Race for '08: Republican primary
rules make politics local again

By Peter Hecht



These are important days for the Ford pickup of semi-retired hay broker Don Floyd.

Floyd, 72, is a friend, neighbor and ardent supporter of Duncan Hunter, the Southern California congressman running for president. Painted on the sides and back of Floyd's truck – which he's now driving throughout Hunter's congressional district in eastern San Diego County – is the message, "Duncan Hunter for President."

Thanks to a new delegate selection system for the Feb. 5 California GOP presidential primary, Floyd's campaign treks in Hunter's district could well make a difference.
Hunter may have little chance for the White House in the big money and media game of American politics. Yet if he wins the presidential vote in his 52nd Congressional District, he will get three bona fide presidential delegates for this summer's Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

It is one of many potential prizes for GOP presidential candidates courtesy of the California Republican Party's new process for selecting presidential delegates.

In 2008, the state party is junking its long-standing system that awarded presidential delegates only to the winner of the statewide popular vote. Now it will award 159 of its 173 California presidential delegates based on who wins in each of the state's 53 separate congressional districts.

The format could well provide a remarkable portrait of the state's different political regions. Will wealthy coastal Republicans embrace Rudy Giuliani? Will Central Valley independents rally for John McCain? Will Silicon Valley techies turn out for former venture capitalist Mitt Romney? Or will rural evangelists turn the tide for Mike Huckabee?

Mark DiCamillo, director of the California Field Poll, said the result could be that one candidate wins the popular vote and another wins the delegate count.

"The chances of there being a different statewide winner compared to a delegate winner will go up as the vote distribution varies across the state," DiCamillo said. "This particular Republican primary is so wide open."

For certain, he said, the new format should make for a long, confusing election night.

Even so, in conservative eastern San Diego County, Floyd said he is thrilled by the new format because "an area like mine can have a greater impact." And in liberal San Francisco, long-ignored Republican voter Chris Bowen is ecstatic over the attention.

Republican candidates have often swooped in for private fundraisers in the heavily Democratic Bay Area. Previously, they've all but cringed at being seen there in public. Not this year.

Bowen, a member of the pro-gay rights Log Cabin Republicans, excitedly turned out to see Giuliani at a diner in nearby Burlingame. The former New York mayor later returned for a town hall meeting and other public appearances in and around San Francisco – home to House Speaker and GOP-arch nemesis Nancy Pelosi.

Fewer than 10 percent of voters in Pelosi's 8th Congressional District are registered Republican. But in the new GOP delegate selection system, her liberal San Francisco means just as much as Rep. John Doolittle's 4th Congressional District, one of the state's reservoirs of Republican voters. The winner in each district will get three delegates to the national convention.

"I like the rules a lot," Bowen said. "I really think that candidates need to campaign in every corner of the state. San Francisco in terms of delegates is as powerful as Wyoming. We're in play."

That was the thinking of state Republican Party officials such as Tom Hudson, chairman of the Placer County Central Committee in Doolittle's district.

Hudson helped draft the new delegation selection rules in 1999. They didn't apply in the 2004 primary because President Bush was running unopposed, Hudson said. This time around, he is pleased to see the results: Republicans in a competitive field publicly stumping for votes in diverse parts of California.

"We did expect campaigning in heavily Democratic districts, and we think that is a good thing," Hudson said. "It may help our turnout in November … and it helps introduce a new generation of people to Republican thinking and Republican ideas."

So far, voters in heavily Democratic Los Angeles County have seen Arizona Sen. John McCain speak on protecting the environment and fighting global warming. And people in U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui's heavily Democratic 5th Congressional District have seen former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney wooing voters over pancakes in Natomas.

The new system will also award 11 delegates to the winner of the statewide popular vote and send three other uncommitted delegates to the national convention.

In contrast, the state Democratic Party awards 241 of its 503 delegates on a percentage formula that allows candidates with at least 15 percent of the vote to win three to seven votes per district.
The Republicans' new winner-take-all district races are influencing campaign tactics, particularly among the better funded presidential camps. Giuliani and Romney have designated campaign leaders in all 53 California congressional districts, competing for votes and the delegate count.

"I think it will help our man," said former Gov. Pete Wilson, a Giuliani supporter. "He is popular in terms of his performance in New York, and his ideology is very much in sync with with a vast majority of California Republicans. … I think he will probably be the beneficiary of a winner-take-all system."

Romney's senior California strategist, Rob Stutzman, said the campaign is waging an aggressive absentee ballot and get-out-the vote effort in the 19 districts that are heavily Republican. Meanwhile, he said, Romney also is trying to win among Republicans living in the 34 Democratic-held districts.

"Obviously, delegates matter," Stutzman said. "The districts with the least amount of Republicans have just as many delegates as districts with the most Republican voters. Both (Giuliani and Romney) campaigns are cognizant of that. My goal is to sweep California, all 53 districts."

In Placer County, 30-year-old investment adviser Ben Mavy of Meadow Vista said learning about the winner-take-all formula made him want to participate.

"I'm probably going to call the Romney campaign and see if I can volunteer," Mavy said. "It seems that now I will have more voice in choosing our nominee than I would have had otherwise."

Meanwhile, in rural Sutter County in the 2nd Congressional District held by GOP Rep. Wally Herger, medical administrative assistant Derek Askins, 26, is working the Internet to set up "meet-ups" to help former Arkansas Gov. Huckabee win the district.

Huckabee is surging in national polls and in earlier primary states but has yet to have a district-by-district campaign working in California.

"Instead of Huckabee having to travel here and set up the campaign, we're the local support," said Askins, who has been spreading the word about the former governor at local churches.

"I'm encouraged by this system." Askins said. "Otherwise, I believe Giuliani would have taken the vote in the liberal districts and just swept California. Now Huckabee looks like he's going to win in Iowa and South Carolina. And I believe the momentum from the small communities Iowa has – replicas of small communities here – will carry over here."

Tim Morgan, a Santa Cruz lawyer and national GOP committee member who will be one of California's three uncommitted presidential delegates, said the new rules may play out in starkly different ways.

He said the state's congressional districts could rally around one candidate, giving him a dominant position in the presidential stakes, or they could split sharply by state regions.

"California can bring a hammer on Super Tuesday or be a microcosm of the rest of the country," Morgan said.

Suggesting the latter possibility may be most likely, he explained: "I would certainly think the San Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay would incline toward Rudy Giuliani. I would think the Central Valley would incline toward John McCain or Mitt Romney. And we could see movement in California from early primaries, in which case Mike Huckabee can be expected to do very well in our rural counties."

In Citrus Heights, veteran GOP activist Ben Gilmore hopes he can help win presidential delegates for former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

The actor did "a good job as the district attorney (in television's 'Law and Order') and was a good admiral in Red October," Gilmore quipped. And he said Thompson's conservative principles fit GOP Rep. Dan Lungren's 3rd Congressional District.

"The grass roots will be more significant," Gilmore said. "I can give (Thompson) three votes to bargain with."

Meanwhile, in Pelosi's San Francisco, Giuliani's congressional district chair Howard Epstein said volunteers "are phone banking and identifying voters" to get out Republicans on election day.

"What is different is that Rudy has been to San Francisco or the general area four of five times in the past few months," Epstein said. "It used to be if you wanted to see a Republican candidate you had to go to Orange County.

"Now we're seeing people. They're asking us for our vote, and they're taking us seriously."

phecht@sacbee.com

Race for '08






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