State seeks louder voice
Bill aims to put California in middle of presidential fray by making primary earlier
California likes to think of itself as the nation’s most important state, with its movies, music and technological prowess shaping lives across the American landscape.
But when it comes to presidential primary elections, the state holds little sway because Californians don’t vote until June, near the end of the primary calendar.
Now, the state’s top election official is spending some political capital in an effort to move up the primary to March, making it the third state in the country to weigh in on presidential candidates.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, would authorize the governor to move the primary date even earlier if other states followed suit. And the primary for state and local elections would be held on the same date — even in nonpresidential election years.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced this week that he’s backing a bill to move the 2020 primary date from the first Tuesday in June to the third Tuesday in March. That, he said, would put the Golden State’s primary right after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, would authorize the governor to move the primary date even earlier if other states followed suit. And the primary for state and local elections would be held on the same date — even in nonpresidential election years.
In almost every presidential election, the race is more or less sewn up by the time Californians go to the polls. Last year, for example, all of Donald Trump’s Republican opponents had already withdrawn from the race, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had little chance of catching Democrat Hillary Clinton.
“We’ll respect the Iowa and New Hampshire tradition, but for California, the most populous and most diverse state in the nation, we should have a much bigger say on who is elected president,” Padilla said in an interview Wednesday.
Padilla and other supporters of Lara’s Senate Bill 568 say the move will also increase voter engagement and turnout in both presidential and lower-ballot races.
But skeptics warn that the date change could spur other states to jockey for position by moving up their primaries.
South Carolina and Nevada, which have been the third and fourth states to vote or caucus in recent years, may be especially protective of their places in the primary lineup. And that could extend an already tortuously long campaign season of negative ads, hourslong debates and acrimonious back-andforth.
The mad scramble has happened before.
In 2008, California held its presidential primary on Feb. 5, which Padilla said resulted in the highest voter turnout of any presidential primary election since 1980. But California was one of 22 states whose primaries dogpiled that day — that year’s Super Tuesday — diluting its influence.
In past years, the Democratic National Committee has also penalized states that moved their primaries too early. The DNC is expected to set its rules for presidential primaries at a meeting in late 2018.
Robin Swanson, a spokeswoman for the California Democratic Party, said Wednesday that the party had taken no official position on Lara’s bill.
Some DNC leaders could look askance at giving California a marquee position because it would lead candidates to embrace political positions that would come back and bite them in a general election, political analysts say.
“If you come into California and you campaign and you’re a Democrat, you’re going to have to embrace the California agenda,” supporting policies such as legalizing marijuana that could be unpopular in more moderate states, said Bill Whalen, a former GOP strategist who is now a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
But to some elected officials, forcing presidential candidates to take more progressive stances early sounds like a good idea.
“California is leading the nation on clean air, criminal justice reform and expanding health care for all — and moving up our presidential primary will ensure our state’s voters are heard in the national debate,” Lara said in a statement.
The proposal would also lead to a seven-and-a-halfmonth gap between the primary and general election up and down the ballot, which could help underdog candidates by giving them a longer time to campaign and raise name recognition. But the extended election season could also annoy voters who don’t want to have to think about politics for such a long time.
And then there’s always a chance that “even with an earlier primary, some candidates might decide to skip California anyway because it’s a black hole of campaign money,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California.
One person who could benefit from an earlier primary here is California’s junior senator: Kamala Harris. If, as many political observers predict, she decides to run for president in 2020 — four years after being elected to the Senate, following Barack Obama’s playbook — an early California primary on her home turf would be a boost for her campaign.
Lara’s bill will get a hearing on Tuesday before the state Senate’s Committee on Elections and Constitutional Amendments.
Padilla has a good track record of pushing proposals through the state Legislature: Notably, his “motor voter” plan in 2015 to automatically register to vote every eligible Californian who gets or renews a driver’s license was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown.
Padilla predicted that Lara’s measure should be popular with Californians of every political stripe.
“Regardless of the party you’re in, the current schedule doesn’t allow California voters to have a big impact on the nation’s process,” he said. “It’s important for California to have a bigger influence.”