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Can Trump finally win Orange County?
Ever since President Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate performance, my regular electric-bike excursions along the Huntington Beach path have changed.
I’m not talking about the views of the Pacific, the birds dancing in the Bolsa Chica wetlands or the smell of early-evening beach bonfires. They’re all just as soothing as ever.
But these days, politics is always lurking in the background.
A few weeks back, I loaded my electric bike onto the car rack and drove across the San Gabriel River, passing through the “Orange Curtain.” On Seal Beach Boulevard, a sea of Trump flags and banners swayed in the wind in front of a Vons. This was “Trump Mart,” and a woman seated at a table was selling Trump-themed merch.
I got to the beach and parked next to a house that had a 10-foot-fall Trump banner hanging from the second floor. I’ve been back a few times since the debate, and the scene is largely unchanged.
Huntington Beach is having a lengthy MAGA moment, complete with battles involving pride flags, book banning, voter ID rules and COVID-related restrictions. Its leaders have made headlines in right-wing circles; first came Tito Ortiz, the former MMA fighter turned Trump-on-the-Pacific, and now there’s the current mayor, Gracey Van Der Mark, whom Times columnist Gustavo Arellano described as “Huntington Beach’s Latina MAGA mayor.”
But Orange County is a big place, with 3.1 million residents, and it’s no longer the homogeneous land of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and John Wayne. (Roughly 38% of the population is white, while 34% is Latino and…