With just 23 days left until election day and voters already casting ballots, former President Trump is returning to California on Saturday for a rally in the Coachella Valley.
The event is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. on a polo field at Calhoun Ranch, located just outside the city of Coachella, but supporters lined up hours earlier in the scorching desert heat to see the former president. They sought shade in the few spots they could and large tanks of ice quickly emptied as attendees grabbed fistfuls of cubes to put under their hats or fill water bottles.
“Welcome to Trumpchella!” said state GOP chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, one of the warm-up speakers for the former president.
Trump’s visit to the home state of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, offers him a chance to bash the liberal policies of the Bay Area native as well as California itself — one of his favorite refrains on the campaign trail.
And the Coachella Valley, home to a thriving agricultural industry and a large population of Latino farmworkers, provides a backdrop for Trump to highlight the region’s water and agricultural needs, as well as immigration. Latinos comprise almost 98% of Coachella, according to the U.S. Census.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Coachella) said the “Coachella Valley is known for being a presidential playground,” noting that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) campaigned in the valley, former President Obama came to golf and Presidents Ford and Eisenhower retired in the region. Still, he called Trump’s decision to visit Coachella “baffling.”
“We are familiar with having presidents come and leave a mark here and we respect and love them… but ex-President Trump is different,” Ruiz said on a call from Coachella Valley, where he was spending the day talking to reporters. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of respect for the demographics that live here — not just in his vile rhetoric but also in his policies.”
The rally venue is located just outside the 41st Congressional District, where Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor, is challenging Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who is expected to attend the rally. The race will be critical in determining which party wins control of Congress.
Calvert, who was endorsed by Trump in the 2022 congressional election, voted against certifying the 2020 election results in Arizona and Pennsylvania though he acknowledged that Democrat Joe Biden won the presidency.
Mary and Pete Venegas drove more than an hour from their Hemet home to see Trump, whom they both plan to vote for for the first time in November.
Mary Venegas, a former Democrat who sat out the 2020 election because she was unenthusiastic about Biden, said Trump deserves “a second chance.” Wearing a red Trump T-shirt, she said she is now a registered Republican.
“He made me do it,” Mary Venegas said, laughing, as she poked her husband,