Sacks’ claim has two parts: (1) the California GOP would need to move toward the center to make progress, and (2) any such meaningful repositioning and accompanying electoral gains would take generations, not just one or two election cycles after 2022.

What has actually happened so far (through the 2024 cycle):

• Democrats still dominate statewide and the legislature. In 2022, Democrats again won every statewide office and kept supermajorities in both legislative chambers; Republicans held only 18 of 80 Assembly seats and 9 of 40 Senate seats. (manatt.com)
• In 2024, Republicans modestly improved their legislative standing (Assembly: 18→20 seats; Senate: 9→10), but Democrats still hold very large majorities (60–20 in the Assembly, 30–10 in the Senate). This is incremental, not a transformational breakthrough in a strongly Democratic state. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Statewide partisan balance remains heavily Democratic. In the 2024 presidential vote, the Democratic nominee (Kamala Harris) still carried California by about 20 points (58.5%–38.3%), even though the state shifted rightward compared with 2020. That is still consistent with California being roughly a +20–30 Democratic state at the top of the ticket. (en.wikipedia.org)
• No clear centrist repositioning of the party itself. An example: in 2023, California Republican Party delegates rejected proposed platform changes that would have softened the party’s language on same-sex marriage and abortion, keeping more hardline stances instead of moving toward the state’s center on key social issues. (metroweekly.com)

These facts suggest that, as of late 2025, the California GOP has not undergone a major centrist shift, nor has it achieved large-scale, rapid electoral gains—outcomes that would contradict Sacks’ view that quick post‑2022 turnaround was unrealistic.

However, Sacks’ core prediction is explicitly long‑term: that meaningful repositioning and substantial progress would take generations (multiple decades), not just one or two cycles. Only one full post‑2022 cycle (2024) has occurred so far, and we are nowhere near the multi‑decade horizon he was talking about. Because the timescale he specified has not elapsed, we cannot yet say whether his long‑run claim is ultimately right or wrong.

So, while current evidence is consistent with his prediction (no rapid centrist shift or major GOP resurgence), it is still too early to render a definitive judgment on a forecast that was about outcomes over decades.