Hope for my home-state?

According to this, yes. Ken Mehlman thinks Republicans can make gains in California, a state they once owned lock, stock and barrel but that has gone Democratic in each of the last 4 national elections.

The key to it appears to be an echo of the national trend: exurban areas are getting redder and redder while the large Democratic metro-areas are becoming less populous. Combine that with a Republican Governor and Mehlman has reason for optimism:

California is home to nearly 37 million people -- one of every eight Americans -- and is projected to add as many as 11 million more in the next two decades, roughly the equivalent of the state of Ohio. But while population growth is slowing in left-leaning coastal areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco, it is accelerating in more conservative regions such as the Central Valley and the Inland Empire area east of Los Angeles.

The state's large Hispanic population, long staunchly Democratic, has become somewhat less so in recent years. Bush won 32 percent of California's Hispanic vote in 2004, up from 28 percent in 2000. Schwarzenegger won about a third of Hispanic voters in the 2003 recall election even though Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Hispanic, was also on the ballot.

Mehlman has seized on those trends, traveling to California every six weeks this year for outreach work in Hispanic, black and Asian American areas. On a recent visit, he addressed a Hispanic community center south of Los Angeles and a black leadership forum in Sacramento, and held several fundraisers and meetings with GOP lawmakers.

In his outreach to ethnic minorities, Mehlman said he stresses the party's commitment to economic self-reliance and traditional family values.

It all remains to be seen if the trends can be reversed, but there appears a slim ray of hope that my home-state may in fact regain some of it's collective sanity!