Reagan Country Turns Blue

When I moved to Orange County in the mid-1990s, it was still the most Republican county, in raw numbers, in the United States. Virtually anyone with serious political ambition there ran as a Republican, although changes were starting to appear. Democrat Loretta Sanchez eked out a victory over GOP firebrand “B-1 Bob” Dornan in the 1996 congressional election — something Dornan blamed on invalid votes, but others knew was a sign of things to come.

I met Rep. Dornan at a conservative organizing event in Des Moines as he tried to drum up support for his presidential bid. The GOP congressman spent time in Iowa when he could have been campaigning in and around Garden Grove. Sanchez’s victory was a shock at the time, but the county GOP remained strong outside the highly urbanized, ethnically diverse areas of the central county. It was business as usual.