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How to win California: A guide to the nation’s largest presidential primary
Aspiring Democratic presidential candidates, welcome to California. You’re not in Iowa anymore.
Although a calendar packed with county fairs, barbecues and house parties might be enough to carry you through the early states that will vote and caucus in February, California — boasting the largest reserve of candidate-electing party delegates — is a different game.
Our electorate is diverse. Our election procedures, complex. Our population, enormous; our costs of campaigning, even more so. And now that California’s primary has been boosted to March 3, just after the first contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the qualities that make California politics unique might actually matter this time.
So consider this your primer. We spoke to five experts — two Democratic political consultants, a political data guru, a veteran campaign operator-turned-academic and a California elections researcher — to learn more about the dos and don’ts of California presidential campaigning.
Tip #1: Every vote matters — but early votes may matter more
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Voters beware of our populist threat. It comes from the right and left
We stand at the precipice of a significant tectonic shift in our political system.
Similar to the profound disruptions the newspaper, music and transportation industries underwent some years ago, our democratic system, which is designed to be a lagging social indicator, is struggling to find a working model for a more complex age.
The speedy rise of populism in both parties marks the end of bilateral political discourse. The two-party system is no longer equipped to address the complexity of our social, economic and political institutions.
There is a very real possibility that in 2020, for the first time in our country’s history, the nominees for both major U.S. political parties will be populists.
On the American right, Donald Trump has consumed the Republican Party and modern conservative principles with it. Trump has raised taxes, imposed tariffs, opposed free markets, saddled the country with historic levels of debt, upended the American-led international order and resurrected a right-wing populism steeped in white-identity politics.
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The races to watch: California Senate primary
California Democrats hit an apex in 2018 when they won three-quarters of seats in the state Assembly and Senate. Two years later, Republicans aim to reverse that trend. But in a state trending ever bluer — and in a presidential election year sure to generate high turnout — Democrats could push their high water mark even higher.
Of the nine Senate seats likely to be competitive this year, only one is a potential pick-up for Republicans. The rest are GOP-held swing seats or in safe Democratic terrain.
Though Democrats expect to retain “gigamajorities” in both chambers, each party contains multitudes. Key races are intra-party battles — pitting far-left candidates against liberals, arch-conservatives against moderates, establishment faves versus iconoclastic outsiders. The outcomes will trace the ideological trajectory of California politics, and determine what policy is possible.
In each of the key races below, a chart shows how the district is currently being represented along a left-to-right ideological spectrum. CalMatters created these by gathering each incumbent’s “yes” and “no” or skipped votes from the 2019 Assembly session and feeding that data through software. The software — created by political scientists from UCLA, the University of Southern California, Rice University and the University of Georgia — groups lawmakers based on how frequently they vote with one another.
Election Day is March 3. And then what? Under California’s top-two primary system, the first and second place winners, regardless of party, will move on to the general election ballot in November.
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The races to watch: California Assembly primary
California Democrats hit an apex in 2018 when they won three-quarters of seats in the state Assembly and Senate. Two years later, Republicans aim to reverse that trend. But in a state trending ever bluer — and in a presidential election year sure to generate high turnout — Democrats could push their high water-mark even higher.
The most competitive races in the Assembly are evenly split three ways: swing seats Democrats recently acquired and must defend, toss-up seats the GOP will try to hang on to, and open seats in partisan strongholds where members of the same party will fight it out. One Riverside-adjacent district is a test case for independents.
Though Democrats expect to retain “gigamajorities” in both chambers, each party contains multitudes. Key races are intra-party battles — pitting far-left candidates against liberals, arch-conservatives against moderates, establishment faves versus iconoclastic outsiders. The outcomes will trace the ideological trajectory of California politics, and determine what policy is possible.
In each of the key races below, a chart shows how the district is currently being represented along a left-to-right ideological spectrum. CalMatters created these by gathering each incumbent’s “yes” and “no” or skipped votes from the 2019 Assembly session and feeding that data through software. The software — created by political scientists from UCLA, the University of Southern California, Rice University and the University of Georgia — groups lawmakers based on how frequently they vote with one another.
Election Day is March 3. And then what? Under California’s top-two primary system, the first and second place winners, regardless of party, will move on to the general election ballot in November.
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The races to watch: California Congressional primary
Everyone likes a good rematch.
The “blue wave” that washed over the county in November 2018, flipping 41 congressional seats to the Democrats, crashed with particular force in California. The state’s Republican caucus in Washington lost half of its delegation — a measly 14 of 53 reduced to a measlier seven.
Now the GOP wants payback. What are the odds? Presidential election years juice voter turnout — that’s trickier for Republicans because it attracts occasional voters, who historically have been more likely to vote Democratic. And there’s no reason to believe that voters from the affluent coastal burbs and majority-minority Central Valley districts that Democrats wrested from Republicans have warmed to President Trump in the intervening months.
But the freshman Democrats from California now have a record — on impeachment, the Green New Deal, and their perceived closeness with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Republicans plan to hammer them on it.
That all makes for several lively races — a dozen, by our count. In Simi Valley, 15 candidates including a YouTube shock jock, a convicted felon and both a Christy and Christopher Smith have crowded into not one but two of the most contentious House races in the country. In east San Diego County, a prison-bound Trump loyalist steps down, prompting a civil war within the regional GOP and a long-shot pick-up opportunity for local Democrats. And the Central Valley and Orange County will see rematches in two of the closest contests of 2018 — testing whether the blue wave will recede or continue to inundate California.
