California has always had quite a bit of political clout. We tout 55 electoral votes and are often compared to countries when considering our economy. After China and the United States, California holds the most prisoners in the world. And, out of the 50 states, we house slightly more than 10 percent of the nation’s entire population.
Now, according to an article in the March 2 issue of The New York Times titled “Orphan No More, California Enjoys Electoral Muscle,” we have moved our presidential primaries from June to Feb. 5. The California primary will be held after Iowa’s (Jan. 14), Nevada’s (Jan. 19), New Hampshire’s (Jan. 22) and South Carolina’s (Jan. 29) and on the same day as those of Florida and Illinois.
At first glance, this seems rather insignificant. One way or another, we will have a primary. However, when a primary is held has tremendous significance.
Presidential primaries are a way of sifting through the vast expanse of people who want to be president and narrowing down the scope to one candidate. The sooner we get to vote, the more candidates Californians get to choose from.
Instead of choosing solely between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, or former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. John McCain (all of whom undoubtedly would have made it to our primary, regardless of the date), we get to decide whether or not more qualified candidates get to proceed to the next round of state primaries.
This has resulted in candidates trying to curry our collective favor from both sides of the major parties. According to the N.Y. Times article, John Edwards visited Fresno on Friday, Clinton held a rally with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Saturday and Giuliani is scheduled to stop by soon.
While it is nice that all the hotly-debated candidates are visiting, what about all of the more obscure players? Is Bill Richardson going to make a stop in California because of the immediacy of our primary date? Will Sen. Joseph Biden drop by the Golden State to speak to voters about the importance of ending the War in Iraq or how to properly engage in international affairs?
According to SmartVoter.org, 14 candidates from both of the major parties have announced that they will be running and nine more are likely to announce their candidacy.
Unfortunately, it seems that only the well-endowed candidates will be making trips to California. This isn’t a result of the primary shift, but rather an age-old problem with elections. The lesser-known (and often more qualified) candidates do not raise as much campaign money, which acts as a handicap that disables them from visiting key states and leaves voters with a narrow scope of “the issues.”
Presidential runners also are unable to visit states where they might have had a shot at winning, like states that share the same color as them. California is consistently “blue” and unless Satan himself takes the form of a Democratic candidate, the state will likely vote for a Democrat, regardless of who is in that position.
If candidates visit states that share the same political persuasion, the more qualified, party-true politician will likely make it to the general election.
So educate yourself. Go to SmartVoter.org and learn about which platforms candidates are running on. Keep up with newspaper articles about each candidate. Californians will have an important role to play next February, and with a possible 23 qualified, intelligent people running, it may just take that long to get a solid grasp on the platforms each candidate is running on.
