Primed to matter, California about to flex political muscle
This year, California really matters.
When voters here cast their ballots Tuesday, they could play a decisive role in choosing the Democratic nominee for president — an it’s-about-time payoff for the country’s most populous
and diverse state, INSIDE: which moved up California its primary to flex billionaire its political relevance. Tom Steyer drops bid But a weekslong for president. count to determine the breakdown of the state’s massive trove of delegates could leave Democrats — and the country — further in the dark.
As candidates sprint across the country to campaign in the Golden State and other Super Tuesday contests, the race in California has evolved into a test of whether front-runner Bernie Sanders can rack up an unbeatable delegate lead — and a tight struggle for second place behind the Vermont senator.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s blowout victory Saturday in the South Carolina primary, where he had just under 50% with more than 80% of the votes counted, will give him a boost in arguing that he’s the best moderate option to take on Sanders. Biden’s win was so convincing it forced the last Californian in the race, San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, to call it quits on his long-shot campaign Saturday night.
But politically, the Palmetto State is a world away from California, where Sanders has a 2-to-1 lead over all of his rivals and a poll Friday found Biden at just 8% — at risk of being completely shut out of delegates here.
With California’s moderate voters divided between Biden and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, establishment Democrats are panicking that the state will carry Sanders to victory.
“Because of the chaos in the Democratic field combined with the delegate selection rules, California may deliver Sanders a massive treasure trove of delegates — even if he only captures a third of our votes,” said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego politics professor.
Tuesday’s primary will be the first Democratic presidential contest in California since 1984 in which voters can choose among more than two major candidates still in the running.
Faced with the buffet of choices, “it seems like an unprecedented number of voters are de
ciding late this year,” said Rose Kapolczynski, a longtime Democratic strategist in Los Angeles who is advising Bloomberg’s campaign. “It’s just so up in the air. It’s such a strange election.”
Biden’s South Carolina victory will propel him into second place in the overall delegate race with Sanders.
“The decisions Democrats make all across America in the next few days will determine what this party stands for, what we believe, and what will get done,” Biden said at his victory party in Columbia, South Carolina. “We have the option of winning big or losing big. That’s the choice.”
But Biden’s declarations that he can unite the party will be easier said than done, as even a new burst of momentum for the former vice president could have a limited impact due to early voting in California.
As of Friday, more than 1.2 million voters had returned Democratic mail-in ballots — about 17% of the total Democratic ballots sent out.
That’s a lower rate than in the last presidential primary here, but that can be at least partly explained by the fact that many more Californians were sent mail-in ballots this year.
The larger issue for Biden and the other moderates is that there are simply too many of them. In addition to Biden, Bloomberg, Buttigieg, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar are all competing over the same group of voters — and they could face pressure to drop out in the wake of South Carolina.
Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has positioned herself as a candidate acceptable to both progressives and moderates and has seen a jump after strong debate performances last month, is hovering near the all-important 15% threshold required for candidates to receive statewide delegates.
Even though Sanders’ mid-30% showing in recent polls is down from the 46% he won in California’s 2016 Democratic primary, he could end up with a majority of the state’s delegates this time because the field is so fractured.
But while moderate voters need to coalesce around one candidate if he or she will have any chance of overtaking Sanders — who they argue would doom Democrats in the general election against President Donald Trump — none of the contenders has an incentive to do so.
Bloomberg has spent more than an astonishing $60 million on California ads in three months touting himself as the strongest contender to take on Trump. He’s built a massive campaign organization that’s larger than any other candidate’s in California and other Super Tuesday states, rivaled only by Sanders’ Golden State team. But he has plenty of baggage, from controversial decisions in New York to a long record of problematic comments.
Buttigieg has pitched himself as a fresh face who can unite the majority of Democratic voters who consider themselves more liberal than Bloomberg. Still, despite his apparent victory in the Iowa caucuses, he has struggled to broaden his appeal among voters of color.
And Biden has the most establishment support and is leading among the party’s base of African American voters — although he’s proven himself an uneven presence on the campaign trail, and his pre-south Carolina electoral record in 2020 is abysmal.
After a dismal fourthplace finish in Iowa and an even worse fifth-place result in New Hampshire, “if Biden recovers and becomes the Bernie alternative, it will be a political miracle unlike most events we’ve ever seen in presidential primary politics,” said Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic strategist for multiple White House campaigns and a USC professor.
Steyer decided to call it quits after getting just under 12% of South Carolina votes counted. He spent at least $250 million of his own fortune on his campaign, pitching himself as a progressive political outsider with a strong business record who could go toe-to-toe with Trump on the economy.
But while the former San Francisco hedge fund chief saw temporary jumps in the polls in South Carolina and Nevada, he barely had an impact on the broader presidential race and was overshadowed by Bloomberg’s much larger fortune.
Rep. Ro Khanna, Dsanta Clara, a national cochair of Sanders’ campaign, argued that Bloomberg’s gargantuan spending has helped Sanders and Warren, giving the two progressives a perfect foil — not to mention further splitting the moderate vote.
The New Yorker “embodies what they’re running against: that someone shouldn’t be able to use their own personal wealth to buy an election,” Khanna said. “It’s provided them a contrast that has helped sharpen their message.”
Other than the billionaires, only Sanders, whose campaign is funded by his massive army of small-dollar donors around the country, has been able to build a substantial ground organization in California, which could help him turn out his mostly young supporters, who are historically less likely to go to the polls.
Tuesday’s returns should also answer another burning question that’s been debated in political circles up and down the state: Did California finally matter in the presidential race?
When former Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature moved the primary date from June to March, the idea was that it would give the diverse state a larger voice in the contest.
While more candidates have visited here over the past year, and we’ve definitely seen an uptick in advertising — thanks mostly to the billionaires — California hasn’t received the same attention lavished on Iowa or South Carolina.
And whatever the results are, we’ll likely have to wait days or weeks to get a clear picture. California has always taken a long time to count votes, and the state’s expansion of vote-by-mail and new rules allowing voters to change their registration on Election Day will likely drag the process out even more — potentially minimizing the impact Californians have on the national narrative about which candidates are winning and losing.
But don’t complain if you have to go to sleep Tuesday night without a clear picture of the results.
“California prioritizes the right to vote over immediate media satisfaction,” Shrum said. “That’s the right thing to do in a democracy.”