I thought Gavin Newsom played the hand Elder dealt him brilliantly. I wrote about that and my thoughts on Elder here:

https://medium.com/politically-speaking/gavin-newsom-just-burned-the-republican-party-to-the-ground-610c6b81f9c0

I'm not a big Newsom fan, but I do think he just stuck it to the California Republican Party big time, by making Elder the face of the party in CA.