CAPITOL JOURNAL / GEORGE SKELTON : California Goliath Is Just a David in Primary

This was to have been the year, the precise moment, when California stood up like the proverbial 800-pound gorilla and shredded the rules for presidential campaigning. It was to have turned the nation’s political landscape upside down.

Remember the Early California Primary?

No longer was the state to be just an idle spectator, watching from the cheap seats while small clusters of pampered voters in strange climates culled out the potential nominees for President.

No more merely an automatic teller machine for candidates who stopped by briefly for chunks of cash to spend in other states.

New Hampshire still could hold its beloved primary first. But two weeks after those half-million registered voters had their say, California’s 13 million would weigh in with theirs.

“Clout”--that’s what California again would wield for the first time in two decades, since all those other states established primaries ahead of ours. No serious candidate could afford any longer to ignore the most populous state. Its special concerns--water, immigrant services, transportation--would be heard. Californians would become Cabinet secretaries, regardless of whether a Californian was President.

The national and state parties, the governor and most legislative leaders all agreed: Great idea. Do it!

So why, then, will California again be standing by passively until the final day of the primary season, June 2, when the nominations presumably will already be clinched?

Former House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill probably has the best explanation. “All politics is local,” he is fond of saying.

Legislators killed the early primary bill last fall because the abstract notion of state clout in the presidential nominating process rates a lower priority than their own political self-interest.

“We all intellectually support an early primary, but when it got down to the nitty-gritty, it came down to everybody’s own individual perspective,” recalled Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno. “It got to be kind of silly.”

These are the principal reasons why California again is being excluded from the winnowing of presidential candidates:

* Some Democratic lawmakers feared that the voters would give a big boost to the candidacies of former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. or the Rev. Jesse Jackson, if he ran. This, they believed, would hurt the party and their own reelection prospects. “They felt that Democratic voters in a California primary couldn’t be trusted and were liable to go for someone far to the left of the mainstream,” said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Jim Costa (D-Fresno).

* Many Democrats were afraid that an early, big-stakes presidential primary would siphon off money from their own races.

* Republicans feared that if the legislative and congressional primaries were combined with the March presidential balloting, the new redistricting more favorable to the GOP would not be implemented in time. Candidates then would have been forced to run in the old districts. The solution: Split the primaries--one in March, the other in June, or even September.

* Legislators of both parties feared any number of scenarios for low voter turnouts. Republicans were afraid that without a lively race for the GOP presidential nomination, their voters would stay home in March. Democrats then would rule the day on ballot initiatives. The solution: limit the March ballot only to presidential candidates.

But Democrats also thought that without the attraction of presidential candidates in June, their voters would stay home. Then the GOP would have an edge on ballot measures. The solution: place all propositions on the November ballot. However, that would require a state constitutional amendment. And one could not be adopted in time for this year.

* Many legislators balked at spending $40 million in taxpayers’ money for an extra primary.

The final reason: Hardly any legislator was in a mood to do Gov. Pete Wilson a favor by creating an early primary that could greatly benefit him if he were to run for President in 1996.

“I suspect if the Democrats get the inkling that he really wants it bad--and a lot of people have that inkling--he won’t get it easy,” said Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles).

“We’re going to trade it for something,” asserted Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco).

As for Wilson, he said: “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for small states to have a disproportionate say in the selection of candidates, but every time somebody tries to do something, people play games. It’s ever gamesmanship here. I’m not going to waste a whole lot of energy on it.”

Costa said he will introduce one more bill in 1993. And if that fails, he will take the issue directly to the voters with an initiative in 1994.

“You can’t write the final chapter,” he said. “This isn’t done yet.”