The California Republican Party is considering removing opposition to abortion and gay marriage from its platform.
The new platform may be voted on at the state GOP’s fall convention in Anaheim and was adopted by a party committee in late July, according to a report from the Los Angeles Times.
The proposed change will remove language that says “it is important to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman,” and pulls explicit opposition to abortion. The section on abortion would instead state, “[w]e value protecting innocent life and want to see the number of abortions reduced. We support adoption as an alternative to abortion.”
The move will likely cause extreme division ahead of the state’s presidential primary.
“This will be extremely controversial and will take a convention that is supposed to be about unifying the party and instead it ends up becoming a big feud,” Jon Fleischman, a former state GOP executive director, told the Times. “It’s the last thing the party needs.”
Fleischman added that it is “a big middle finger” to the presidential candidates slated to appear at the convention, “all of whom embrace the various party planks that are proposed for removal.”
Charles Moran, a Los Angeles County delegate who is a member of the platform drafting committee, told the Times that the move is an effort to fall in line with the sentiments of the state’s voters “to give our California Republican candidates a fighting chance.”
Though the state is heavily blue, there are many red districts and a dozen Republican members of Congress.
The Daily Caller reports, “The California GOP is seeking to defend House seats it won in 2022’s midterm elections by close margins. Republican Rep. John Duarte of the 13th district in the San Francisco Bay Area was elected in 2022 by a margin of just 564 votes, with the district being rated D+4 by the Cook Political Report. McCarthy, in a conference call on Aug. 14, also highlighted Republican Reps. Mike Garcia and David Valadao as well as candidate Scott Baugh — who is running in the Orange County district being vacated by Democratic Rep. Katie Porter — as candidates who need to win.”
