Even before Donald Trump’s confusing gaffe Monday night in Nebraska about Iran bombing Los Angeles and San Diego, the president was looming large over nearly every hotly contested California election campaign.

In one Southern California race, Trump’s long shadow produced a disjointed two-step. Rep. Ken Calvert is attacking fellow Republican Rep. Young Kim for her anti-Trump stances, even as a Calvert-aligned PAC sent Democratic voters in the district mailers playing up her support for and from Trump.

Confused? That’s understandable. Under the new map, Calvert’s 41^st Congressional District in Southern California was redrawn as a solidly Democratic seat, so the 33-year incumbent chose to run in the neighboring 40^th, which stretches from the eastern edge of Orange County into a large chunk of western Riverside County.

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That move set up the cycle’s strangest California race: Calvert versus Kim in a solidly Republican district that Trump carried by 12 points. It has been one of the nastiest campaigns in the country, with both sides fighting over who is more loyal to Trump. During the primary, a pro-Calvert super PAC, Americans 4 Security, spent $2.9 million on anti-Kim ads. Calvert has called Kim a “backstabbing RINO” and a “Trump-traitor,” and the PAC’s ads paint her as a liberal who hates Trump, citing her past vote to censure the president while ignoring her votes against Democrats’ efforts to impeach him.

Yet the same pro-Calvert super PAC sent two deliberately deceptive mailers to Democrats, playing up Kim’s pro-MAGA record. One showed a photo of a smiling Kim with the words “Young Kim, 100% with Trump,” and “a proven fighter who will stand with President Trump to deliver a bold American First Agenda.”

The goal was obvious: Turn off Democratic households and discourage party crossover support for Kim.

Kim answered with an ad focused on Calvert’s old scandals. It cites a 2009 Orange County Register editorial that ranked him among the most corrupt members of Congress, calls him swampy and sleazy, and revives a 1994 Los Angeles Times story about police catching him with a prostitute in his car. The ad ends by calling Calvert a “sleazebag.”

For all their fighting over Trump, both Calvert and Kim carefully avoided the furor over his Iran comments early this week, even as the remarks set off a raging debate on social media and in campaigns across the state. The timing could hardly have been worse for Republicans: The comments landed just as most California voters began receiving their mail-in ballots.

Speaking before a cheering crowd in Grand Island, Nebraska, Monday night, Trump defended his war with Iran with a line that landed hard 1,500 miles west: “Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego.” The White House defended the line, saying the president was clearly warning about what Iran could do with a nuclear weapon, not encouraging it.

Although the explanation clearly fits the context of the president’s remarks, it didn’t satisfy everyone in his own party. By Tuesday morning, the Republican running in Southern California’s most closely watched open House seat was publicly breaking with him.

Jim Desmond, a San Diego County supervisor and Navy veteran who is the GOP nominee in the redrawn 48^th District, said he “vehemently” disapproved of what the president said. The district is currently represented by retiring Rep. Darrell Issa.

Desmond’s quick distancing is a measure of how worried Republicans are about Trump’s waning popularity even in precincts he carried in previous elections – a dynamic playing out beyond California’s borders as well.

The newly drawn 48^th district is a hook-shaped swath that includes areas in San Diego and Riverside counties, including around Vista, San Marcos, Palm Springs, and Temecula. The current configuration changed a 12-point Republican voter registration advantage to a 4-point Democratic lead. That, of course, was done by design. Late last year, state Democrats redrew the state’s congressional map through Proposition 50, the ballot measure voters approved last November. Gov. Gavin Newsom sold the measure to voters as a way to fight Republican “fire with fire,” abandoning independent redistricting to redraw California’s congressional map in Democrats’ favor (in response to Republicans’ redistricting effort in Texas). The new map was designed to put five of California’s nine Republican-held seats either at a strong Democratic advantage or within Democrats’ reach. The question now is not whether Democrats gain seats here, but how many. And the answer turns on a handful of genuinely competitive races.

Click here to read the full article in Real Clear Politics