Leftists have been gaming the system as long as politics has been a thing.

But there’s one thing they didn’t count on.

And Democrats are smoking mad over what just happened to their favorite campaign tool.

California Republicans showed why the GOP has to adapt or die

The leftists running California have made the job of seizing power for themselves as easy as possible by legalizing a campaign practice of “ballot harvesting” thinking that Republicans would never catch on.

You can only imagine what they’re saying behind the scenes after a Republican campaign took a page from their book and coasted to victory.

A Republican National Committee member from California says it’s essential for conservatives to embrace the campaign methods leftists have made law in the Golden State.

“It’s a different game because of ballot harvesting,” Shawn Steel told Breitbart News. “Several states, they outlawed it in the last two years. I don’t like it, but since that’s the rule in California, you have to adapt or die, and so we’ve adapted it. We’re not ashamed of it, because that’s explicitly the law.”

The idea that campaigns can go out and literally collect their votes seems wrong on many levels, but Steel says it’s essential to stay competitive in the leftist controlled environment.

His wife, Representative Michelle Steel, used ballot harvesting as a tool to help her win reelection in California’s 48th Congressional District.

California GOP ballot-harvesting program wins helped snatch the Speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi

The campaign worked with church elders in Korean-American and Vietnamese-American churches ensuring that voters felt comfortable that the ballots would be handled with integrity.

“It turns out that it’s a matter [of] does the person trust the person that you’re giving your ballot to? That’s a big part of it,” Steel said.

His wife is certainly working against the odds in her Northwest Orange County district.

In 2020 Biden carried her district by six points.

But Steel won despite that because her campaign had built up a harvesting model and went on to win reelection again even after Democrats specifically tried to draw district lines so victory would be out of reach for Republicans.

He also noted that 40% of her district is made up of immigrants.

But unlike groups Democrats seem to be obsessed with courting, those in Steel’s district became citizens by following the rules.

“They became American citizens, legally. They bought homes. They owned businesses and got their kids to a good school,” he said. “And these are middle-class homes, not fancy homes on the beach, but smaller homes in Buena Park and such.”

By going after their votes with a firmly anti-Communist messages the Republican managed to hold on to a critical House seat even in the middle of California.

“By knocking on 200,000 doors, campaigning in seven languages, and fiercely taking on the Chinese Communist Party … literally, it was the most anti-communist campaign in America, because her opponent was a proponent of the Confucius Institute and got his master’s degree at the University of Peking,” Steel explained.

He also called out the Democrats’ claims about immigrant voters as nonsense.

“The Democrats keep having these broad-based stereotypes [about immigrants],” he said. “We’re talking about a mostly hard-working people that jealously guard their families and their children, that love their homes, and appreciate this country. The Democrats put them in some kind of category, ‘They’re oppressed. They’re angry. They’re upset.’ That’s nonsense.”

By taking a page from the Democrats’ playbook—and winning—Steel might just play a role in convincing Democrats that their ballot harvesting scheme wasn’t such a bright idea after all.

Stay tuned to Blue State Blues for any updates to this ongoing story.