THE SAVAGE STRUGGLE FOR POWER / SPECIAL REPORT: CAMPAIGN ’92 : They Might as Well Be Running for President on the Moon : California: With attempts to move the primary to March a failure, voters focus on local politics. Cash-short activists may not be so giving this year.

What presidential campaign? In California this election year, all politics is local.

Unless you’re a “rolodex commando”--someone capable of marshaling friends to ante up a slew of campaign contributions--don’t expect to hear much from the presidential contenders this primary season. Instead, Californians are likely to be hustled by candidates running for the state’s two U.S. Senate seats and 52 congressional slots and in some hotly contested post-reapportionment legislative races.

Things might have been different if California had successfully moved its June primary election to early March. By now, the presidential candidates might have set up serious campaign organizations in the state; they might have been forced to become more visible or to address issues of direct concern to Californians. And New Hampshire, with only 3% of California’s population, might not be looming quite so large in presidential politics.

So maybe President George Bush should have lobbied for a March primary in California. He holds a gargantuan fund-raising lead over his competitors; whatever the outcome in New Hampshire, only Bush can gear up quickly enough to organize and finance an instant California campaign.

For Democrats, California might have provided a one-state Super Tuesday, anointing a candidate with appeal to diverse constituencies in an important political region. On the other hand, that’s risky--particularly in a state like California, whose Democratic primary electorate is far more liberal than the nation as a whole. Remember 1988? Super Tuesday was supposed to provide a lift for moderate Democratic candidates, presumed to be more salable in the general election. But when the dust from the Southern Regional Primary cleared, liberals Michael S. Dukakis and Jesse Jackson had gained ground and moderates Albert Gore Jr. and Richard A. Gephardt stumbled.

The only certainty is that the Golden State will continue to play the role it has long played in the presidential selection process. It has become a cliche--but a true one--that California is the Automatic Teller Machine of American politics. Candidates come here to extract money. This year, however, they may not be leaving with the bounty they expect.

The California money pot has shrunk for two reasons: the economy is feeble and the configuration of high-stakes state and local elections has led to a concentration of available resources almost anywhere but in presidential races.

Political money is tight nationwide--and California reflects the overall pattern of recession-driven retrenchment. Many of the state’s traditional campaign contributors--attorneys, developers, realtors, business people, the entertainment industries--have been hit hard by the economic downturn. And even those who haven’t been hurt worry that they might be--or are using the economy as an excuse to opt out of political participation--and aren’t contributing as much.

Asked by a prominent GOP fund-raiser to donate to the Bush campaign, one California businessman shot back: “Read my lips. No new contributions.”

Some Republicans assert that, in the end, money will come in for the President--because he is the President. Others testily argue that the GOP has abandoned California as part of its presidential strategy, and that will hurt Bush. As one Republican put it, “When Ronald Reagan went out of office, the California presence in the party seemed to follow. Bush has few ties here. The Democrats,” he pointed out, “at least have finance people” in the state.

Clearly, Bush has not been the money draw California Republicans had hoped. As things stood in 1991, Sen. John Seymour, appointed last year to fill Gov. Pete Wilson’s seat in the U.S. Senate, could have expected to reap financial and electoral benefits from a wildly popular President. With the economy stalled and Bush’s ratings plummeting in the state, Seymour appears to be quietly distancing himself from the Oval Office.

In the race for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Alan Cranston, unhappiness with the President and his economic policies appears to be helping the efforts of at least one GOP hopeful.

Silicon Valley types are furious at Bush over his Japan trip and the dearth of high-tech representatives on it; many will concentrate their energies and fund-raising on the Senate candidacy of Rep. Tom Campbell, a moderate Republican from the heart of California’s ailing hi-tech industry. Said one Bay Area Republican, there is “unbounded enthusiasm for Tom Campbell and anything but enthusiasm for the President.”

Just as traditional Republican boosters are sitting on their hands or turning to state races, major sources of Democratic support and money, like the Hollywood community, appear to be paying far more attention to the Senate races than to national politics.

None of the Democratic presidential candidates is “inspiring fire,” as one fund-raiser put it. With the race for the nomination starting so late, Californians know little about most of the Democratic contenders--and they may know too much about their former governor, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.

Few candidates have “established personal relationships,” in the words of one Democratic player, with California activists and givers. On the Senate level, people do have longstanding ties to the various candidates. And that is making a difference.

The lesson here is that, in California politics, people tend to support candidates whom they know and causes in which they’ve come to believe. They’ll focus on the presidential campaign whenever they’re good and ready.

Political fortunes--and power equations--can change with lightning speed. Timing is everything. And analysts and activists of both major parties agree that, no matter how little respect California gets during the primary season, the state’s role in November’s general election will be pivotal. Whoever wins California’s 54 electoral votes, gains 20% of the total needed to elect the President.

It is almost impossible, pundits say, for the Democrats to capture the presidency without carrying the state. Conventional Wisdom and recent electoral results indicate that the GOP could win without California in its column. But the Republican nominee--Bush, presumably--can’t risk letting the Democrats get away with that prize. And the GOP’s task in this pro-choice state has not been made easier by the U.S. Supreme Court decision to rule on Pennsylvania’s restrictive abortion law before the November election.

Come September, the nominees of both major parties will be spending a lot of time and money in California. The resources they will have to invest, the field organizations that will have to put in place and the resulting level of voter turnout will affect the presidential contest on down to the local races.

One thing is clear: California. Wallflower in June. Prom queen in November. And that’s the way it is. In politics.