WASHINGTON – The California-Florida rivalry reached its peak in November 2023 when Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, took on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, on Fox News and asked which state had the better model for the country.
Thirteen months later, DeSantis has left the national stage after an aborted presidential election. But his state is winning the political war.
The nation under President-elect Donald Trump will look a lot more like Trump's adopted home of Florida after he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by portraying her as an out-of-touch California liberal.
Trump fills his cabinet with Florida residents. And his plans to reverse California's policies on the environment, crime, homelessness and education are facing far less resistance than during his first term because of the state's waning influence in Congress and a system of checks on Trump's power that has eroded .
“These are all people who were born and raised in our state and will show America our kind of leadership,” said Brian Ballard, a powerful Florida lobbyist and Republican fundraiser whose firm previously employed and still employs Trump’s new chief of staff, Susie Wiles his candidate for attorney general, Pam Bondi, former Florida attorney general. (Ballard's expanded footprint now includes offices in Washington and West Los Angeles that opened two years ago, another sign of his state's march in.)
Other high-profile Florida citizens likely to be in Trump's inner circle include Sen. Marco Rubio, Trump's pick for secretary of state, and Rep. Mike Waltz, his pick for national security adviser.
Two prominent people in Trump's orbit with ties to California, advisers Elon Musk and Stephen Miller, are harsh critics of the state's business and immigration policies, which they have vowed to help Trump reverse.
Their combined efforts are expected to trigger a continuation of the fighting that began eight years ago, during Trump's first term, as he tried to stop California's policies that gave sanctuary to immigrants who entered the country illegally and his powers to set environmental policies such as restricting auto fuel standards, changing water policies to benefit farmers and suspending aid after wildfires.
He was thwarted in many of those efforts by regulators, consultants who found ways to change his mind, courts and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who emerged as his main opponent.
Democratic attorneys general filed a record 155 lawsuits against the first Trump administration, winning 83% of the cases, according to a tally by Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University. California has been involved in more than 100 such lawsuits.
But Trump has chosen staffers for his second term who are less likely to resign against his wishes. The Supreme Court has become more deferential to Trump, who has appointed three of its nine members. And Pelosi no longer leads her party while Republicans won control of the House and Senate in last month's elections.
California Democrats' best defense appears to be Republican dysfunction, as shown by the party's efforts last week to pass a bill in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives that would prevent a government shutdown.
Trump, meanwhile, has vowed to attack the state on several fronts this time, including its homelessness policies, its opposition to a border wall, its electric car mandate and its plans to begin mass deportations that would disproportionately affect the border state of California with the largest Latino population -Population of the country.
Newsom, who declined an interview request, has vowed to continue the fight against Trump's policies but without what he called the “brand of resistance” that characterized his previous clashes. Other Democrats have approached Trump's second term with more conciliatory rhetoric as the party struggles to agree on a strategy.
Former Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat who helped shape the party's liberal wing for decades, argues that Trump will provoke his own backlash by overreaching.
“Do it,” she said.
“People just decided they weren’t happy about things,” she added. “They haven't voted on the issues they're going to hit now,” she said, pointing to a list of actions by Trump's allies that could cause workers to lose overtime and residents to lose their breathable air.
But even if Trump's policies help Democrats politically, they could have a profound impact on Californians.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who began preparing possible lawsuits months before the election, said he expects to fight with the new administration on immigration, climate, reproductive rights, gun safety, democracy-related issues and civil rights. He acknowledged the Supreme Court's rightward turn, but noted that most decisions are made by judges in trial and district courts.
“We can and will prevail, and we have prevailed in the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said.
Bonta, who is considering a run for governor in 2026, argued that voters chose – narrowly – Trump the man rather than the single-state model of government.
“The Florida Model? You mean Matt Gaetz or DeSantis or Pam Bondi?” he said, referring to the former House member who resigned as attorney general amid allegations of sexual misconduct with minors, as well as the governor and current candidate for attorney general. “I don’t think they are a model for our future.” Country. What else is the Florida Model? “Don’t say gay” – just completely exclusionary and discriminatory? A formal program that sends immigrants around the country as political pawns?”
But Bonta and other Democrats acknowledge that the party just lost an election and that although Trump lost California by 20 percentage points, he gained about 10 percentage points in the state compared to his margins in 2016 and 2020.
Much of that growth was due to the state's Latino population, which makes up a large portion of the Democrats' traditional blue-collar base.
“It’s all about affordability. “California is the least affordable state when you consider housing costs,” said Mike Madrid, an anti-Trump Republican pollster who conducted post-election surveys of Latino voters and has focused on their changing views for decades. “The idea of California values is specific to cultural issues. It essentially ignores economic issues.”
Madrid pointed to measures like Newsom's plan to end sales of new gasoline vehicles by 2035 as an example of policies that do not appeal to working-class voters.
Most Latinos in the state have to live farther from their jobs and pay more for gas because of high housing costs, but can't afford a new electric vehicle or benefit from a rebate from the Biden administration. Most of their income is spent on housing costs, which have increased in part because of costly building codes.
New census estimates were released Thursday show California will gain 232,570 residents between 2023 and 2024 after pandemic-era declines. But the state lost more residents (239,575) to other parts of the country than any other state and saw an increase only because of immigrants from other countries, according to the latest estimates.
Florida recorded one of the largest population increases with 467,347 more residents, including both immigrants and domestic migrants.
California's long-beleaguered Republicans are rejoicing as they promise to work with Trump to eliminate Democratic-led projects and environmental regulations.
Rep. Vince Fong, a Bakersfield Republican who won an election earlier this year to succeed former Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy, said he would file legislation to stop funding for California's high-speed rail project and join Trump in building a border wall in the state, blaming a porous border for enabling fentanyl smuggling from China.
In an interview, he effusively praised Florida as a better model for economics, regulation, environmental policy and housing costs, and hailed the state's influence at the national level.
“It’s ironic to me that Governor Newsom and the Democrats in the state legislature are now concerned about affordability,” he said. “You hear them talking about it, but it’s their policy.”
He accused Newsom of waging war with Florida and the Trump administration for his personal gain.
“He is trying to promote himself for his own political purposes and at the expense of Californians,” he said.
Newsom's office said the state maintains the fifth-largest economy in the world and ranks first in new businesses and private sector jobs. Brandon Richards, a spokesman, said Newsom is traveling the state to expand economic opportunities.
But many of the country's biggest business leaders are making their own pilgrimages – to visit Trump at his home in Florida.