State Sen. Shannon Grove's ascension parallels wider leadership turnover among California Republicans. | Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo California Reeling California Republicans elevate social conservative

California Republicans, battered by deep losses in the 2018 elections, have shaken up their leadership by elevating a social conservative to lead the state Senate caucus.

State senators voted to replace Sen. Patricia Bates with Sen. Shannon Grove on Tuesday, the latest leadership shuffle as the state party searches for a way out of political oblivion. Grove highlighted California’s highest-in-the-nation poverty rate in a statement heralding the change.


“For the sake of the millions of forgotten Californians, our Caucus will work to navigate government with pragmatism and compassion and negotiate with fearlessness,” the Bakersfield Republican said.

The Senate Republican caucus is relegated to superminority status, with Democrats wielding enough votes to pass tax increases or move measures to the ballot without GOP support.

Republicans ceded seats in a pair of critical races this cycle, one in Orange County and the other in agriculturally dominated Central Valley — two onetime GOP strongholds whose forfeiture underscored the scope of the party’s woes.

While some California Republicans have advocated a socially moderate, fiscally conservative platform as a way to appeal to more voters, Grove has embraced an agenda that includes opposing abortion rights despite California’s general embrace of them.

In 2015, Grove courted controversy after she was quoted suggesting that a withering drought was God’s punishment for abortion. Grove denied that account but said in response that “God’s hand is in the affairs of man.”

Grove's ascension parallels wider leadership turnover among California Republicans.

The California Republican Party will soon elect a new chairman in a race widely viewed as a test of the party's priorities in the era of Donald Trump. A former Republican assemblyman who did not back Trump in 2016 recently exited the race, telling POLITICO he could not overcome the rift caused by his refusal to support the president.

In the state Assembly, where Democrats control three-quarters of seats, Republicans moved in November to make Assemblywoman Marie Waldron their leader after former Minority Leader Brian Dahle stepped aside to run for state Senate.