BERKELEY — In the last year, UC Berkeley has spent more than a million dollars policing tumultuous political events instigated by the Berkeley College Republicans. But now the club members themselves are engaged in an internal struggle for control of the group, with a moderate faction trying to wrest control away from members who associate with the flashy alt-right movement.

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UC Berkeley to take part in resurgence of research in psychedelic drugs The squabble mirrors a broader debate among Republicans nationally and among young California Republicans in particular: Do you support the GOP establishment or the insurgency led by alt-right hero Steve Bannon — and just how far right are you willing to go?

In the past, the student club was a quiet group of Ronald Reagan admirers who talked about issues such as free trade. In the last year or so, however, a vocal contingent of members have sent the club lurching to the right and into the spotlight.

The club’s attempts to bring controversial speakers like right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and firebrand author Ann Coulter to campus in the last year alone have cost the school at least $1.4 million, said Cal spokesman Dan Mogulof. The scheduled appearance of Yiannopoulos in February generated violent demonstrations, with protesters throwing rocks and fireworks, and causing $100,000 in damage to campus property. The school canceled Yiannopoulos’ speech.

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Some of the club’s members also belong to Berkeley Patriot, another conservative group that attempted to bring Yiannopoulos and other controversial speakers to campus for a “Free Speech Week” last month. The event fizzled, but the antics cost the school at least another million dollars in security preparations, Mogulof said.

All this has now led to a new movement, with some Berkeley College Republican members maneuvering to bring the club back from what they see as the fringe, even as college Republicans across the state lean further right.

Several weeks ago, Bradley Devlin, the club’s secretary, tried to dethrone the club’s president, Troy Worden, by staging a surprise vote to oust his classmate.

“I’m not here for a troll factory. I’m here to make political activists,” Devlin, a sophomore, told the Daily Californian, the student newspaper, at the time. “If the Berkeley College Republicans came under new leadership, we would still be inviting speakers that some think are controversial and disagree with, but it would be for education and not to troll the university.”

Last weekend, however, California College Republicans went in the opposite direction and elected a new leader, UC Irvine student Ariana Rowlands, a fan of Yiannopoulos who wants to push the party’s young people to the right.

The 19-year-old Devlin, who makes no secret of his own desire to lead the Berkeley College Republicans, told the Bay Area News Group that the vote of no-confidence in Worden passed. But Worden, 21, said Devlin had packed the room with members of his fraternity.

“I am still the President of the Berkeley College Republicans,” Worden wrote on Facebook on Oct. 13.

Similar GOP tensions are playing out across the state and country.

This past week, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a moderating voice in the Republican Party and a longtime critic of President Donald Trump, announced that he will not seek re-election. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker did the same in September, to the delight of Trump and allies like Bannon, Trump’s former top political strategist who is now back in his old job as head of the far-right Breitbart News.

At last weekend’s California College Republican convention in Anaheim, Rowlands, who has written for Breitbart, seized the helm of the organization from a more moderate rival, positioning herself as the leader of an uprising and her opponent as part of a status quo.

“It’s really a debate between people who want attention, who want to bask in the light of those currently in power, and those who have a practical orientation toward winning elections,” said Jack Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former Republican official who quit the GOP after Trump’s election.

Worden, a Berkeley senior who was elected administrative vice chair of the executive board of the California College Republicans at the same convention, said he’s excited by what he sees as a rightward shift among young conservatives toward more cultural conservatism.

When he started at Berkeley, Worden said, there were just a dozen or so active members. Now, he said, there are 45 to 80 people attending each meeting and more than 1,400 on the club’s mailing list.

“What we’re seeing are the last gasps of a less conservative, more neoliberal group known as neoconservatives,” he said.

But Berkeley senior Jonathan Chow, who ran against Worden for president in the spring and lost, thinks Worden’s views have veered toward the extreme.

Chow said some of the club members who supported Worden told him they were “national socialists,” a term often used by neo-Nazis — which appalled Chow.

On a club online discussion board, anti-Semitic comments began to pop up, Chow said, and when some members complained to Worden, “Troy said it was not his position to do anything.”

Worden dismissed the claims as “ridiculous” and denied ever expressing opinions or policy ideas that could be considered “white nationalist” — which Worden said is usually what people mean when they use terms like “alt-right.”

Yet Worden’s social media pages are peppered with photos of himself grinning next to the likes of Bannon and Kyle Chapman, an alt-right instigator who goes by the name Based Stickman. He’s also been photographed with ex-Google employee James Damore — who was fired for writing a memo suggesting that biological differences explain the tech industry’s gender gap — and Martin Sellner, the head of the far-right Austrian group Generation Identity.

Worden dismissed the idea that he agrees with all of the people he poses with.

Regardless, it’s clear Worden isn’t satisfied with talking about Reagan, and his opinions appear to resonate with members of the Berkeley College Republicans.

“It’s easy to convince people to lower their taxes,” Naweed Tahmas, who has handled media requests for the club, told the online news site Berkeleyside in September. “But right now we’re in an era where culture matters. What have conservatives really conserved in the last decade? Our civil liberties, our national identity? No.”

Tahmas has similarly posted photos of himself smiling next to Bannon, Yiannopoulos, Damore and members of the Proud Boys, a group of right-wing nationalists who, according to the New York Times, require an oath of fealty to Western culture to join.

Tahmas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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“I’m very proud to have grown this club and really educated people on the dangers of the far left,” Worden said, repeatedly dismissing Devlin’s move as a “botched coup attempt.”

Devlin is a native of Orange County whose Facebook page boasts a Ronald Reagan quote and who has credited Larry Elder, a conservative radio commentator and writer with libertarian leanings, for giving him the “intellectual tools to stand up for conservative beliefs with respect and civility.”

“I want to go back to education and informing college students about how to be active politically and all the different job opportunities within the political realm,” Devlin said.