Palin rallies the faithful in Anaheim while Whitman and Fiorina campaign elsewhere

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The state’s top two GOP candidates, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, may have skipped Sarah Palin’s rally in Anaheim, but that didn’t stop the former Alaska governor from claiming the California flag for the cadre of conservative women she has endorsed as her “mama grizzlies.”

“There is no way I’m not going to love a state when you enter your borders and you look up at your state flag and you see emblazoned on that a mama grizzly,” Palin said to cheers in Anaheim.

While Palin rallied hundreds of voters with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, Whitman and Fiorina campaigned on opposite ends of the state. Fiorina spent the morning at a veterans’ event in San Diego with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.); Whitman continued her bus tour of Northern California.

Alhough Palin endorsed Fiorina in the primary, counting the candidate among her “mama grizzlies,” she did not mention Whitman or Fiorina in her remarks at the RNC fundraiser in Anaheim.

Instead she urged her audience to “exhaust yourselves” before the election.

“Now is when we kick it in to gear. Now is when we have to dig deep,” Palin said, appearing on a stage with other California GOP candidates –- the most prominent of whom was Assemblyman Van Tran, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove).

“You wouldn’t be here today if you didn’t know too that America is at a turning point,” Palin said. “People know something has gone terribly wrong with our government and it has gotten so far off track. But people also know that there is nothing wrong in America that a good old-fashioned election can’t fix.”

A full report about Palin’s visit will appear tonight at latimes.com.

-- Maeve Reston and Seema Mehta in Anaheim