BURLINGAME - Instead of triumphantly addressing California's GOP convention this weekend with his enemies silenced and his sights on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump is now hunkering down to spend the next several weeks in the Golden State -- usually an afterthought in presidential politics -- fighting a series of bloody battles with John Kasich and Ted Cruz, congressional district by congressional district.

"No one has ever had to do anything like this before in California," said Richard Temple, a veteran Republican strategist who is working on an independent campaign to derail front-runner Trump because he feels the bombastic New York businessman and reality TV star will destroy the party he loves -- and almost surely lead the GOP to a crushing defeat in November.

So Temple and other California strategists are mining demographic, marketing and voting trend data, trying to find where Trump is most vulnerable. They will then marshal resources to those enclaves -- whether that means hiring people to call voters, knock on their doors or bombard them with mailers.

"This is going to be hand-to-hand" combat, Temple said. "You're talking about five reams of paper sitting on my desk. I'm going to figure out how each one of these districts tick."

They'll sort the immigration-loving GOP executives in the Silicon Valley from the conservative ranchers along the southern border who feel their land has been invaded by a foreign force. They'll figure out how to appeal to deeply religious Latinos in East Los Angeles and drought-stricken farmers up and down the Central Valley.

The challenge they face in halting Trump's advance toward the nomination should become clearer after Tuesday's Indiana primary. Trump needs a strong showing in the Hoosier State, where polls show him slightly ahead of Cruz, to avoid needing to effectively run the table in California on June 7, the last day of this crazy primary season. (Source: San Jose Mercury)

Story Date: May 2, 2016