California Primary: Big Question Mark for Democrats, GOP

As the presidential campaign moved into California for an epic two-week battle, the state’s political caste was split Wednesday between two emotions--astonishment that a California primary really matters and bewilderment over how things would turn out.

While Arizona Sen. John McCain’s efforts to capture the state won a clear boost from his double header victories Tuesday night, he must attract Republicans far more successfully than he has in earlier primaries.

That is because in California, unlike South Carolina or Michigan, only Republican votes will count when it comes to dispensing the state’s convention delegates. Until Tuesday, at least, Texas Gov. George W. Bush had maintained a strong hold on Republican regulars, whom he has assiduously courted.

But Bush has a huge risk here as well--if he loses Democrats and independents to McCain, as he has in other states, he could lose the popular vote, leaving him with the difficult explanation of how, exactly, he could win the state in November.

36 Years Since State GOP Primary Mattered

All of this is bad news for Democrat Bill Bradley, who has staked his campaign on the March 7 results but now finds himself in the shadows of the Republican contest at least until then. And it is very good news for Vice President Al Gore, who gets to watch as Bush and McCain bloody each other for the GOP nomination and distract voters from Bradley’s efforts to come from behind to victory.

On a purely parochial level, however, all of the handicapping Wednesday was secondary to sheer amazement that California really will have a role in electing a party’s nominees, after so many years spent as an afterthought.

“I’m 38, and I know I’ve never voted in a primary that mattered,” crowed the state Republican Party Chairman John McGraw. “This is really serious now.”

Indeed, a California Republican would have to be at least 57 to have voted in a state presidential primary that affected the nomination. The last time Republicans held a meaningful rumble here was in 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran for president. There was a contested primary in 1976, but that featured favorite son Ronald Reagan, who beat incumbent President Ford by nearly a 2-1 margin.

On the Democratic side, California has languished on the sidelines since 1972, when George S. McGovern clinched the nomination here.

The novelty of it all prompted many to predict a larger-than-normal turnout on March 7. The secretary of state’s office has yet to issue its formal turnout prediction, but spokeswoman Beth Miller said officials expect it to be “well above” the 42% figure of the last presidential primary in 1996.

Just what those voters will do, however, is far more difficult to predict. The guesswork is complicated because this is the first year in which the state will vote in a presidential primary under the blanket primary rules.

The act of voting will be as it was in the 1998 state elections--voters of any political stripe can cast ballots for any candidate, regardless of party. From there on out, however, everything is new.

State officials will tally the popular vote, and they will also use coding on the ballots to determine the voters’ party affiliations. For the second tally, which will determine who gathers the state’s delegates, officials will count only registered party members.

The unusual process is the result of a conflict between Republican and Democratic party rules and a voter-approved initiative mandating the blanket primary.

Thus, only Republicans will determine which candidate wins the 162 delegates, which will all go to the statewide winner. Only Democrats will determine who gets the 367 Democratic delegates, which will be awarded through a complicated formula.

Although the system has been in place for months--and party officials broadcast its existence before the voter registration deadline in February--Secretary of State Bill Jones predicted that voters will be incensed when they learn that their right to vote for the candidate of their choice does not give them influence over the selection of delegates.

“Wait till you actually have people show up and vote, and yet their votes are not counted,” said Jones, who to no avail has encouraged the political parties to confer delegates based on the popular vote.

The distinction is most pressing in the Republican contest. McCain reaches California with a surge of momentum from Tuesday’s victories in Michigan and his home state of Arizona--but he has yet to prove that he can corral enough Republican votes to win the delegates.

Tracking polls taken for other contests showed as recently as Tuesday that Bush held a forceful lead among Republicans here. And while he angered some activists by skipping the recent GOP state convention, Bush bailed out the financially struggling party last fall with a fund-raiser that brought it into the black.

“I don’t think Republicans are ready to forget about that,” said Barbara Alby, a former state legislator and one of two California members of the Republican National Committee.

McCain officials, while insisting that they believe the senator will win the delegates, already were advancing their line of attack in case he doesn’t.

“If there is a split decision, if George Bush loses California, even if he does pick up the delegates, he is a crippled candidate,” said Dan Schnur, McCain’s communications director and a veteran of California campaigns. McCain would use the popular vote to reinforce his argument that he is the most electable Republican for November.

“A California blanket primary is the single most accurate predictor of a general election campaign you can find,” Schnur said.

The focus of attention on the Republican contest, which also includes candidate Alan Keyes, is likely to further obscure the Democratic contest in a way that could benefit Gore.

He leads in all pre-primary polling in California by margins of 2 to 1 or better. Bradley’s state coordinator, Gale Kaufman, acknowledged that McCain’s continued surge against Bush has limited interest in the Democratic race.

“We would like someone to be paying attention to the Democratic race for a moment,” she said. But she insisted that a rise in interest statewide would buoy the Bradley troops.

Differing Reasons for Supporting Race

In a state where relations between the parties are often fractious, there was joint applause that the presidential campaign will continue unabated into California. But the sentiments arose for very different reasons.

Republicans said they were hopeful that Democrats and independents attracted to their candidates would stick with the party until November’s general election--a necessary act if Republicans, who are vastly outnumbered by Democrats here, are to win.

“Once people make that leap of faith, I think we’ve got them,” said party chairman McGraw.

Democrats, however, were gleeful at the recent tone of the Republican race, in which Bush in particular has allied himself with religious conservatives. McCain, if he is to overtake Bush in the battle for Republican votes, will likely have to appeal to conservatives, too--and the substance of those appeals will be grist for the Democratic candidate in November.