State May Get Its Long-Sought Wish: A Say in the Nominations

After years spent as a frustrated understudy, learning lines never to be uttered, California steps onto the national political stage today as the five-week blitz before the March 7 primary begins.

Yes, you’ve heard it before, but this time it might actually be true: California’s much-sought vote just may matter this year in defining the major party nominees for the presidency.

Look to the candidates for evidence. Just hours after the polls close in New Hampshire, Vice President Al Gore will fly here on Air Force Two, arriving tonight for two events with another set for Thursday. That same day his Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, will hold an outdoor rally in San Francisco.

This weekend, the Republicans arrive at the state party convention in Burlingame. Sen. John McCain of Arizona will speak for himself, while the other Gov. Bush, Jeb of Florida, will step in for his brother, GOP national front-runner and Texas Gov. George W. Bush. Their father, former President George Bush, will campaign in California the following weekend.

Californians could be forgiven if they are not quite aware that the show is about to open. Only once before, in 1996, has the California primary been held before June; even then, with a March 26 primary, the party nominees had already been assured and excitement was at a minimum.

“If you did a poll and the one question was, ‘When’s the primary?’ I won’t think many here would say March 7,” one senior presidential campaign advisor said, dryly and anonymously.

Nonetheless, the California voting will rank as perhaps the premier contest that day in a nationwide set of 13 primaries. And the next five weeks should provide both an unpredictable primary battle here and, potentially, a dress rehearsal for the November general election.

“The winner of the California primary will be the Republican nominee for president, period,” predicted McCain communications director Dan Schnur, adding words that to a slightly lesser extent could also be said about the Democratic contest: “Two or more may come into California, but only one will be coming out.”

The national front-runners, Republican Bush and Democrat Gore, lead by yawning ratios of better than 2 to 1 in California. The challengers insist that is more a reflection of familiarity than hard-and-fast support.

“What the polls in California say is of those who know the candidates, Al Gore has name identification,” said Gale Kaufman, the Sacramento-based consultant who is managing Bradley’s campaign. “For us, it’s fertile ground.”

After a big and campaign-sustaining victory in New Hampshire, McCain officials were touting the similarities between curmudgeonly New Hampshire and laid-back California.

“The states have very marked characteristics in common,” said Schnur, a veteran of several California contests, including Pete Wilson’s gubernatorial reelection. “California voters take the opportunity to tell politicians how little they trust them every time they can--Proposition 13, term limits, a whole string of campaign finance initiatives.”

But the dynamics of campaigning there and here could not be more different. Fresh from a state where a handshake with the candidate is de rigueur before voting day, they come to a place where candidates are unrecognizable unless captive in a television screen.

Perhaps predictably in a state this vast, all of the candidates can tout some reasonable line of appeal. If McCain’s backers say his rout-the-system approach has resonance, Bush supporters can point to his electoral success in Texas, another big state with an influential Latino vote. Gore staffers can argue that their man is the best replica of the incrementalist Democrat who won the last big election here--Gov. Gray Davis. Bradley’s supporters can argue that California’s go-for-broke optimists yearn for someone literally larger than life.

While California will be a routine campaign stop for the candidates in the next five weeks, it will not have all of their attention, as New Hampshire did this week. That is because, while there are a few Republican contests between now and March 7, every primary day afterward involves several states.

“The national campaign begins for everybody after this,” said Gore’s California director, Sky Gallegos, as she awaited election returns in Los Angeles.

For Bush, who hopes to quash McCain before California, this state may elicit a return to the “compassionate conservative” theme he sketched early in his campaign, before assaults from the right required him to shore up his taxes-and-abortion right flank.

“I don’t think you’ll see George Bush tacking to the right anymore, because frankly, he won’t need to,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican activist who is supporting Bush. He does expect Bush to launch an “unprecedented” appeal to Latino voters, whom Bush is trying to wrest from the embrace of Democrats.

For Gore--and to a lesser extent Bradley--more bashing of Bush will likely be in the offing.

“Al Gore, in terms of his views on the environment, choice and gun control is very much in sync with California voters,” one prominent supporter said recently, his antenna clearly focused on a general election as much as the primary.