In 1997, Tom Hudson on my staff came to me with a great idea–why don’t we distribute our presidential delegates to the winner of the primary in each congressional district? At that time, California had about 180 presidential delegates (three per congressional district and about 21 bonus delegates), all of which were awarded to the presidential candidate that won the most votes in the presidential primary. Given this system, most presidential candidates would show up in California about a year away from the primary, have a bunch of fundraisers in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento, then come in about two weeks before the primary and spend several million dollars on commercials. Not a system designed to build a stronger party operation.
My experience in politics taught me two principles of politics. Principles dictate positions. Systems dictate strategies. If California Republicans wanted a stronger party operation, they had to devise systems that encouraged people to develop that operation. A winner take all by congressional district system would do that. California has double the delegates of any other state, and five or six times the delegates of most states. Winning six or ten congressional districts in California would be better for a presidential candidate would be better than winning all of the delegates in most of the other states. Candidates would now go to Fresno, or Redding, or San Bernardino, or Visalia, rather than just Los Angeles and San Francisco, because they would get delegates by doing so.
I got some serious objections. There are about 50,000 Republicans in all of San Francisco, but those Republicans would select as many delegates as 300,000 Republicans in Orange County. True, I said, but today, every Republican candidate for any job visits Orange County. No Republicans go to San Francisco. How would we ever rebuild a party there if no one ever goes there?
Ultimately, through a lot of compromises, the rule change was adopted, with the help of Jon Fleischman, and then State Party Chair John McGraw, but its effectiveness was delayed until 2004. This presidential election is the first in which it is making a real difference, and guess what is happening. That’s right, candidates are showing up all over the state, trying to win some of California’s delegates. Six, seven, or eight congressional districts would be a real prize. California is not just the bank for these candidates, it is an actual source of delegates for the nomination.
The problem? How can we get these candidates to continue to pay attention to California after the nomination process is over? The solution, award electors on the basis of congressional districts as well. There are about 10 competitive congressional districts in California. That is twice the number in New Mexico, and the same as Wisconsin. Yet in every election since 1988, presidential candidates of both parties have ignored California, and spent hundreds of hours in Wisconsin and New Mexico. Why? Because the ten votes in Wisconsin, and the five votes in New Mexico can be affected by visiting there. What if a trip to Fresno, San Diego, Sacramento, and Santa Barbara resulted in five, six or seven more electoral votes? Would these candidates visit those areas? Absolutely. No longer would California be a foregone conclusion.
In addition, these competitive congressional districts also happen to overlap our competitive legislative districts. Would we elect more Republicans to Congress and the Legislature if the national party focused resources on these parts of our state? Absolutely, and our party would become stronger.
I proposed the idea in 2001, and it went nowhere. An initiatitive was just approved for circulation recently, and the Democrats went nuts. Howard Dean actually held a press conference to condemn those "wascawy wepublicans" who had the gall to propose this heinous and despicable idea. Boxer and Feinstein said they would rather eliminate the Electoral College than allow this change in how our electoral votes are awarded. Across the state, left wing nutballs are going nutballs because of this proposal. "Evil," "underhanded," "deceptive" is what it is being called.
That alone is a good reason to consider the change. Driving the left wing nuts in this state even nuttier than they already are is a noble calling all by itself, but this proposal is more than that. It is actually a fair way of distributing the enormous number of Electoral College votes that California has. If you are in favor of redistricting reform, one of the fastest ways to get that reform is to have Electoral College votes dependent on redistricting. The Republican National Committee will spend considerable resources to get that reform if they could get the same number of electoral votes as they would get for spending four or five million dollars in Iowa. If you want a Republican majority in the Legislature, Electoral College reform is a way to get that, because more Republicans in the Legislature means more Electoral College votes. More important, if you want a stronger Republican Party in California, creating a system that rewards a Republican presidential candidate for campaigning in California is start in the right direction.
Systems determine strategies. Awarding Electoral College votes by congressional district is a good system to help Republicans to develop good strategies for strengthening the California Republican Party. We should all support the idea.
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