This ain't your granddaddy's California Republican Party.

For two decades, California Republicans have watched our voter registration numbers dwindle with the state's changing demographics. Since the beginning of the decline, you've heard how this election will be different - how the party is finally serious about expanding our coalition beyond the 60 percent of white voters who always vote Republican.

Is there any reason to think 2014 will be any different?

(You mean besides Neel Kashkari, the party's Indian American, anti-poverty candidate for governor.)

In the heart of conservative Orange County, four Asian American women - all immigrants who've spent years involved in their community - are running in safe or competitive Republican districts. If the quartet runs the table, it will be the most dramatic demographic change in the party's elected leadership, and in the process, shatter conventional myths about the Grand Old Party.

Myth 1: Republicans can't win in majority-minority districts. This November, the traditional party roles are reversed in the 55th Assembly District. Diamond Bar Councilwoman Ling-Ling Chang, a first-generation Taiwanese-American, faces token opposition from a white male Democrat. Chang earned her spot in the runoff after a hard-fought primary battle with Walnut Valley Unified Trustee Phillip Chen, another Taiwanese-American Republican with a bright future. This seat is unique because it's the only safe Republican seat that is a majority-minority district. When Chang wins in November, it will mark an important victory in a district that consists of primarily minority voters.

Myth 2: Republicans can't win on social issues. In the neighboring 65th Assembly District, Korean-American Young Kim is trying to reclaim a seat Republicans lost two years ago. Kim, a small businesswoman and former aide to Rep. Ed Royce, had the highest vote percentage of any legislative challenger in the primary, beating Democrat Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva by nearly 10 points. Kim's victory also shows that the party doesn't have to sacrifice its conservative ideology to win votes. Her campaign has given equal weight to fiscal and social issues and made Quirk-Silva's support for the new transgender bathroom law a central issue in the race.

Myth 3: Republicans are anti-immigrant. At the local level, Republicans have always done well in Orange County's Little Saigon. This year, Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen is counting on the Vietnamese-American community to send her to Sacramento. Nguyen, who escaped the communist takeover on a small wooden boat in the South China Sea, will be a powerful spokeswoman for how the new California Republican Party embraces immigrants.

Myth 4: Nontraditional Republicans, especially women, can't raise money. Full disclosure: I'm married to the fourth Asian American woman that is changing the face of the California GOP. After eight years as Orange County's representative on the state tax board, my wife, Board of Equalization member Michelle Steel, is campaigning for a spot on the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

Of course, I'm biased in my assessment of the state's highest-ranking Republican official. So, I'll simply point to an objective metric: fundraising. Michelle has raised nearly three quarters of a million dollars for her supervisorial campaign, shattering the myth that female candidates can't raise money.

For too long, nontraditional Republican candidates have been relegated to quixotic campaigns in hopelessly gerrymandered districts. That's caused a vicious circle: fewer minority elected officials results in fewer minority candidates, and in turn, even fewer minority Republican voters.

These four remarkable women will end that cycle. As our state party chairman, Jim Brulte, routinely says, "The candidate who most looks like, sounds like and has the most shared experiences of the majority of voters tends to win."

This ain't your granddaddy's California Republican Party. Come November, your granddaddy won't be the only one voting Republican.

Shawn Steel, a former chairman of the California Republican Party, is the California national committeeman on the Republican National Committee.

Last week, I returned from the RNC's Summer Meeting in Chicago.  As your National Committeeman, I wanted to update you on our meetings and keep you abreast of what is happening nationally in our party.

Our RNC staff gave an update on our Victory 365 program and how we are working to engage voters across the country, in every community year-round.  The RNC has raised $131.9 million for the 2014 cycle thus far and has $14.4 million cash on hand.  We now have more than 90 percent of our political staff in the field -- no longer sitting in an office at headquarters.  The RNC is investing heavily in digital and data capabilities and we are now able to provide voter scores to every state to help support our ground operations with more than 3 million voter contact attempts to date. In California alone, the RNC is financing 15 field workers and 6 political action centers. We have never had this level of support from the RNC before. 
 
We also had the opportunity to meet rising GOP stars -- Will Hurd, Republican Nominee for Texas’ 23^rd Congressional District; BJ Pak, Georgia State Representative; Amanda Pasdon, West Virginia House of Delegates; and Evelyn Sanguinetti, candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Illinois.  These four individuals embody the GOP’s message of freedom and opportunity.  
 
