Donald Trump is the Pete Wilson of America

For the last several months, my girlfriend Catherine Geanuracos and I have been discussing how a Trump victory was terrifying and unthinkable — but I’ve been saying that it would not be so different from what California experienced in the 1990s. What happened in the aftermath of the Pete Wilson administration may provide some comfort on this terrifying November morning.

For those of you who don’t know our state’s political history, the gubernatorial election of 1990 was a race between Republican Pete Wilson and former Mayor of San Francisco Dianne Feinstein, a deeply moderate, and of course female, Democrat. Wilson won, and was part of a tradition of mostly white Republican power in California. Despite its diverse population, California for years produced more Republican than Democratic governors —from Nixon and Reagan to George Deukmejian, supported by a white power base centered in Southern California. California regularly sent Republicans to the U.S. Senate and the state’s Congressional delegation was full of Republicans.

Pete Wilson, for most of his early political career, was considered to be a moderate. As the popular Mayor of San Diego, he helped the city to revitalize. When he was a U.S. Senator (after beating Jerry Brown), he co-sponsored the bill to give reparations for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. During his first term as Governor, Wilson remained a fiscally-conservative moderate Republican. Despite vetoing a bill that would have prohibited employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, he was seen as a moderate California Republican.

In 1994 he faced a tough re-election in his fight against Kathleen Brown, Democratic State Treasurer and sister of Jerry Brown. Early polls showed her winning, due to a number of issues, including California’s failing economy. However, despite no real track record on immigration or social issues, Wilson pivoted. It is not a stretch to claim that he won his second term by exploiting anti-immigrant sentiment (Proposition 187, which sought to deny public benefits to undocumented immigrants, passed in 1994 on the same ballot) and racial fear in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots. Wilson played up racist stereotypes. about African American and Latino resistance to police violence and corruption (the Rampart scandal in Los Angeles wouldn’t be exposed until 1998). The campaign was divisive and demoralizing. Pete Wilson received over 55% of the popular vote, winning every county but a few Bay Area liberal stalwarts, but only 25% of the Latino vote, the lowest for any incumbent Republican Governor in modern electoral history.

1994 ended with not just a second Wilson term, but a statewide initiative that ended all state services for undocumented workers, including access to healthcare and education. It was a devastating time for California progressives — but it resulted in an unprecedented shift in our state level politics. The anti-immigrant, conservative victories galvanized a sea change in our political life, energizing Latino leadership and political participation and functionally destroying the long-term viability of the California Republican Party.

Since then, California could count the number of statewide elected Republicans in the last several election cycles on one hand — with the only major position belonging to kinda-Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. Currently all our statewide officials, both of our U.S. Senators (with Kamala Harris beating fellow Democrat Loretta Sanchez in the runoff) are Democratic. Our largely Latino-led Democratic party controls both of our state houses, with a super-majority in the State Assembly.

While we still send a few Republicans to Congress, the state-level Republican Party has never recovered from its decision to work against immigrants for short-term political gain. Catherine and I fundamentally believe that a positive view of immigration is essential to our identify as Americans. Anyone can come here and become part of our incredible national experiment, and denying our fundamental belief in the dignity and worth of our immigrant communities is un-American.

We’re dismayed by Trump’s victory, but the history of California gives us hope.

Catherine Geanuracos contributed to this article.