State Dumping Early Primary, Returning to June and Sanity

Sacramento —  Let’s face it, California is in the backwater of presidential politics. We stopped being part of the main ship channel long ago.

The two major candidates did campaign for a few hours in L.A. on Thursday, using California as a cruise stop on the way to Oregon and Washington.

The Golden State appears to be solidly blue on the Electoral College map and out of play, based on polls and recent history.

A new statewide survey, conducted by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, shows Sen. John F. Kerry running ahead of President Bush among likely voters by 16 points, 54% to 38%. Tellingly, 56% disapprove of Bush’s job performance.

That shouldn’t surprise anybody. Bush lost here to Al Gore by 12 points in 2000.

California has had virtually nothing to do with nominating any of these candidates.

We haven’t exercised real clout in the nominating process since 1972, when George McGovern became the Democratic standard bearer by winning here. For Republican relevance, you’ve got to go clear back to 1964, when Barry Goldwater won the GOP nomination with a landmark California victory.

Reforms led to more and more states holding primaries and scheduling them earlier in the year. California’s big June primary lost its punch.

Trying to recapture our glory, we moved the presidential primary to March in 1996 and then merged the state primary with it in 2000. It was all futile. Other states leapfrogged ahead of us. By the time California voted this past March 2, presidential contests already had been held in 20 states. Nine other states voted the same day we did, further diluting our influence.

“An early primary didn’t make us any more relevant,” notes Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles). “The only result was a lower turnout.”

Blame the rainy season, tule fog, winter darkness or post-holiday, pre-tax jitters. Whatever. Voter turnouts fell to historic lows of 41.9% for a presidential primary in 1996 and 34.6% for a state primary in 2002.

Fortunately, the Legislature now has seen enough. It is poised to return California’s primary to June starting in 2006. A bill awaiting passage on the Assembly floor would move back the primary -- both state and presidential -- to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June, where it was for five decades.

Thank a bulldog state senator, Ross Johnson (R-Irvine).

Johnson, 64, is a tenacious, 26-year legislative veteran who is termed-out after this session and couldn’t bear to leave town without cleaning up the primary mess.

Like a lot of politicians and pundits -- myself included -- Johnson once thought California could become a star player in presidential politics by moving up its primary. After all, we do offer the largest bloc of convention delegates, a lot more than any of those early pipsqueak players.

“It was just illusionary,” the senator says. “We were wrong. The time has come to admit it.”

Johnson is a conservative ideologue, one of the original “Proposition 13 babies,” his career born of the property tax rebellion. He’s also a former Republican leader in each house. But this cause has nothing to do with ideology or party.

Here’s an instance of a bill being pushed and gaining momentum strictly because it is right for the state, not because it’s lobbied by a special interest or helpful to a political party.

So far, the measure (SB 1730) has breezed through two Senate committees, the full Senate and two Assembly committees -- without picking up one “no” vote. There doesn’t seem to be any opposition in the Assembly either.

Speaker Nunez -- echoing every lawmaker I’ve talked to -- favors a state primary in June, rather than March, because that would shorten the campaign season. For termed-out lawmakers, he notes, it also would shorten their lame-duck season.

Candidates no longer would need to decide around Halloween whether to run the next year. They could wait until, say, President’s Day. It would reduce the stash of political money they had to raise to finance a marathon race. And the shorter campaign would be more focused for voters, instead of strung out and largely ignored for 10 months.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t indicated whether he’d sign the bill. But why wouldn’t he? It’s a win-win.

Moving the primary to June would give the governor more time to decide whether to run for reelection in 2006. If he decided not to, he’d be a lame duck for a shorter period because his potential successors wouldn’t be nominated until June. If he did run, he could start later.

And his Democratic opponent, having survived an expensive, bruising primary, would have less time to heal wounds and raise money for November.

Govs. Gray Davis and Pete Wilson favored early primaries because it could have benefited them in presidential races. But Schwarzenegger can’t run for president because he’s not American-born.

Johnson’s first preference was to hold a separate, early presidential primary and later a state primary. But too many politicians winced at the $40-million cost once every four years. “Democracy is not necessarily cheap,” he argued fruitlessly. He finally compromised on returning all primaries to June, reasoning “this will restore some sanity.”

California is headed back to what works best for it -- a comfortable June primary in the backwaters. Before November, the candidates may deem us worthy of a port call, mainly a refueling stop for political coffers.

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George Skelton writes Monday and Thursday. Reach him at george.skelton@latimes.com.