'This Election in California May Make All the Difference'
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif.—Scott Baugh stood on soft carpet inside the Meadowlark Golf Club before the monthly meeting of the Huntington Harbour Republican Women Federated. Golfers whacked at balls outside under a gray sky. A couple dozen older women and a few men had loaded their plates with fried chicken, coleslaw, and mac and cheese from the buffet and returned to their tables, and now applauded as Baugh began with a paean to the president.
“Don’t you like what’s going on in this country? Do you like what President Trump is doing?” They did. “Do you like, uh, the tax cuts? Okay, do you like the regulations that he’s slackening? How about the Supreme Court appointment, you like the Supreme Court appointment, right?” They did.
Baugh, a Republican, had been given exactly five minutes to speak—club rules—and wrapped up right on time. In the time he had, he praised Trump, blasted Nancy Pelosi, but avoided direct mention of the man he is is running to unseat here in the 48th congressional district: Dana Rohrabacher. Except to make an oblique remark about Rohrabacher’s idiosyncratic lone-wolf career in Congress: “You need fresh blood, you need new vision. You need problem solvers to come into the Congress and build coalitions. One man, one vote isn’t gonna get it done.”
The women of the Huntington Harbour Republican Women Federated were surprised that a photographer on assignment for The Wall Street Journal and I had shown up at their gathering; they don’t get a lot of press at these events. On the night I attended, the third speaker was a man who wanted to discuss the school board.
The club’s vice president, Annette Eliot, was decked out in a light-up red-white-and-blue necklace; she’s in the midst of planning the annual Fourth of July parade, which will