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The new Proposition 13: A $15 billion bond for school facilities
This Proposition 13 would authorize a $15 billion bond for school modernization and construction projects. Here's how it would break down: $9 billion for K-12 schools ,and $2 billion each for community colleges and the state’s two public university systems, the California State University and University of California.
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates it would cost the state about $740 million a year over the next 35 years to repay the costs of the bond, with interest. That's a total estimated cost of $26 billion: the bond itself plus an added $11 billion in interest.
Lawmakers, Democrat and Republican, overwhelmingly voted to put this on the ballot, stressing California's urgent need to modernize its facilities. Academics say that addressing a backlog of those needs would cost about $117 billion over the next decade. California voters approved a $9 billion school bond in 2016, but all that money has been accounted for and oversubscribed.
One of the main selling points by advocates of the measure, including Gov. Gavin Newsom: This bond measure is structured differently from previous state bonds, focusing more on school modernization than new construction. Prop. 13, they say, will prioritize health and safety issues – such as mold and asbestos – and puts an end to the first-come, first-served application process that critics say has favored richer districts at the expense of needier ones.
No organized campaign against the measure has yet surfaced. But opponents including the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association contend that Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature should have spent the state's $21 billion surplus to upgrade school facilities instead of "wasting our money on their own pet projects." As a result, opponents note in ballot arguments, "Wasteful money pits in the vast education bureaucracy will grab much of this money" for "wasteful construction projects that benefit special interests."
An earlier say: Race to the White House runs through California
Sick of bringing up the rear of the national primary schedule, California bumped up its Election Day to March 3. Now, after Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the nation’s largest state will have an early say about who will be occupying the Oval Office come January 2021. And given Golden State voters’ propensity for voting early (in the last election, two-out-of-three California voters cast a ballot by mail), many Californians will have the chance to weigh in as early as February 3rd — the same day that Iowans go to their precious, “first-in-the-nation” caucus meetings.
President Trump can probably count on the lion’s share of the state’s Republican votes. But on the Democratic side there’s little chance that any one candidate will grab up all of the state’s 495 delegates. That’s because these electors, all of whom will convene in Milwaukee next July to formally pick the party’s next nominee, are awarded roughly proportional to each presidential candidate’s vote. It’s a complex electoral breakdown that breeds complex electoral strategizing. Some delegates will be elected based on their share of the vote in each congressional district. Others will be elected base on the state-wide tally. Still others, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s various members of Congress, will get an automatic trip to Wisconsin.
California’s early order in the lineup seems to have garnered it a bit more attention than past elections. While the tonier swaths of San Francisco and Los Angeles are perennial pit stops for campaign fundraisers, this election season has seen candidates visit the Central Valley and the Inland Empire. They’ve weighed in on California state policy debates like how to classify gig workers or whether to raise property taxes on commercial property owners.
But California's Sen. Kamala Harris, after initially sweeping up much of the state's Democratic donations and endorsements, saw her campaign stall. She pulled out in December, before a single vote had been cast, citing a lack of money. The only Californian left in the race is Tom Steyer, a hedge fund manager turned mega-donor who has poured more money into California politics than most.
So no, California may not have the persistent appeal of an Iowa or a New Hampshire. Coming fifth amid a crowded crop of other states on March 3’s “Super Tuesday,” no one is spending the winter touring the state by bus or blasting our TV channels with ads (few of them, except for billionaire Michael Bloomberg, could afford to).
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Your guide to the 2020 California Primary
California: Get ready for your close-up.
Long viewed as a cash-rich afterthought on the presidential campaign trail, the country’s largest state will finally have an early say in who will win each political party’s presidential nomination — and by extension, who will occupy the White House come January 2021.
Californians now get to vote on March 3. For those who vote by mail (most voters these days), they may get their chance to cast a ballot a month earlier. That means that while candidates and much of the national press corps are crowding into Iowa to see how the first-in-the-nation presidential contest shakes out, Californians — with more delegates to award than any other state — will be weighing in too.
But it won’t just be presidential candidates on the ballot. Voters here will have a few other decisions to make:
If you’re confused about what’s at stake in this election, which races to watch or how to vote, consider this guide your one-stop-shop.
Newsom’s big move on homelessness may be just in political time, new poll suggests
Gov. Gavin Newsom kicked off 2020 by pledging to plow an extra $1.4 billion into homeless services, proposing a state constitutional amendment to make it easier to sue cities who fail to provide shelter for their unhoused populations, and embarking on a statewide “homelessness tour” to visit shelters and other providers.
Homelessness, he said last week as he unveiled his proposed budget last week, is "the issue that defines our times."
According to a poll released tonight, more Californians than ever agree.
Twenty percent of Californians surveyed by the Public Policy Institute of California cited homelessness as the most important issue for the governor and Legislature to work on this year.
That's a record, said the institute's president, Mark Baldassare: "It’s never, ever been in the double digits."
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Event: CalMatters co-sponsoring debate for Senate District 13 election
Embarcadero Media papers — Palo Alto Weekly, Mountain View Voice and The Almanac — and CalMatters are co-sponsoring a debate on Wednesday, February 5, at the Palo Alto Art Center from 7:30 to 9 p.m.
The debate will be moderated by Palo Alto Weekly editor Jocelyn Dong and have Embarcadero Media reporter Kate Bradshaw and CalMatters political writer Ben Christopher as panelists asking questions.”
March 3 is the new early date of the California primary this year, and the most interesting local race will be for the State Senate seat being vacated by the termed-out Sen. Jerry Hill. The 13th Senate District, which runs from South San Francisco to Sunnyvale, has attracted a strong field of five Democrats, one Republican and one Libertarian, who will all appear on the same ballot in accordance with California’s open primary system.