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?
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