amended early March primary bill advances in California legislature

[The Other Castro]

It's official, the CA primary will be March 3, 2020.

John Myers‏ @johnmyers
Breaking: @JerryBrownGov signs bill moving CA's primary to early March, an attempt to again be relevant in presidential politics.

https://twitter.com/johnmyers/status/913141998063726592

[Mr. Morden]

It's official, the CA primary will be March 3, 2020.

As of right now, I think the other states that are legally scheduled for the same date are AL, MA, OK, TN, TX, VT, and VA, though it's expected that CO, GA, and MN will join them, unless something unexpected happens.  North Carolina was also eyeing that date as well, but I don't know where that stands at the moment.

[TheSaint250]

It's official, the CA primary will be March 3, 2020.

John Myers‏ @johnmyers
Breaking: @JerryBrownGov signs bill moving CA's primary to early March, an attempt to again be relevant in presidential politics.

https://twitter.com/johnmyers/status/913141998063726592

This is for both parties, correct?

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

super tuesday is way too stacked now with texas and california. most of the big states should be near the end, except maybe with the exception of illinois. it's hard for a candidate with low name recognition to stake a campaign in such massive states without hella cash. another issue is texas and california have very different demographics from the rest of the usa, esp california.

[Virginiá]

This also moves the legislative primaries right up to March as well, right? I don't know why they would want to do this. Our elections are already too long as it is. They just made state elections even longer now, all to try and gain some relevance that is hardly guaranteed in the first place.

I wish all the states would agree to move their primaries back so we can try and cut down on America's perpetual election problem.

[Mr. Morden]

super tuesday is way too stacked now with texas and california. most of the big states should be near the end, except maybe with the exception of illinois. it's hard for a candidate with low name recognition to stake a campaign in such massive states without hella cash.

Well, I discussed this upthread: I agree that you're not going to get anywhere on Super Tuesday if you have low name recognition, but name recognition today, in September 2017, is very different from name recognition in March 2020.  A currently unknown candidate can become a household name by March 2020 if he or she wins one of the four early primary states, or even just starts polling well in them.  Hardly anyone who wasn't a political news junkie knew who Mike Huckabee was in September 2005 or even who Bernie Sanders was in September 2013.  But they caught fire campaigning in the early primary states, and scored early victories, and everyone knew who they were by Super Tuesday.

Like I said upthread, it's quite possible that frontloading the big states in the primary calendar actually makes the first four primaries *more* important, because the media glow from winning them will not yet have faded when the Super Tuesday states vote.  It's also unclear that money will become any more important with a frontloaded calendar.  Will even the richest campaigns be able to put up enough ads to make a dent in that many major media markets at once?  I think free national media will be much more important.  I think money actually matters more when the primary campaign is a long slog that's stretched out for months than when the race is decided early on.

[Mr. Morden]

This also moves the legislative primaries right up to March as well, right?

I think that's right.  IIRC, it means that the legislative primaries will be in March in presidential election years, but still in June in off years.

[Holy Unifying Centrist]

You make a very good point. The candidate that does the best job at attracting the most national media news gets a big boost in the primaries.

Hopefully the media doesn't play favorites, but for some reason I expect they will...

[Mr. Morden]

Hopefully the media doesn't play favorites, but for some reason I expect they will...

Well, they are largely ratings driven.  So I assume that, as with Trump in 2016, it'll be possible to attract media attention simply by saying outrageous things.  My hunch is that if the Dems do indeed have a very large field in 2020, there'll be one candidate who gets a decent amount of media attention, and a cult following, just for making controversial statements.  Maybe Tulsi Gabbard, though who knows, it could be someone like Alan Grayson.    I don't think they would win the nomination like Trump did, but gain a Ron Paul-esque cult following that commands more than just a couple of %age points of primary support?  That seems possible to me.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Obviously a pro establishment candidate move.. If Bernie doesn't run, any insurgent progressive candidate is going to be struggling to get media cover and raise money while needing to start a campaign in California before Iowa completes.

[Rookie Yinzer]

Obviously a pro establishment candidate move.. If Bernie doesn't run, any insurgent progressive candidate is going to be struggling to get media cover and raise money while needing to start a campaign in California before Iowa completes.

