Meet the man with ‘big, Trumpy plans for California’

Labor unions and establishment Republicans fought tooth and nail to keep firebrand conservative activist Carl DeMaio out of the California Assembly. It didn’t work.

The talk-radio host and former San Diego City Councilmember is shipping up to Sacramento next month after handily dispatching fellow Republican Andrew Hayes earlier this month in the race to fill outgoing GOP Rep. Marie Waldron’s seat in northern San Diego County.

He comes bearing a risky proposition for other Golden State Republicans: embracing Donald Trump.

“I’m going to be pushing the Republican Party in a whole different direction when it comes to environmental issues, housing issues, social issues,” he said in an interview with Playbook. “If we want to be a majority in California, which is absolutely possible, we have to transform.”

State Republican leaders have long attempted to distance themselves from the president-elect in hopes that a more moderate image will earn them swing votes in deep-blue California.

It’s good timing for DeMaio, a longtime Trump acolyte who has built his political brand by advocating controversial anti-tax and anti-labor policies despite criticism from both sides of the aisle. His Assembly campaign leaned into Trump’s hardline immigration stances, even running ads declaring that former Republican Governor Pete Wilson “was right” to back a controversial 1994 ballot measure that sought to deny public services to undocumented immigrants.

Just last month, DeMaio told former Fox News host and British government policy adviser Steve Hilton that California’s GOP leaders have “Stockholm syndrome” after two decades stuck under Democrats’ thumb.

“He’s exactly the kind of fighting spirit that I think you need in Sacramento,” Hilton told Playbook.

Come December, DeMaio’s Trump train will come roaring into town. DeMaio told Playbook he plans to hire an “intergovernmental affairs” staffer whose primary role will be connecting with the Trump-led federal government, and he hopes the Department of Housing and Urban Development will “come down like a load of bricks on California’s dysfunctional and failure-ridden homeless policies.”

DeMaio said he’s planning to make a trip to Washington early next year to ask that federal agencies like the Interior, State and Homeland Security departments take a stronger role in beating back California’s liberal majority. He has yet to iron out specifics but said he plans to discuss border policy and Tijuana River sewage pollution.

“The Trump administration needs to hold California accountable for the billions of dollars that they’re wasting,” DeMaio said. “Stay tuned — we are working with our lawyers and coming up with policy proposals that we want to present.”

DeMaio also wants to start a Golden State version of the House Freedom Caucus: the “Reform Caucus,” a not-so-subtle nod to his conservative policy group Reform California.