Good friend and fellow Californian, National Federated Republican Women President Kathleen Brugger (Rancho Cucamonga) hosted a special event for RNC members as well.
 
The RNC Standing Committee on Rules established the Standing Committee on Presidential Primary Debates, which is tasked with determining which GOP primary debates to sanction. There will be fewer debates, unlike the marathon 23 we had in 2012. And you will not see liberal hacks like George Stephanopoulos moderating -- the RNC will determine who moderates and make sure to control this process.
 
At the recommendation of the Site Selection Committee, of which I am a member,  we voted to officially select Cleveland, Ohio to host the 2016 Republican National Convention.  Cleveland is ready to show the country what they have to offer and the importance of this state to the 2016 presidential election cannot be overstated. 
 
The RNC was honored to hear from  Vice President Dick Cheney, Governor Scott Walker, Governor Mike Pence, Senator Mark Kirk, and Congressman Paul Ryan.

There are good things happening and I am confident that we are going to win control of the U.S. Senate in November and put a check on the out-of-control abuses of the Obama Administration.  

We are poised to win and I look forward to being in the trenches with you for the next 74 days!

~ Shawn Steel

As California Republicans plot our survival, there's a growing belief among state operatives that our success is tied to Silicon Valley. The wealthy, libertarian-minded tech entrepreneurs are a natural fit, this line of thinking goes, with a more socially moderate, fiscally conservative Republican Party.

There's just one problem: The Silicon Valley isn't aligned with right-of-center politics.

From Google's copyright infringements and censorship in China to the entire valley's collaboration with government spying, techies aren't the libertarian heroes of Ayn Rand's dreams. Nor are they free-market capitalists with the desire to fix Sacramento.

The Bay Area, one of the country's most liberal regions, has dropped Republican voter registration to third-party status behind decline-to-state voters. In 2012, the valley's two representatives in Congress each won re-election with more than 70 percent of the vote.

Democrats' dominance in the valley is so monolithic that Rep. Mike Honda, D-Silicon Valley, now faces an intra-party challenge from former Obama administration official Ro Khanna. A Republican could fail to make the general election.

"The press portrays a ruthless band of techno-libertarians taking over the city," David Auerbach, a New York-based writer and software engineer, writes at Slate.com. "The reality is much different."

Aside from a few high-profile Ron Paul bundlers, 80 percent of the valley's political contributions go to Democratic candidates. All but two of the tech executives recently invited to the White House backed President Barack Obama's reelection campaign.

"The tech moguls may be the first large capitalist constituency outside Hollywood to identify almost entirely with the progressives," argues author Joel Kotkin. Other authors point to a new philosophy of "peer progressivism" that is sweeping the valley.

These tech progressives embrace planned communities, where corporate institutions control every aspect of daily life. Employees at Facebook and Google hop on company buses to reach their corporate compounds. They can enjoy a gourmet meal and drop the kids off at daycare all by going to work, and without having to interact with the help.

Contrary to the myth, the Silicon Valley isn't full of individualistic free-market capitalists. Tech companies are largely building wealth from government contracts. This summer's revelations by government whistleblower Edward Snowden detail how the biggest tech companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo, cooperated with the NSA's Prism data collection program.

Even Peter Thiel, the archetype of the Ron Paul-loving techie, lines his pockets from big government surveillance. Thiel is the single largest shareholder in Palantir Technologies, a quasi-secretive data-mining company. Now valued at $9 billion, Palantir owes much of its profits to government contracts.

Google's policies in particular are incompatible with the Republican Party's values of individual freedom and property rights. Ask authors of the millions of books that the company has digitally copied without permission about Google's respect for intellectual property rights. Then again, some Google users can't even ask questions. Last week, Google stopped notifying users in China when they searched for censored terms, such as "Tiananmen Square in 1989" or "Falun Gong."

The "Do No Evil" search giant, which recently purchased robotics giant Boston Dynamics, has directly aligned its business plan with big government. One analyst predicts that the U.S. military is on track to become Google's biggest customer.

"In a sense, the tech companies are more like the NSA than they would like to think," writes Wired's Steven Levy. "Both have seized on the progress in computing, communications, and storage to advance their respective missions."

There's no question that California Republicans need to expand our coalition. But, as long as Republicans remain focused on the Silicon Valley mirage, we put off the hard work of build trusting with women, Latinos and Asian-Americans.

Shawn Steel, a former chairman of the California Republican Party, is the state's representative on the Republican National Committee. He wrote this for this newspaper.

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