Many people think that California is still a “winner take all” state for the Republican Presidential primary.  We are not.  But we are also do not award our delegates proportionately, as many states do…

By the time California Republicans for their pick for President in 2008, Senator John McCain had pretty much sewn up the nomination.  McCain won the statewide vote in the California primary.  But he did not get all of California’s delegates.  A group of them actually went to Mitt Romney that year because in California, almost all of the delegates are awarded based on the winner in each of our 53 Congressional Districts.  To be precise — California will send 172 delegates to the Tampa Convention this August.  159 of them will be awarded, three apiece, to the candidate that gets the plurality of the vote in each U.S. House district.  10 delegates will go to the candidate that wins the plurality of Republican votes statewide.  The remaining 3 delegates will be our RNC members, who are not bound to any particular candidate.  In California, each candidate will submit a list of 169 potential delegates (a big project since delegates must be registered to vote in the Congressional District they represent) — and based on the results, the appropriate delegates will be seated.

This “by district” system of delegate allocation in California is relatively new in its application.  In 1976 the California Party rules were set up to support the “Favorite Son” candidacy of Ronald Reagan for President — by awarding all delegates to the statewide winner.   Those rules remained in place until last decade….  In 1999, in a little remembered drill that nonetheless caused then Bush California Chairman Gerry Parsky heartburn, GOP conservatives engineered a “winner take all by Congressional District” delegate selection process for GOP delegates to future Presidential Nominating Conventions after 2000.  Led by then State Senator Ray Haynes, Party Chairman John McGraw and his Executive Director, yours truly (honorable mentions to Tom Hudson, Lorelei Kinder RIP, Mike Schroeder and Mike Spence), the Republican Party modified its old “winner take all” rules.

The 1999 rules weren’t in effect for the 2000 California Presidential Primary, at which President Bush and Senator McCain had a semblance of a contest.  The new rules also had no effect on delegate selection in 2004, when President Bush was the incumbent.  And as I mentioned above, the rules had little impact in 2008 where McCain had already locked things up.  But as we see the campaign for the nomination this year drag on, the candidates vying for the top spot on the GOP ticket are going to have to start to think about how to approach a California campaign…

The by-district delegate selection rules encourage Presidential candidates to campaign in congressional districts that might offer them a chance of a plurality: areas that offer them the best opportunities to go face-to-face with the voters or at least to hit the 5 o’clock news shows and talk radio — in places like Fresno, Redding, Hemet and San Luis Obispo.

Presidential candidates will also have to devise grassroots campaigns into traditionally non-GOP areas, such as Maxine Waters’ 35th Congressional District, where around 10,000 Republicans regularly vote.  Yet, whoever wins the plurality of those 10,000 votes will gain 3 Congressional District delegates to the 2012 convention – equivalent to Deleware, Wyoming, or four other states with only one Congressional District (though these states comes with at-large delegates, too).

Candidates must come into California with a regional strategy – perhaps choosing to compete only for delegates in a single media-market, or if they can afford it, the whole state.

While all of these things will be good for the California  GOP, with candidates focused locally instead of just on the state as a whole, it is still probable that the nomination contest will be all but over before Californians weigh in.  But it’ s important to remember that a great many Golden State voters will start voting by absentee ballot in early May, in less than two months.  All four campaigns have to be looking at their strategies for California with these unique rules in mind.  Organizationally, Mitt Romney will have a leg up — as he campaigned here in 2008 and set up a 58 county structure.  But these rules means all of the contenders have a shot at winning delegates here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2012 at 11:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.