Christie will run for reelection in November, only a few weeks after the special Senate election. The bigger his margin, the more he will be able to argue to Republicans in 2016, should he become a candidate for president, that he has the capacity to change the electoral map equation by winning blue states like his.

Rand Paul used a trip to California to make an explicit appeal for his libertarian conservatism as the way to make the Golden State, and perhaps some other blue states, competitive. He said there’s no reason a redefined Republican Party cannot compete in California.

With an eye on younger voters and the state’s high-tech community, he called for more tolerance and diversity within the party, said Republicans must appeal more directly to Hispanics and African Americans, and argued that environmentalism and small-government conservatism need not be mutually exclusive.

“I bike and hike and kayak and compost,” Paul said, joking that he’s trying to grow a giant sequoia in Kentucky.