SAN FRANCISCO—The meeting of some of the most marginalized Republicans in America came to order, and the few and the proud leaders of the San Francisco GOP received welcome news. Registration in the city was on the rise. They were back above an emotionally, if not electorally, significant percentage of the electorate—at least when rounded up.

“7.9995,” said the man delivering the registration report earlier this month. Knowing laughter filled the room.


But what the San Francisco Republican Party lacks in numbers—its chairwoman, Christine Hughes, called them her “fighting 8 percent”—it is about to make up in unprecedented presidential clout.

With three delegates at stake in every California, Maryland and New York congressional district—no matter how few Republicans live there—Donald Trump’s chances to clinch the GOP nomination rests in no small part on his strength in these GOP wastelands, from the Bronx, to Baltimore, to Berkeley.

Roughly 70 percent of the Republican delegates have already been allocated, but more than half of the 100 most liberal districts in America—including 39 in California, Maryland and New York alone—have not yet voted. And those 39 districts are worth a combined 117 delegates—more than the state of Florida. They very possibly could make the difference in whether Trump seals the nomination or not.

"This is their 15 minutes of fame." This is "clearly the most influence they’re ever going to have,” said one top California strategist, Republican Wayne Johnson. “This is it.”

It’s why John Kasich and Ted Cruz each crisscrossed Democratic strongholds in Brooklyn and the Bronx in recent weeks, digging into a deli sandwich, rolling out matzoh and shaking hands at a “Chino-Latino restaurant.” Both notably swung through Rep. Jose Serrano’s New York City district—which handed Romney only 3 percent of the vote four years ago, his worst defeat anywhere in the nation.

Targeting these sparsely populated GOP districts makes good economic sense. There are fewer calls to make, doors to knock on and households to send mail. It’s possible Serrano’s seat could be carried with as little as 1,000 votes.

“Three delegates in Nancy Pelosi’s district are cheaper to go campaign for because you have to talk to fewer people,” said Rob Stutzman, who is running an anti-Trump super PAC in California. He said his group is eyeing such seats first. “The Republicans in Berkeley are about to become more popular than they’ve even been. They could become the most popular people in town.”

Indeed, in Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee’s Berkeley district, there are only 26,790 registered Republicans, and only half of those are expected to vote in June. Contrast that with GOP Rep. Tom McClintock’s rural northern California seat, where more than 171,000 Republicans historically have been likelier to turn out.

“The Republicans in Berkeley are about to become more popular than they’ve even been. They could become the most popular people in town.”

It all adds up to heady times for devoted GOP partisans isolated in Democratic strongholds.

“We’re actually going to make some kind of significant difference in this election,” said Hughes, the San Francisco chairwoman, almost in disbelief. “Which is pretty fun.”

But the new GOP geography also has campaign strategists asking themselves a question few ever thought they would: What does a Berkeley or West Hollywood Republican look like? And how do you build a campaign around them?

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It’s not easy living permanently behind enemy lines. “The R-word has become a four-letter word,” said Ken Loo, who is in the midst of a no-win bid for state Senate in San Francisco. As the city’s GOP leaders prepared to make some ballot measure endorsements, Bill Owens, a resident since 1998, observed matter of factly, “There are probably as many candidates who don’t want our endorsement as do.”

Harmeet Dhillon, a prominent San Francisco Republican and the vice-chair of the state party, called anti-Republican sentiment “the last bastion on bigotry” allowed in the Bay Area. “If you put a bumper sticker on your car that’s conservative, you’re going to get your car keyed, OK? It is not something people advertise,” she said.

When Dhillon interviews people to work at her law firm, she said she asks whether they’re comfortable working for a known Republican. Some say no. This cycle, she said she represented a person fired for saying they wanted to run for local office as a Republican.

All of which is to say that if you choose to be a Republican here, you’re probably a devoted Republican. A weak-kneed Republican is likely already an independent, and the GOP primary here is closed only to registered GOP voters. “People assume if you’re a Republican in San Francisco, you must be, like, squishy, liberal, purple,” Dhillon said. “The opposite is true.”

Or as Paul Mitchell, a California data analyst and vice president of Political Data, put it, “They don’t get more liberal by osmosis.”

Mitchell noted that the 2014 California governor’s primary featured two major Republicans, tea-party Assemblyman Tim Donnelley and more moderate Neel Kashkari. Donnelly easily bested Kashkari in San Francisco, 5,379 to 4,436. He won by a similar margin in liberal Alameda County, which includes Berkeley and Oakland.

“There's this sense that sometimes Republicans in a more progressive area are going to be more progressive Republicans,” Mitchell said. “But if you’ve ever been to a liberal college campus, the college Republicans there are just as conservative as they are anywhere else. So you’re gonna have people who are strong conservative, even in some of these liberal districts. There’s just a lot less of them."

The Trump phenomenon isn't limited to conservative areas of the country. In places like Brooklyn--where the Trump name is a part of everyday life--the New York business mogul has found a surprising popularity. This middle class house apartment complex in Brooklyn was built by Donald Trump's father Fred. | AP Photo

So far, it’s been Trump who has performed best in big city liberal bastions, and Cruz who has performed worst.

