Game Changer?: California Likely To Move Its Presidential Primaries To March
This will change things dramatically . . . in favor of Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA)
California’s primaries are currently held in June; however, legislation is expected to be signed by Governor Jerry Brown (D) next week that would move them to March.
This move would place California’s primaries right after Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Further, the move would tilt the donor and electoral tables heavily in Senator Kamala Harris’ (D-CA) favor.
California is pushing forward with a plan to change the state’s primary date from June to March, a move that could scramble the 2020 presidential nominating contest and swing the early weight of the campaign to the west.
If adopted by the legislature this week — as is widely expected — and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, the early primary would allocate California’s massive haul of delegates just after the nation’s first contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
The earlier primary could benefit at least two potential presidential contenders from California — U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — while jeopardizing the prospects of other candidates who will struggle to raise enough early money to compete in expensive media markets in the nation’s most populous state.
“In all probability, the winner of the California primary would be the nominee,” said Don Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman from South Carolina.
While acknowledging that “a lot of this rationale this far in advance just is completely wrong,” Fowler said, “The implications for the flow of the winnowing process [of candidates] is very significant in moving California.”
California for years has sought to exert greater influence in presidential elections. Despite its size, the state has been a relative afterthought in national campaigns, marginalized not only because of its late primary, but because of the high cost of campaigning here.
An early and coffer-breakingly expensive California primary would push out both relative unknowns like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and the untested like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, while potentially hobbling even well-known but radical Democrat presidential hopefuls, including Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and even Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
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Comments
yes! let’s go st00pid early…. #Failifornia leads the way!
the idiots here will pick the wackiest Demonrat on the ballot, and Trump will take the GOP votes. in fact, depending on how the rules are written, i may have to re-register as a Republican, vice “independent” just so i can vote for him…
now, pass the popcorn. this should be entertaining, in a morbid sort of way.
I hear you! I had to register as a Democrat when I lived in closed-primary Massachusetts if I wanted to have any (remote, unattainable) hope of making a difference.
LOL: i re-registered last year so i could vote for Bernie over Shrillery.
the LA County Registrar left me as Republican, “because that’s how you’ve always been registered” (yes, i drove down there to ask “WTF?”)
they swore they had fixed it, then sent me TWO sample ballots for the primary, both GOP.
naw, our elections aren’t corrupt here… not at all.
I agree, bring it!
not to mention – everyone hates California politics, as evidenced by the disdain red-staters have for CA transplants.
CA chooses the Dem nominee, who happens to be true-blue-California-politician? The rest of the country will change from Dem to anything else. The Dem would loose.
lets hope they lose too! 😉
The Democrat/Communist Party has a suicide wish methinks……
I do believe they have gotten stuck on the same Tuesday as the Super-Tuesday-Primary Day in the South.
CA is road kill then imo!
demonrats are the masters of “jury rigging”, this just extends the methods used by hil-lie-ry against bernie !
Dems are always trying to game the system because that’s all they’ve got. Problem is, their One True G*d has come and gone and he’s not coming back. Thanks, Constitution! The rest of these losers are pale imitations, pun intended. Kamala’s not all that, nor is Michelle. They’re weak robo-pols, like Hillary, but black because durrh, that worked with King Putt. Like most Dims, they’ve been brought up through a system that does not reward merit, brains, initiative, creative but realistic thinking, or any other characteristic that one would want in a President – or anyone else for that matter. They rely on tricks, tactics, games and overwhelming media-saturation of false narratives.
Will this allow her time to read the Constitution, because obviously she has not yet read or comprehend it. This is another idiot liberal in the likeness of Maxine Waters, Pelosi, Warren,etc.
Other states will follow suit and move their primaries.
Why any state has its primary as late as June is beyond me. The early primary states have all the influence.
We’re going to inevitably move to a system where every state has their primary on the same day in March, because no state will want to be “left out” of the sweepstakes – and when we get to that point, the entire rationale for having primary’s at all will vanish, and the entire thing will become a pointless exercise that sanctifies whoever has the biggest advertising budget.
The smoke filled rooms of yesteryear did a better job than this.
Why have late primaries?
Maybe the other states just want to be left alone.
