the world....