Stony Ground Part ONE: The Thirty-Year View
Or, How Republicans Lost California, and How They're Losing the Southwest
Most of my mongoose thoughts start with an interesting question. For example: How long has California been a Democratic Party stronghold? And when did it first become such?
Because here’s the thing - California was Reagan country. Nixon’s home state. From 1952 through 1988, California voted Republican in nine out of ten presidential elections. In 1994, Republicans held 26 of the state’s 52 House seats - dead even split. Latino voters in California broke roughly 50-50 between the parties. Pete Wilson got 47% of the Latino vote when he won the governorship in 1990.
Then came Proposition 187.
It was November 1994. California was hurting - recession, defense cuts, aerospace layoffs. Wilson was running for reelection and trailing badly in the polls. So he championed Prop 187, the “Save Our State” initiative. The pitch was simple: California spends billions on illegal immigrants while citizens suffer.
The TV ads showed grainy black-and-white footage of people running across the border. “They keep coming. Two million illegal immigrants in California. The federal government won’t stop them at the border, yet requires us to pay billions to take care of them.”
Prop 187 would have denied undocumented immigrants access to public schools, non-emergency healthcare, and all social services. But here’s the part that really bit: it would have required teachers, doctors, nurses - anyone working in public services - to verify immigration status and report anyone they suspected of being undocumented to authorities.
Seventy thousand people marched through downtown Los Angeles against it. Students walked out of schools. And on November 8, 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187 by 59% to 41%. Pete Wilson won reelection.
A federal court blocked the law within days. It was declared unconstitutional in 1997 - turns out states can’t regulate immigration, that’s a federal thing. The law never went into effect. It was formally repealed in 2014.
But 75% of Latino voters had opposed it. And here’s what the pressure gauges showed:
Naturalization applications in Los Angeles County spiked by 650% following the Prop 187 campaign. Not 65%. Six hundred and fifty percent.
Alex Padilla - now California’s U.S. Senator - was 26 years old, fresh back from MIT with an engineering degree. He watched his father come home one day and announce he’d started the naturalization process. His mother became a citizen in 1999. When he asked her why, after 44 years as a legal permanent resident, she said: “So I could vote against Pete Wilson.”
Latino registered voters: 1.4 million in 1994. Over 4 million by 2019. Latino voter turnout in California hit 60% - compared to 37% in Texas where Republicans weren’t running anti-immigrant campaigns. Latino state legislators more than doubled. Republican House seats in California went from 26 out of 52 in 1994 to 15 out of 53 by 2013.
California has voted blue in every presidential election since 1992. No Republican has won statewide office except Arnold Schwarzenegger in a weird recall election. The state’s gone from purple to permanently blue.
And here’s the mongoose question: How long does political memory last?
In 2010 - sixteen years later - Meg Whitman ran for governor. Pete Wilson was her campaign co-chair. When pollsters asked Latino voters how they felt about Wilson’s involvement, 84% said they were “concerned” about it.
Sixteen years later, and 84% of Latino voters still cared. That’s not a news cycle. That’s not an election cycle. That’s generational memory - people remembering what was said about their families, parents telling their kids, communities that don’t forget being told they’re the problem.
Now look at what’s happening in 2026.
Texas Republicans didn't propose that teachers report students. Trump's ICE is raiding schools. They're using five-year-olds as bait. They're killing U.S. citizens while communities watch. They're raiding churches. They’re terrorizing neighborhoods.
And Texas Republicans built their 2026 gerrymander betting those communities won’t remember in November. Nine months from now. That’s barely enough time to make a baby, let alone to forget generational trauma.
Prop 187 turned California from Reagan country to Democratic lock in two election cycles. One state. One bad campaign. One message that told an entire community they don’t belong.
What Trump’s doing in 2026? That’s Prop 187 for the entire Southwest. Simultaneously. But faster. And more visible. With actual dead bodies.
The thirty-year view isn’t November 2026. It’s November 2056. It’s what parents are telling their kids right now about what they watched happen on the way home from work. It’s the community memory that forms when you use someone’s nephew as bait, when you kill people in front of their neighbors, when you make it crystal clear what you think of them.
California Republicans won one election in 1994. Then they lost their state for a generation.
Trump Republicans are about to lose the Southwest for two.
Which leaves the harder question for the side that stands to gain. The Republican party demonstrated, twice now, how to permanently alienate a community. They did the work. The mechanism is documented. The thirty-year clock is already running on the realignment.
But a people that’s been told it doesn’t belong isn’t the same as a soil ready to grow what we want to plant in it.
Telling people they are welcome after all, is just the precondition. It is not the harvest. The harvest depends on what you plant, and where, and when. It depends on whether you are ready to plant the right tree for the place.
That’s the question for next time.
🦝🐸🦄
Consider sharing this with someone who needs the long view today.
Stony Ground Part TWO: Right Tree, Right Place
There’s a big box hardware store near me with a nursery out front. They sell trees, shrubs, flowers, ornamental grasses — whatever corporate decides to ship in from wherever corporate is. It’s a fine nursery. The prices are reasonable. The staff are helpful enough.
As a New Zealander one thing you said stands out
He watched his father come home one day and announce he’d started the naturalization process. His mother became a citizen in 1999. When he asked her why, after 44 years as a legal permanent resident, she said: “So I could vote against Pete Wilson.”
Here ALL legal residents (who are old enough) can vote - you do need to be a citizen to actually become an MP
There was a country once that talked about “no taxation without representation”
This is a great idea. I hope with all my heart that you are correct.