A Potential Bully’s Primary Concern

Bottom line: They hate us.

Oh sure, they take their cultural cues from Hollywood, eat our lettuce and live better thanks to the fruits of high technology that blossom in our fertile Silicon Valley. But most of the 220 million Americans who live outside California loathe us with a smirky passion. Nice place to visit, and all that.

Nowhere is this animus more passionately felt than political circles, where the state’s bigness is instinctively equated with badness. (Except, of course, when it comes to mining the state for campaign cash to spend in places like Iowa and New Hampshire).

Thus, anyone in Washington who knows their ABCs knows the acronym stands for Anywhere But California--which explains how Congress wound up placing a national earthquake research center in Buffalo, N.Y.

And so we feel put upon. Whether it’s highway funding, research grants or congressional seats, the old wheeze from our end is that California has never gotten its fair share, considering our size, economic import, blah, blah, blah.

Roughly every four years the whimpering reaches a crescendo, as the nation sets out to pick its presidential candidates and California has absolutely zippo to say about it. Indeed, it’s been close to 30 years since Californians have voted in a presidential primary that mattered.

Last year, state legislators sought to address this perceived injustice by pushing California’s primary up from June 4 to March 26, on a one-time experimental basis. Naturally, states like New York, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois all moved their primaries up even earlier. The Midwest proved decisive. California proved irrelevant. Again.

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So now renewed efforts are underway to figure out how to make California more of a player when the presidential primary season rolls around in 2000. There is talk of everything from legislating an earlier March primary to giving voters a chance to set the date through a state ballot initiative.

Most everyone--well, OK, that handful of people paying attention--agrees that reverting back to a June primary is a nonstarter. “California should never be last again, which is historically where we’ve been,” said Secretary of State Bill Jones, the point man in California’s discussions with other states. Nor, Jones said, should California try to elbow its way past the traditional kickoff states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Given the exorbitant cost of campaigning here, he said, “if California were to go first, the primaries would be over for all practical purposes” once the final votes were tallied in Siskiyou County.

Instead, Jones favors a series of rotating regional primaries, a la Super Tuesday in the South and the Yankee primary in the Northeast, “which would give everyone a chance to be first every so often.”

As it happens, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt favors something along similar lines. He recalls visiting New Hampshire in November 1995 for a Republican governors conference and being “startled at the degree of attention” lavished on the state by so many White House wannabes.

“There was a presidential candidate on every corner and they didn’t just know state issues, they knew what was on the different city council agendas,” Leavitt marveled.

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So the governor got to wondering how tiny Utah might cut itself in on the action. He finally settled on the venerable strength-in-numbers approach. To wit, he envisions a Western states primary, coming right on the heels of New Hampshire’s leadoff contest, and ideally consisting of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming.

The confederation, warmly received in many of the constituent states, would create a political event “small enough to be achievable yet large enough to be significant,” Leavitt suggests. At that, he fairly rubs his hands thinking of candidates standing in the shadow of the Rockies discussing mining and water rights instead of moose crossings and the price of ethanol.

And what, pray, of their westernmost neighbor? Might California have a place in this political roundup?

Leavitt shakes his head--politely, but firmly--no. “California has strength. No one will pass up California, it’s just too significant,” he says, ignoring history.

Nevada Gov. Bob Miller agrees. Including California “would detract from the desire of candidates to spend time in the surrounding states,” the Democrat says.

A great game of leapfrog to determine the primary schedule for 2000 will play out over roughly the next 18 months. Secretary of State Jones, diplomatically, insists a reasonable accommodation can be reached. At the same time, though, he hints that California is prepared to use “our size and our impact and our importance” to shape a presidential selection process more to the state’s liking.

If so, the big, bad bully may finally start acting his size.