If you are a member of a Golden State Republican Women club, like Chico Evening Republican Women, you are asked not to publicly endorse one Republican candidate over the other before the primary.  In 2025-26 we have 3 Republican candidates who are running for the Assembly seat in District 3 in which our current Assemlyman, James Gallagher, will be terming out.

It would be very easy to jump into this race with an endorsement, since it is heating up quickly and will most likely be a very contentious campaign, but we strongly advise our members to refrain from doing so – and there are reasons why.  We aren’t requesting that you refrain from endorsing one candidate or bad mouthing another candidate in order to try and boss you around.  We are asking this for several reasons:

• This pits groups of Republicans one against the other, and we need to treat one another decently.
• We live in a small, rural area, and when we bash one another, those opinions can tarnish our relationships with the candidates far beyond the election.
• We may disagree with the way a candidate voted on an issue in the past, or with something he or she may have said, but this is not the entire picture of that candidate.
• It is written into the bylaws of both our club and the state organization, GSRW, that we are not to endorse one Republican candidate over another before the primary.

In fact, it is a wise bylaw that has been in place across the US for many decades in most Republican women’s organizations in order that we are supportive of ALL of our Republican candidates.  You’re free to support the candidate of your choosing, free to express that privately to your friends and family, free to donate to a campaign for one candidate.  All we are asking is that you do this privately.  Here is what we are asking that you NOT DO:

• Write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper supporting one candidate over the others.
• Speak on a local television station or internet video against one candidate or for one candidate.
• Get on social media and bash or support one candidate over the others.
• Click the Laugh or Angry icons in social media to ridicule or hate on Republican candidates.

If you were running for office, wouldn’t you want Republicans to treat you with decency at all times, even though they were voting for another candidate?  Let’s give these candidates a fair shake and stay out of the fray by not endorsing or criticizing publicly in the 2025-26 Assembly race.  We’ll save up all of that emotion for the candidate who wins in the primary, then go great guns publicly supporting our Republican Assembly candidate in the lead-up to the 2026 November Election.

And in the larger picture, shouldn’t we save the vitriol for the Democrat candidates?