Oh God. Please. *eye roll*

[Possiblymaybe]

California voted on Super Tuesday in 2008 and Obama got blown out in it. It didn't really matter.

Exactly.

[Mr. Morden]

If we assume that North Carolina (currently unscheduled) joins Super Tuesday as well, as has been speculated, and that New York votes in April again like last time, then the 10 states with the largest base number of delegates (actual top ten may change slightly because of bonuses) will go like this:

March 3: CA, TX, NC
March 10: OH, MI
March 17: FL, IL

April 28: PA, NY (don’t know that NY will go on the 28th, it’s just a guess)

June 2: NJ

California and Texas are the two with the largest Hispanic population, and they’d both be going on Super Tuesday.  Does that make them more powerful in this race?  Maybe.  We don’t really know, because it depends on how important momentum will be.  If momentum is important, then you want to go early.  If it’s not important, then you want to go late, and get the delegate bonuses for having your primary held later.

[The Other Castro]

The effect of moving CA much earlier in the calendar may be less about CA itself, but actually more about IA and NH (and SC and NV). These early states already had great importance because they often whittle down the field to just a few candidates, and now they'll have even greater importance because the leader at the end of the first four(ish) states will be in position to win the lion's share on Super Tuesday.

[Mr. Morden]

The effect of moving CA much earlier in the calendar may be less about CA itself, but actually more about IA and NH (and SC and NV). These early states already had great importance because they often whittle down the field to just a few candidates, and now they'll have even greater importance because the leader at the end of the first four(ish) states will be in position to win the lion's share on Super Tuesday.

Yes, I agree.  This potentially makes IA/NH/NV/SC more important.

However, the other big thing this may do is make it more likely that we'll still have more than two candidates left in the race at the time that California votes, and so, with proportional representation, potentially scrambling the delegate math a bit in a way that would be less likely if California was at the very end.  Exactly who benefits from that is unclear.  Though as I said upthread, I guess it does at least marginally increase the odds of a contested convention.  Though a contested convention still seems like a longshot.

[Webnicz]

This as a result likely means the campaigning will start earlier since candidates will need more time to build a donor base and name rec(although in my opinion primary voters keep up more with current events and watch at least  some of the debates)
Instead of announcing in spring we could see them announce in January/ February of '19 (maybe even a month after the midterm?). I excluded John Delany of course.

[Burke Bro]

Thanks a lot, California. RIP any underdog candidate who doesn't have enough name recognition early on in the primaries.

[The Mikado]

Thanks a lot, California. RIP any underdog candidate who doesn't have enough name recognition early on in the primaries.

Anyone who isn't nationally discussed by the day after New Hampshire is already screwed no matter what the calendar looks like.

[Mr. Morden]

Thanks a lot, California. RIP any underdog candidate who doesn't have enough name recognition early on in the primaries.

Anyone who isn't nationally discussed by the day after New Hampshire is already screwed no matter what the calendar looks like.

Yeah, I agree.  No offense to anyone in this thread, but some of the hot takes on this (this changes everything!) are getting tedious.  This move might benefit California candidates like Harris (but even that's not totally clear, since the state is sacrificing delegates in order to move earlier), but it doesn't really transform the nomination process in a fundamental way, as some folks seem to be suggesting.  There will still be four small-ish states (IA/NH/NV/SC) voting first, so that provides an "on-ramp" for candidates without big bank accounts.  The fact that Super Tuesday then comes right after those four states isn't really new.  It's pretty much the same as what we've seen in recent primary campaigns.  California was in June last time, but it was in March in 1996, 2000, and 2004, and February in 2008, so that isn't new either.

If California were actually going to be scheduled *first*, before even Iowa and New Hampshire, *that* would change the nature of the race quite a bit.  But that isn't happening.  The national parties are continuing to use rules that set up smaller states as the first four contests, which means that there's going to be a lot of emphasis on retail politics, just like in other recent primary contests.  No, the candidates aren't going to abandon all of the early primary states in order to campaign in California and Texas now.  That's not how it works.  (Rudy Giuliani proved how dumb that is.  )  Were people paying any attention to how the primary campaigns worked in past years?  I've noticed that Josh Putnam has been spending all his time on Twitter these past few days debunking all these myths.... 

https://twitter.com/FHQ