SACRAMENTO—Delegates elected Corrin Rankin as the new chairwoman of the California Republican Party on March 16 at the CAGOP convention.
Rankin, the sitting vice chairwoman, defeated former state Sen. Mike Morrell (R-District 23) for the position. She succeeds Jessica Millan Patterson, who wrapped up her tenure at the helm of the state party leadership at the three-day convention over the weekend.
In her victory speech, Rankin told Republicans her message is loud and clear.
“Change is coming to California,” she said. “It’s time to end the Democrats’ one-party rule and make California great again.”
She urged Republicans to go “on the offense” at the grassroots level in every corner of the state to win more Republican seats.
“As California Republicans, we do not have the luxury of abundance. We must make every door knock, every phone call, every text message, and every dollar spent in the best way possible to win races,” she said. “The 2026 election cycle starts now. Let’s get to work.”
John Park, former vice chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, will replace Rankin as the vice chairman of the state party.
Jack Guerrero was elected party treasurer and Sayrs Morris was elected secretary.
Republican Congressman Jay Olbernolte called for party unity, urging Republicans to rally behind Rankin and the newly elected board of directors.
Rankin’s Response
In a media scrum following the elections, Rankin said the party’s main focus for the 2026 mid-term elections is what it always is: “To elect Republicans.”“We need to grow our majority in the House of Congress, and we need to grow our majority in the Legislature,” she said. “We are focused on solutions. We’re focused on common sense. We’re focused on reaching out to Californians and letting them know that the Republican Party is here to serve them.”
When asked about rifts in the state party and criticisms from American First Republicans who have suggested the state party would fare better in elections if the leadership fully backed Trump, Rankin told The Epoch Times the CAGOP welcomes all voices.
“We’re a big tent party, so we don’t all have to agree on every single issue, but what we do agree upon is that we want to elect more Republicans, and we’re going to focus on that,” she said.
War Room host Steve Bannon told The Epoch Times preceding the convention that if California conservatives had the gumption to “go full MAGA,” they could change the dynamic in the state.
“I would ask the ‘conservatives’ in California, ‘What the hell have you been doing?’” Bannon said.
“I lived in California for 20 years, so I know how hapless the California Republican Party is and the conservative movement out there,” he said. “You can’t sit there and run on the old Republican playbook. It’s not working.”
Patterson’s Parting
Patterson, who has accepted a fellowship role at the University of Southern California, held her last press conference as chairwoman at the convention on March 15.For 15 years, the state party was on a downward trajectory with more people registered as “No Party Preference” than Republican, Patterson said.
“And six years later, not only are we now the second largest party in the state again, but we have registered over 1 million new Republicans since February of 2019 ... and now we have as many Republicans as we did in 2004. There are more Republicans in California now than there were during the Schwarzenegger administration,” she said.
Patterson said one of her proudest moments during her tenure as chairwoman was helping Kevin McCarthy get elected as House speaker.
However, McCarthy, the largest fundraiser for the state party at the time, resigned from public office in 2023 after being ousted as speaker.
Fielding questions from reporters, Patterson was asked how President Donald Trump’s tariffs could affect the party in 2026.
“He’s a businessman and he’s a deal maker,” she said. “And, if you ever read even excerpts of ‘The Art of the Deal,’ you can’t love any deal too much that you won’t walk away from it. And so, I love having President Trump in a role where he’s making deals and making those decisions.”
When asked what advice she would give to Republican candidates about the deportation of illegal immigrants and what potential effect this could have on California’s agricultural industry, Patterson said Republicans picked up seats in farming regions in the last election.
“As a Republican, I love immigration. I love legal immigration, and I think that our immigrants are a vibrant part of our community. But [people] want it done right. They want it done correctly. And this is a message that is winning in places like the Central Valley,” she said.
The last election cycle showed that the border crisis has affected everyone, Patterson told reporters.
“The Biden–Harris administration’s position on illegal immigration had turned every single state into a border state,” she said. “And while in the past it had been a difficult conversation for Republicans to have, it is no longer the case.”
When illegal border crossings dropped by 96 percent in Trump’s first six weeks in office, “it was very clear we didn’t need an act of Congress for this. We just needed new leadership,” she said.
“If you are moderating your position on how you feel about men playing in women’s sports, why don’t you go and say that you support the Republican Assembly bill protecting women in sports? Why don’t you go and work on getting some of your legislative office members to vote for it?” Patterson asked. “So saying one thing and doing another thing is very, very common for this governor.”
The governor’s office has not responded to a request for comment about his debut podcast with guest Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, in which Newsom said men competing in women’s sports is “deeply unfair.”
‘Absurdity’
Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who was thrust into the national media spotlight for protesting males who identify as transgender females competing in women’s sports, spoke at the CAGOP dinner later that evening.She called it the “sleeper issue” in the last election.
“I believe, of course, that people turned out to the polls to embrace Donald Trump, to embrace the America First agenda, to embrace his cabinet picks, but more so I believe that people turned out to the polls to reject absurdity, and that is what the Democratic Party has become, entirely and thoroughly from top to bottom: Absurd,” she said.
Gaines, who was recognized by Trump at his Joint Session of Congress speech on March 4, also criticized the gender ideology movement and “especially what we’re doing with children—the chemical and surgical castration of kids for profit,” she said at the convention.
She said maybe it won’t be too long before people look back at “this weird” time in history and “call that what it is: the biggest medical scandal this world has ever seen.”
