The California Presidential Primary Has Been An Unmitigated Failure

We are 56 days from the California Presidential primary on February 5, and just a few weeks from opening early and absentee voting, and I think it's reasonable to assess how the facts of the race thus far have met with the expectations, and even if it isn't reasonable, I'm about to do it. The entire rationale for moving up the primary to February, from people as varied as the Governor, the Speaker of the Assembly, even our friends at the Courage Campaign, was that this would bring new attention to California in the Presidential race and would allow the state a say in the picking of a nominee.

How's that goin'?

Monday was one of the first days in months and months where the two top contenders on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, were in California at the same time. They were both here for fundraisers, and both by accident - there was supposed to be a debate on CBS in Los Angeles that day, but a pending WGA action and the unwillingness for the candidates to cross the picket line forced cancellation. Obama's fundraiser, granted, was a low-dollar event at the Gibson Ampitheatre in Universal City - a combination rock concert/political rally. In similar rallies in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, fans saw Oprah: in Hollywood, home of the stars, we got Nick Cannon and the Goo Goo Dolls. Indeed, the last public, no-money-needed appearance by any viable candidate in California fades into the back of the memory. There just haven't been any.

Last night I sat in on a conference call with supporters of John Edwards and the national campaign. It was billed as a dialogue about how Edwards supporters in Southern California can best help their preferred candidate. The unequivocal message from the campaign was that these activists can best help them by "adopting Nevada," home to one of the earlier caucuses, on January 19. They touted road trips to Las Vegas for phone banking and canvassing. This was extremely redolent of work I did with the Dean campaign in 2004 on their "Southwest Victory Tour" into Arizona and New Mexico. Four years later, absolutely nothing has changed.

This is not a slam on the top three campaigns. They are ignoring California, so to speak, because they are making the calculation that victories in the early states will lead to a momentum build that will be impossible to stop. And this is precisely the dynamic of the race. It's clear to anyone that is paying attention that Iowa, and to a lesser extent New Hampshire, have been made MORE decisive as a result of the truncated primary. There are dozens of examples I can cite. Edwards supporter and California Assemblyman Anthony Portantino was on the conference call. He wasn't whipping up support in his district, he was calling in from Iowa. Fabian Nuñez recently took a trip out to Iowa. A few weeks ago we had the executive board meeting of the CDP - the largest gathering of activists you're going to see until the primary. That inviting target attracted - well, it attracted Dennis Kucinich. There have been no TV ads run in California and exactly one mailer, by Clinton, in a small enough quantity to get the attention of the political press and nobody else. The public polling on the California race, at least on the Democratic side, has mirrored the national polling to a T, because all we're getting out here is the national race. The national primary is fictional, and so is the California primary, for all intents and purposes.

People in this state that supported this move, and it was broadly popular, were simply sold a bill of goods. It was blindingly obvious that the only way to change the primary system and allow it to have a diversity of voices was to actually change it, by removing the dominance of Iowa and New Hampshire. I am hopeful that, as a result of this ridiculous front-loading, that will happen in 2012. But clearly, California's move, which was the first of the non-early states and essentially broke the dike, causing 20 or so other states to move up in order to keep pace, EXACERBATED the problem.

And in so doing, the move enabled not only the ballot initiatives that we see on February 5, but the potential for all sorts of Republican mischief in the low-turnout June primary. Frankly, to suggest that a group of lawmakers who wished to change term limits just happened to pick a day before the deadline for filing in the June primary to hold an election which could have that on the ballot is beyond naive. In so doing, the June election became initiative bait, susceptible to all sorts of right-wing ballot measures. We may have dodged a bullet with the Dirty Tricks thing, but there will be others, as you all know (starting with the Hidden Agenda initiative about eminent domain "reform").

In point of fact, the only time that California has ever been a factor in the Presidential primaries is... when they held them in June, in the 1968 and 1972 races (the tragic death of RFK changed what would have been a decisive election in '68, obviously). I'm certainly not saying that history would have repeated itself in 2008 if California only retained its position, but I am saying that absolutely nothing good could have come from moving up, and still potentially something pretty bad could happen as a consequence.