California Politics: March 2 Presidential primary

The front-loaded Democratic primary process is one more making the primary in California, the state with the most electoral votes, more-or-less and non-event. John Kerry is expected to best John Edwards by a substantial margin. But the only story expected is the margin of Kerry's win. Ohio will likely be more interesting to see how Edwards' emphasis on industrial job losses plays in competition with Kerry.

But, as Marc Sandalow points out in the San Francisco Chronicle, "a strong showing by Kerry [in California] would provide the Massachusetts senator a nearly insurmountable delegate lead." In other words, Kerry is within shouting distance of clinching the nomination.

California moved its primary forward to enhance the state's clout in both parties' nominating process. But other states had the same idea already. And one effect of the "front-loading" (early scheduling) of some many primaries has been to increase the need for massive fund-raising in the Presidential races. Thirty years ago, when the primaries were more spread out in time, insurgent candidates had more of a chance to establish themselves in the early primaries and then have more time to raise money for the later primaries.

Jim Costa, the former state senator who led the drive for an earlier California primary, is still not satisfied with the result. He says, "We have the potential to be the 800-pound gorilla, but we have never flexed our muscle to the extent we could. We have to look at making further changes to create greater opportunities for California voters to exercise their choice."

In the same article, Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa suggests that moving the California primary back to May might actually increase the state's clout in the process. And state Democratic party chairman Art Torres complains that some issues of particular concern to California are getting short shrift in the Democratic primaries: "There's been no debate on illegal immigration, water, environmental safeguards, coastal protection or air quality. They haven't discussed these issues because it's been a national campaign, and that is a tragedy."