I can’t wait for the democrats to start eating their own when it comes down to the mooch vs Harris!
Get the pop corn ready!!
And a cold 30 pack.
Hopefully white voters got over their white guilt with Obama.One-term senator with no real accomplishments.
Oh, please, please give us Kamala Harris for the Democratic nominee!
I am sure the whole country will truly enjoy the campaign commercials showing her flouncing, eye-rolling performances in hearings.
Yes, folks, that’s what passed for an Attorney General in California, who supposedly had at least eight years’ experience at the trial level.
Look carefully at that picture of Krazy Kamilla:
Is ‘she’ a man?
Look at that Adam’s apple!
I believe you’d have to ask Willie Brown.
Can you just imagine the scold we would hear at the DNC convention? This is one of the nastiest women in Congress except maybe Warren and Maxine. Just what the American people want to hear is how mean and racist they all are and how much we owe the minorities. I haven’t prayed for a while but I am praying for her to win the nomination. I’m no great fan of Trump but if she runs he will win hands down.
Hitlery 2020 cuz IT’S STILL HER TURN!
Her base is a basket full of deplorables: Those who deplore the 1st and 2nd Amendments.
A few months ago here in the very pages of LI was a thread topic of a California Senate Bill which had her full support as CA AG. The bill if it became law would criminalize in in clear violation of the 1st Amendment publication of scientific research and data which which contradicted or otherwise disproved AGW as “settled” science; How very medieval of her.
A few months ago, she introduced a Senate Resolution which declared any derogatory speech against minorities, specifically defined as blacks, illegal immigrants, Muslims (she did generously include Jewa probably to ensure passage) as hate speech. A resolution does not carry the force of law, nor is it even a bill, but it is probative of her state of mind into which she may believe should be made into law. Again even if a bill was introduced in accordance with the language of this resolution, its passage and enactment by being signed into law would a clear violation of the 1st Amendment and also the equal protection clause of the 14th as it would not be actionable as hate speech to call someone a wop or kraut as neither is a member of a defined group.
The entry of California into the early primary states would vastly change the calculus as to campaigning.
In terms of the Democrat candidate, it would heavily shift the likely candidate to the radical leftist portion of the scale. Think Pelosi, but with a harder-line agenda. The likelihood is that the major cities of California would heavily influence their nomination. That won’t play well in the rest of the nation. Also, as mentioned, the vast cost of campaigning in California so early will winnow the race quite a bit, as the funds won’t be there for the medium candidates, let alone the small ones. You’ll never see a 17-candidate primary like we saw in the Republican presidential bench this past cycle. One, the DNC won’t allow it, and two, the bench isn’t deep enough to get that many candidates into the race.
As for whom: I don’t think it will be Kamala Harris. I think at the first debate she crashes and burns. She may have been a moderately successful attorney, buoyed along by Affirmative Action politics, but now that she’s got the cameras on her every single day, she’s going to crash-and-burn, because her daily nuttiness is too much to pass up.
As for the Republicans, I concur they’re going to have problems too, and whomever emerges from California with that primary (unless it’s proportional) will have an enormous advantage. The question will be whom can make the pitch to the public in the most cost-effective way, and save their funds while wiping out the remainder of the field. Free Social Media will become the candidate’s friend.
The likelihood is that everybody thereafter will be fighting to be VP, on the idea that they can deliver the Midwest. On the other hand, that could also be the catalyst for another candidate to emerge if the California Electorate goes sideways and tries to impose a “progressive” on the rest of the nation.
California hasn’t participated in an election in a meaningful way in my lifetime, so we don’t really know what this will do. Will they be staunch Dem establishmentarianists? Will they be hard leftwing radicals? Who knows?
I note that something similar occurs at CPAC every time, where some crowd favorite wins the vote and NEVER wins the general race.
This move may do nothing more than cause chaos in the Dem party.
“This move may do nothing more than cause chaos in the Dem party.”
pass the popcorn
Oh, please do run Kamala Harris against PDT. Will Willie Brown be her campaign manager?
With California’s large number of delegates at stake that many months earlier, all the presidential capmpaigns will have to gear up all that much earlier. Sheesh. Can’t we ever catch a break from perpetual campaigns?