Mario Savio, leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, is restrained by police as he walks on to the platform at the University of California's Greek Theater in Berkeley, Dec. 7, 1964. Savio attempted to speak directly following the appearance of University President Clark Kerr. He was later permitted to make two announcements to the assembled students. (AP Photo/Robert W. Klein)

Even their biggest fans acknowledge the ironic -- some would say bizarre -- overlap of their appeal.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have become political sensations this election cycle by declaring themselves enemies of entrenched power and defenders of a beleaguered and betrayed working class.

Whether you believe Sanders, who argues that Wall Street is plundering the nation's wealth, or Trump -- who says Big Stupid Government is exporting jobs and importing cheap foreign workers -- the conclusion remains the same: The status quo must go.

With their campaigns now gearing up for California's June 7 primary, both men are about to find out whether their messages can resonate in a state that has given birth to its fair share of left- and right-leaning populist movements and buried many more.

Peter Saul, left, Wendell Johannson, center, and Irene Merrill, right, celebrate the overwhelming lead taken by Proposition 13 in early returns in the California primary in Los Angeles, June 7, 1978. The stickers all over their bodies read "Save the American Dream, vote Yes on 13." (AP Photo/Lennox McLendon)

"For as much as the country likes to think of California as a wacky place where you get the John Birch Society and the Berkeley hippies, the defining trend in California is that none of those groups have come to power," said Thad Kousser, a professor of California politics at UC San Diego.

But that's not to say that they haven't left their mark.

Rampant xenophobia led California's first Legislature to tax miners from China and Mexico in a bid to drive them away. More than 40 years later, James Weaver, presidential candidate of the left-wing Populist Party, carried several of the state's farming areas by railing against an unfettered capitalist system that he claimed was dividing the nation into two classes: millionaires and tramps.


"Sanders could practically have run on the Populist Party platform of 1892," said Michael Magliari, a history professor at Cal State Chico. He said that Sanders' proposal to let people cash checks and open savings accounts at post offices is taken directly from it.

The eeriest historical parallel, some academics say, is between Trump and the Workingmen's Party of California, whose slogan was "The Chinese must go."

"They were the blue-collar NASCAR dads of the time," Kousser said of the party's rank and file.

While the party's influence was short-lived, its leader, Denis Kearney, who traveled the country in the late 1870s warning that Chinese immigrants were hurting American workers, is credited with helping lay the groundwork for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Jim Crow laws.

"Whites in the South would say, 'See, California is excluding nonwhites; we have to have segregation too,' " said Charles Postel, a history professor at San Francisco State. "It was a nationalistic appeal to defending American labor."

Postel, who authored "The Populist Vision," hears echoes of Kearney during the climax of Trump's stump speech.

"When he says they're going to build a wall, and they're going to make the Mexicans pay for it, it sounds the same to me," Postel said.

A lone demonstrator stays behind to argue with the National Guards troops who moved in to help California Highway patrolmen break up an unauthorized rally on the University of California Campus in Berkeley, Ca., Friday, May 16, 1969. The guard was called by Gov. Ronald Reagan Thursday after a bloody riot over the fencing of People's Park, which had been built on school property. Several persons were shot when police opened fire with shotguns filled with birdshot. (Associated Press)

It's no coincidence that Sanders and Trump both seem like ghosts of California's Gilded Age, a time of growing wealth at the top, politically powerful robber barons and mass immigration.

Voters once again are fuming over the increasing power of moneyed elites, their own declining status and the government's apparent impotence to do anything about it.

"This is a perfect storm," said Chip Berlet, a former senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a left-leaning Massachusetts nonprofit that tracks right-wing networks. "You have the middle and lower middle class being pushed down the ladder. They're angry, and now they're choosing sides between Trump and Sanders."

Roy Mejia, a 65-year-old Alameda resident who usually votes Republican, said he's backing Trump in part because he feels betrayed by GOP leaders. "People don't like being lied to," he said. "Trump sheds a little light on them, and they all run like cockroaches."

Joshua Brown, a 28-year-old Oakland independent, said he's supporting Sanders because, unlike Hillary Clinton, he isn't beholden to rich donors. "Unfortunately that is how our system works," Brown said. "It's an oligarchy in many respects."

Competing populist movements on the left and right have been commonplace in California.

The Populist Party, who elected Adolph Sutro mayor of San Francisco in 1894, quickly made common cause with the Democrats, who soon veered further left and co-opted much of the new party's platform.

In the Populist Party's wake, smaller-scale movements arose throughout the 20th century championing free speech, black power and workers' rights.

If anyone foreshadowed the sudden rise of Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who registered as a Democrat only last year, historians say it was the muckraking author Upton Sinclair Jr.

After losing elections in California as a socialist, Sinclair registered as a Democrat in 1934. He won the party's nomination for governor that year on a platform of eradicating poverty, but he lost in the general election.

"They came from the same political tradition," Postel said. "Sinclair called himself a socialist in the same way that Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist."

The state's right-leaning populist movements have been even more influential. Southern California spawned the anti-tax movement led by Howard Jarvis that in 1978 resulted in Proposition 13 and copycat tax-slashing initiatives across the country. It also nurtured the anti-communist, anti-union John Birch Society in the late '50s, as well as the Minutemen, who a decade ago conducted citizen border patrols to protest illegal immigration.

"All this energy coming out of California played an essential role in spreading these ideas across America," Berlet said.

He sees Trump as a natural successor to conservative Golden State icons such as Ronald Reagan and Jarvis, who tapped into discontent on the right. But others disagree.

"Trump is not a doctrinaire Reagan movement conservative," said UC San Diego's Kousser. "That's why you've seen part of the establishment rebel against him."

Joel Fox, a former director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said Jarvis would have opposed Trump. "Howard was a conservative," Fox said. "Trump is no conservative. He's a populist."

For now, it appears the state's populist impulses are being driven by the left, as evidenced by the current push to again raise the minimum wage and extend Proposition 30 tax hikes on the wealthy.

"You could make an argument that California is having another populist moment, but it's more in the Bernie Sanders mold than the Donald Trump mold," Kousser said.

Although Trump has polled well among Republicans, the state's demographics and diverse economy make it hard for his message to resonate, Postel said.

"I think if Trump does well in California," Postel added, "it will be because we love our celebrities."

Contact Matthew Artz at 510-208-6435. Follow him at Twitter.com/matthew_artz.