Well, I guess the recession must've taught some conservatives a lesson.
SANTA ANA, Calif. — Orange County has been a national symbol of conservatism for more than 50 years: birthplace of President Richard M. Nixon and home to John Wayne, a bastion for the John Birch Society, a land of orange groves and affluence, the region of California where Republican presidential candidates could always count on a friendly audience.
But this iconic county of 3.1 million people passed something of a milestone in June. The percentage of registered Republican voters dropped to 43 percent, the lowest level in 70 years.
It was the latest sign of the demographic, ethnic and political changes that are transforming the county and challenging long-held views of a region whose colorful — its detractors might suggest zany — reputation extends well beyond the borders of this state.
At the end of 2009, nearly 45 percent of the county’s residents spoke a language other than English at home, according to county officials. Whites now make up only 45 percent of the population; this county is teeming with Hispanics, as well as Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese families. Its percentage of foreign-born residents jumped to 30 percent in 2008 from 6 percent in 1970, and visits to some of its corners can feel like a trip to a foreign land.
On another certain message board that shares a name with a certain Billy Joel album, people are getting angry and start talking trash.
Also, notice the presidential election results in 2008 vs. 1980:
In 2008, Barack Obama drew 48 percent of the vote here against Senator John McCain of Arizona. (By comparison, in 1980, Jimmy Carter received just 23 percent against Ronald Reagan, the conservative hero whose election as California governor in 1966 and 1970 was boosted in no small part by the affection for him here.)
The population seems to be getting poorer too:
There are pockets of deep poverty spread across a county long identified with suburban affluence and escape from urban Los Angeles. About 25 percent of residents here did not have health insurance at some point during 2009, according to a report released last week by the U.C.L.A. Center for Health Policy Research. Less than a mile from the entrance to Disneyland is a Latino enclave of low-income housing where trucks arrive every morning, with names like Yucatán Produce, to sell groceries and household goods to people who cannot afford a car to drive to the store.
But still the Vietnamese immigrant community helps support the GOP base. Y'know, because of the Republicans' supposedly stronger anti-communist arm and the values of hard work and self-reliance:
Orange remains a Republican county, at least relatively: an influx of immigrants certainly does not equate to automatic Democratic gains, here or anywhere else across the country. Many Vietnamese immigrants are socially conservative and run for office as Republicans. Until the increased identification of the Republican Party with tough measures on immigration in recent years, Latino voters were also clearly in play for Republicans. Most elected officials in Orange County are Republicans.
Independent voters have been on the rise in the OC:
While Republicans have been on a steady decline — in 1990, they made up 56 percent of the electorate — the percentage of independent voters, as in much of the state, soared to 20 percent this past June from 8.6 percent in 1990. President Obama’s strong showing here in 2008 continued a nearly 30-year pattern in which the vote for Democratic presidential candidates has steadily increased.
Mr. Tram, the Vietnamese immigrant in Westminster, said that he had voted for Mr. Obama and that he thought most of his Vietnamese friends had done the same. “The Republicans are for rich people,” he said.
Spot on, Mr. Tram.
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