Early primary paid off for state, Clinton

Californians can be thankful the state held its presidential primary on the earliest day legally possible. And Hillary Rodham Clinton should be especially grateful.

Clinton probably wouldn’t even be in the race today if California had not rescued her candidacy way back on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, by delivering a timely victory that helped keep her afloat. The Pennsylvania primary Tuesday likely would have been irrelevant.

Some state pundits have been pining for a June primary that, they dream, would be the final decider of the Democratic presidential nomination. They argue that California got lost in the crowd Feb. 5 -- there were 23 other contests -- and we were irrelevant.

If this state had waited until the optimum moment, they contend, it could have picked the winner and peppered the candidates with California-specific questions on the likes of illegal immigration and the environment.

I doubt it. More likely, Barack Obama still would have been grilled by some Beltway bore about flag pins or the inane equivalent. There was ample opportunity before our primary to press the candidates on state issues; there were two major televised debates, after all.

As for delaying our primary in hopes of becoming the final arbiter of the nominating process, that’s like a poker player surrendering a full house in hopes of drawing a royal flush. Almost always, he’ll go bust. And California certainly would have.

For starters, Republican John McCain’s strongest competitor, Mitt Romney, folded shortly after Feb. 5. California all but clinched the nomination for McCain. That was the last day that any Republican’s vote meant anything anywhere in the country.

Next, do the Democratic math. Clinton won California and gained a net 38 delegates (Clinton, 204; Obama, 166). But if California hadn’t voted Feb. 5, she would have lost Super Tuesday nationally by 12 delegates.

That’s not the complete story of Clinton and California, however. Those are just the pledged delegates won on election day. Figure in the superdelegates who have committed to her and she leads Obama within California’s huge 441-member delegation by 56 votes. Most of those super delegates sided with her before the primary. Many probably would have held off if the primary weren’t slated until June.

An axiom of politics -- even for superdelegates -- is don’t make a decision until you have to.

Now consider the outcome of the Pennsylvania primary. Despite Clinton’s victory, she only gained, maybe, a net 10 delegates, based on initial calculations, and still trails Obama by 130. If she didn’t hold a 56-delegate advantage from California, her task would be virtually impossible. Many believe it is anyway.

Moreover, for bragging points -- and to prove electability -- Clinton is trying to catch up with Obama in the popular vote. After Pennsylvania, she still trails by more than half a million. Obama’s lead would be absolutely insurmountable if not for the nearly 422,000-vote victory margin Clinton garnered in California.

So California couldn’t have been much more relevant than it was Feb. 5, providing the lifeline for her future big wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have survived without California,” says Bob Mulholland, a strategist for the state Democratic Party and an uncommitted superdelegate. “It was a huge boost for her to win here. If it weren’t for California, the race would have been over.”

State Democratic Chairman Art Torres, another uncommitted superdelegate, agrees. “She wouldn’t have made it this far,” he says.

Besides, what pundits and politicians too often miss is that presidential primaries aren’t about state clout. Nor are they about some abstract “process” that may or not be good for the “system.” They’re about giving citizens the opportunity to participate in electing a president and cast a vote when it matters.

A record 9.1 million Californians voted in a historic presidential primary. They didn’t have to sit on their thumbs until June, envying the other states.

It was the biggest turnout of registered voters for a primary, 57.7%, since the 1980 presidential election.

The Clinton-Obama race has been a particular plus for Democratic voter registration. The party signed up about 171,000 new voters between late January and early April. Meanwhile, the GOP -- without a nominating contest, but with an unpopular president -- lost nearly 8,800 members.

On April 13, Democrats held local caucuses throughout California to elect 370 pledged delegates to the national convention in Denver. More than 2,500 people ran for those slots and 23,000 showed up at the caucuses on a Sunday afternoon. Both figures were records, double any previous numbers, Mulholland says. And most caucus attendees were new to politics, he adds.

Torres credits the exciting race and the early primary. Interest “might have fizzled” if the primary had been later, he says.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen, a Democrat, says her “measuring stick” for whether an early primary makes sense “is not whether California calls the shot, but whether people are engaged.” The turnout exceeded any past primary’s by nearly 1.2 million voters, she says. “That’s a lot of voters. Clearly we have engaged people.”

She’d prefer, in the future, that the states cooperate on rotating regional primaries, rather than feverishly bunching most of their contests awkwardly into the first few weeks. So would Republican state Chairman Ron Nehring. Not Torres. Hold California’s primary again on the first day legally possible, he asserts. “We finally got a chance to have a say.”

I’m with Torres. Or I’m with Bowen and Nehring. What I’m against is being stuck permanently someplace where our votes don’t matter. Fortunately, this year they mattered a lot. The proof is Clinton.

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george.skelton@latimes.com