In Cook County, which comprises the city of Chicago and some of its close-in suburbs, Trump topped 40 percent of the vote on March 15. Cruz came in third, behind Kasich, with 22.4 percent. The same dynamic played out in Wayne County, home to Detroit, where Trump won handily (40.5 percent), Kasich finish second (27.7 percent) and Cruz came in third, with 18.3 percent on March 8. And in Suffolk County, home to Boston, Trump romped on March 1 with 46.4 percent. Cruz finished fourth, with 7.8 percent, behind Marco Rubio, as well.

One reason for Cruz’s struggles may be his outspoken social conservatism, which numerous Bay Area Republicans told POLITICO was a sticking point for them. While urban Republicans may be conservative, they’re not necessarily conservative on those issues. “Trump and Kasich are probably more philosophically aligned with San Francisco Republicans,” Hughes said.

The next test comes April 19 in New York City. Trump is hovering above 50 percent in statewide polls, Cruz and Kasich hope to keep him below that threshold in some urban areas as they’ve campaigned and organized in liberal parts of the city (New York, unlike California or Maryland, gives all three delegates to the winner only if he or she secures 50 percent.)

In California, early polls show Trump leading handily in the Bay Area. He led Cruz 39 percent to 23 percent in the recent Los Angeles Times poll, with Kasich in third with 18 percent. He beat Cruz in the region 39 percent to 32 percent in the Field Poll, with Kasich again lagging in third with 23 percent.

But Kasich hopes to sell his more conciliatory brand of conservatism here, and people familiar with his plans said he is organizing Bay Area town halls, possibly around the state GOP convention at the end of the month.

“If you look at a map and say where do you want to go first, and really start locking everything down, Bay Area obviously, Gov. Kasich is very strong,” said Robert Molnar, a senior adviser to Steve Poizner, the former state insurance commissioner and co-chair of Kasich’s California campaign.

“People assume if you’re a Republican in San Francisco you must be, like, squishy, liberal, purple,” Dhillion said. “The opposite is true.”

Not all heavily Democratic districts are built alike in sprawling California. Turnout tends to be higher in the Bay Area, and lower in Los Angeles. Mitchell, for instance, projected that Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard’s seat south and east of Los Angeles would have the fewest likely GOP voters in the primary—a mere 7,457—and that it would have the highest Latino GOP turnout in the state at 38 percent.

Mario Guerra is one of those highly sought after Latino Republicans in Roybal-Allard’s district.

“I would be surprised and embarrassed if Donald Trump was our nominee,” said Guerra, who also serves as treasurer of the state GOP. “I think most Latinos feel that way.”

Polls show Los Angeles County is among Trump’s weaker spots in the state, along with the more conservative but less populated Central Valley, where Cruz leads.

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Of the 100 districts where Romney fared worst in 2012, California is home to 24 of them and New York, 12. In fact, Romney’s nine worst-performing districts in all of America sit inside these two states.

Mario Guerra is one of the mostly highly sought-after Latino Republicans in California. Here he shakes hands with a University of California, Berkeley student after a 2011 California GOP Latino town hall meeting in Los Angeles. | AP Photo

The difficulty of finding these voters means advantage falls to the most-organized campaigns and those most reliant on data—both specialties of Cruz, who tapped a California leadership team more than six months before his rivals.

“It really does lend itself to someone who is really well organized,” said Johnson, the GOP strategist. “In these low Republican population districts, it looks a lot more like a caucus. You ID and turn out. That’s really Cruz’s game.”

Michael Schroeder, a former California Republican Party chairman and Cruz’s political director in the state, said running a congressional district campaign is almost the opposite of a traditional California race dominated by warring on the airwaves.

“I’ve run statewide campaigns here. You go for big chunks of votes. This is not that,” Schroeder said. “We have 53 separate elections that happen to occur on the same day. We have to look at it that way.”

Schroeder said he plans to lean on the campaign’s call-from-home program for volunteers—“I call them my drone pilots,” he said—to phone into districts.

Molnar, who is working closely with the Kasich campaign, predicted a more subterranean race than is typical in the state. “Unless you have stupid money,” he said, “there’s no way you’re going to see a lot of broadcast TV ads for Republican voters in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

He said Kasich would explore “tele-town halls” where they call into GOP households, and that plans are in the works for in-person town halls where the Kasich campaign hopes to lure the most likely voters. Molnar predicted the best-funded campaigns might do “targeted cable,” buying reliably GOP networks, like Fox News, even in liberal areas.

Finding actual Republicans can be a tall task, as Jim Kay, a 74-year-old Republican who’s lived in Berkeley since 1971, can attest. He estimates he has canvassed Berkeley 20 times in the past 45 years to get out the GOP vote. “I’m a big walker, so I wouldn’t mind walking a few miles even if you get a Republican every two to three blocks,” he said, mostly because it’s so satisfying when he does. “Usually, they’re so surprised to see someone canvassing for the Republicans that it’s almost like you’re a long-lost cousin!”

Kay said he’d knock doors for Kasich—and to stop Trump—but despite reaching out, the campaign hasn’t provided him any materials yet. (He has ordered a bumper sticker and plans to put it on his hybrid SUV). But while he waits, Kay is relishing the moment.

“My vote’s been irrelevant for so many years here,” he said, sipping tea at the original Peet’s coffee shop in Berkeley. A musician strummed the banjo around the corner. “It’s almost a physical shock!”