By Gary Aminoff, Treasurer, The Republican Party of Los Angeles County
California is now a one-party state, with Democrats having a supermajority in both the State Assembly and Senate.
How is it that the GOP can’t adequately explain to California residents that our ideas are better? Why is it that Republicans can’t convince Californians that our solutions will bring prosperity and a better life for everyone, Democrats included? The fact is that Republicans in California are poor marketers. We have a great product but don’t know how to sell it.
We need to learn how to market it. You can manufacture a great widget that will do incredible things, including saving people tons of money. But if you don’t know how to market it, you won’t make any sales, even if it is better than sliced bread.
The blame is not completely with the Republican Party. Selling our ideas is only one of the ways we can improve our standing with California voters. We have many obstacles in California. The populous cities of the State are predominantly filled with secular progressives who aren’t interested in limited government, lower taxes, and a better business environment. The unions run the Democrat Party and they and multi-millionaire Democrats provide funding to Democrats and their candidates that Republicans can only dream about. It isn’t easy to overcome the Democrat funding, no matter how well we sell our ideas.
Also, the Democrats have been very successful over the past several decades in convincing voters that Republicans are heartless, racist, misogynist, and white supremacists, without compassion, and who are essentially evil. We have let them get away with that and have done very little to counter those false charges.
We also need to get active in the inner cities and show the African-American community that we care about them. We do, but saying so means nothing compared to getting into the communities and actually doing something to help their community.
We have been active in the Latino community, and have several Latino-American elected officials and party leaders. Programs like the Grow Elect program are doing great things in the Latino community, and state and local leaders like Mario Guerra, Jack Guerrero, Ignacio Velazquez, Alex Vargas and others are making a big difference in the Latino community. We need to do more to show Latinos that their future and the prosperity for their families lies with the Republican Party.
With the supermajority now in the legislature. One way we can make a public relations difference is to propose legislation that will benefit Californians. Go the the extremes. Eliminate the carbon tax, reduce stifling regulations on business, propose lowering taxes. Of course, none of these bills will pass, but we can then issue press releases that Republicans are trying to make life better for Californians by submitting important bills that are being voted down by Democrats. Let’s learn how to use the press and public relations. In the next two years let’s see if we can convince Californians to try voting for Republicans. Let’s convince the voters that they have nothing to lose, and might have everything to gain.
I know we can do it.