Eight deck boats and a crowd of about 50 Republicans rallied in San Mateo County at the same hour Kamala Harris accepted the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week.
The Republican Party chapter organized a flotilla event and picnic in the Foster City Lagoon. Tickets were $125.
Just 14% of registered voters in San Mateo County are Republican. Statewide, 46% of Californians are registered Democrat, nearly 25% are Republican and 22% are registered without a party preference. As of July 5, nearly 23 million Californians have registered to vote, that’s 82% of the eligible population.
“California has changed,” said Mark De Paula, who was born in Massachusetts and used to be a Democrat. “About 30 years ago they were pretty right leaning. Then you got a phony person named Arnold Schwarzenegger who said he’s a Republican, but he’s really a RINO — a Republican in Name Only. If we lose this election to Kamala Harris, our country is going downhill, because it’s a socialistic viewpoint.”
De Paula’s son Ryan, who works in sales at a cybersecurity firm, waved an American flag as the train of boats looped around for a second pass. He spoke about what makes California’s Republicans different than those in other states.
“We’re definitely more libertarian,” he said. “Just because of the diversity here. I think people here are not going to be as religious-centric.”
There are just 1,214 pre-registered Libertarians in California, with the highest percentages, 2% to 2.3%, found in the counties around Lake Tahoe — Alpine, Sierra and El Dorado.
“Even though we can have a Republican president, I think there’s definitely more registered Democrats than Republicans,” De Paula said.
Ryan was with his friend Taylor Bickel, who had draped a Trump flag around his shoulders. They said their biggest issues of concern are inflation and public safety.
“The criminals are the ones that are in power while the people that are good have no way to defend themselves,” said De Paula. “With the laws that they have been implemented here now through Democrats, the criminals can kind of run rampant. They let people out with no bail in LA, even with violent crimes.”
Cash bail was eliminated for non-violent and non-serious crimes in Los Angeles County in October 2023, ending the years-long standard of setting cash bail amounts for defendants based on the severity of their crime.
Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon, formerly the police chief and then district attorney in San Francisco, said the move would help balance an unfair system that favored the rich, but it has prompted several cities to sue the county.
De Paula says he must keep his Republican affiliation secret because he will lose all his friends.
“There’s a lot of people that are afraid because it’s a hive mentality here,” he said. “You could say the Electoral College doesn’t represent everybody. But it’s like, how many people here have individual thought?”
Also at the rally was Maybelle Regaspi, who was born in Manila, Philippines and emigrated to the U.S. in 2006. She attended a recent Trump rally in Morgan Hill.
“I have become politically aware only in 2016,” she said. “I started understanding what’s going on.”
Regaspi said she’s a Christian, which is why she was glad to see the Republican platform.
“Not only on abortion,” she said. “It’s marriage between and a guy and a guy, a girl and a girl. But now it’s just the lies. It’s all the lies that they’re saying.”
Media and political divide
About the cultural divide in national politics, De Paula blames the media.
“Nobody sees both sides of the aisle, and especially leftists,” he said. “The leftist media and liberals are only seeing what they want to hear, whereas the people on the right are always having rebuttals to what the left has presented. I feel a lot of people on the right are more informed because we’re seeing what they’re being told.”
Both De Paula and Bickel said they get their news through third-party media, like YouTube channels and podcasters.
“I get most of my news from the Internet nowadays. I’m just not a big fan of mainstream media,” said Bickel.
He said his primary source of news is a YouTube channel called Timcast IRL, In Real Life, which is owned and operated by Tim Pool, a political commentator who first became known for live-streaming the 2011 Occupy Wall Street protests in New York.
“They go over all the news and they fact check,” he said.
“A lot of alternative conservative media is always in response to what the left is usually lying about,” said De Paula. “I think anything anybody that’s defending the truth is going to have to do that.”
Both men said they trust local news sources like KTVU or CBS Bay Area.
“I look at Nextdoor, Facebook, sometimes Instagram,” said a third man at the rally who chose not to give his name. “Mostly I’ll just watch my nieces and see what they’re doing out there.”
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