From the
AP:
California lawmakers are considering a plan that could put the state in a race with New Hampshire to have the earliest presidential primary.
The bill would require California's secretary of state to schedule the election as early as Jan. 2 in presidential election years and conduct it by mail.
If you've been following the debate and internal DNC procedural transactions over the 2008 Presidential Primary Calendar, you would have to recognize that this has the potential fundamentally to be a game-changer.
It's a matter of media coverage and delegates.
Presidential candidates spend so much time in Iowa and New Hampshire not because of the (admirable) grassroots culture or their (less admirable) state laws mandating that they be the first caucus and primary.
They devote millions of dollars and hundreds of staff people and thousands of hours to Iowa and New Hampshire because that's where they will receive the greatest volume of press coverage outside of the actual nominating convention and the night of the general election.
The media coverage is a kind of magnetic rocket fuel that accrues to the candidate with the most attractive "story" among the contenders. Usually, that candidate is the guy who wins the primary, but every so often, it's a surprise second or third place finisher.
Anyway, a presidential primary in California is only potentially, yet fundamentally a bigger story than a presidential primary in New Hampshire.
That potential is realized if there's a chance that California is at the top of the primary calendar.
See, it doesn't have to be first. New Hampshire, through some maneuver could technically retain it's first place status by a week or two. No one would care. Not only do the volume of people, the number of media markets, telegenic political culture, and literal and figurative color of the electorate make California a self-evidently more desirable news story than does New Hampshire, there's the fact that 440 convention delegates are at stake. This is nearly one-fourth the total number of delegates needed to win the nomination.
No major candidate will waste time in New Hampshire when California's to be had. And the tv cameras will follow.
Anyway, here's the text of the actual bill mentioned in the above article.
INTRODUCED BY Assembly Member Umberg
FEBRUARY 24, 2006
An act to add Division 6.5 (commencing with Section 6960) to the
Elections Code, relating to elections.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
AB 2949, as amended, Umberg Elections: presidential primary
elections.
(1) Existing law specifies that the presidential primary election
shall be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June in
any year evenly divisible by the number four.
This bill would instead require the Secretary of State to select a
date that results in California being the first state in the United
States to hold its presidential primary, as specified. The bill would
require the secretary to issue a proclamation to that effect not
later than 40 75 days prior to the
election, require that this election be conducted as an all-mail
ballot election, and prohibit the election from including any other
candidate or ballot measure or from being consolidated with any other
election. By increasing the duties of local elections officials,
this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
And here's how to express your support (or dismay) to Tom Umberg the California legislator responsible for the bill.