Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez said that Donald Trump does not “align with the values” of his city ahead of the former president’s rally planned near the Southern California locale later this week.
Trump’s campaign announced Monday that the Republican presidential nominee will address supporters at an event at Calhoun Ranch at 5 p.m. PST Saturday, his first public event in the Coachella Valley since his 2020 reelection bid.
It’s an unusual stop for a GOP candidate so close to Election Day. Coachella’s congressional district is represented by Democratic Congressman Raul Ruiz, and the city’s surrounding county, Riverside, has voted for a Democratic candidate in the last four presidential elections.
Some experts have suggested that Trump may be going to speak to Latino voters, hoping that his presence in a Democratic stronghold could rally the key voting bloc in swing states come November. But Hernandez, a Democrat serving his fifth term in office, rebuked Trump’s visit in a statement Monday, saying that the former president “wasn’t invited by the people who live here.”
“The City of Coachella was proud to welcome Senator Bernie Sanders during the 2020 primary election, but news of former President Trump’s upcoming visit has been met very differently,” Hernandez said in the statement shared to Facebook.
“Trump’s attacks on immigrants, women, the LGBTQ community and the most vulnerable among us don’t align with the values of our community,” the mayor added. “He has consistently expressed disdain for the type of diversity that helps define Coachella. We don’t know why Trump is visiting near Coachella, but we know he wasn’t invited by the people who live here. He ain’t like us.”
Ruiz also attacked the former president in a statement shared on Monday with the Desert Sun, saying that it’s “truly appalling—and yet another demonstration of his cluelessness and ignorance—that Donald Trump would stage a rally in Coachella.”
“Under a second Trump administration, there is literally no place in America that would be harmed more than the Coachella Valley,” Ruiz added, who specifically called out Trump’s policies on tariffs, immigration and climate action.
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign via email on Tuesday for comment.
Trump’s visit on Saturday has a low chance of impacting his chances in California. According to FiveThirtyEight’s tracking, as of Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris is up by nearly 25 points (59.7 percent to 34.8 percent) on average across statewide polling. The last time the state voted Republican in a presidential tilt was in 1988, when former President George H.W. Bush was elected to the White House.
In the 2016 election, Trump set a record low for Republican candidates in California, losing by more than 30 points to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 61.73 percent to 31.62 percent. In 2020, President Joe Biden won the Golden State, 63.5 percent to 34.3 percent.
Trump communications director Steven Cheung told Newsweek earlier Tuesday that the former president’s “visit to Coachella will highlight Harris’ poor record and show that he has the right solutions for every state and every American.”
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