California: Here they come

By: Mandie Mohsenzadegan

Posted: 1/23/08

What is a primary? Is it the same as a caucus?

A primary is an election, so anybody who is registered to vote can go and participate.

• Usually, you have to be a registered Democrat to participate in the Democratic primary or a registered Republican to participate in the Republican primary.

• In California, if you haven't registered with either party, you can opt to vote in the Democratic primary but not the Republican primary.

• So Democrats will be getting some independent voters and some non-party voters, which will probably help a candidate like Barack Obama, who appeals to independent voters.

• In California, McCain will be penalized by that because independent voters can't vote in the Republican primary, and he's usually popular with independents.

A caucus is a meeting at which the members of the party go and talk to each other, and they determine right there how they want their delegates to be allocated.

• Usually participation is much higher in a primary because it's an election. It's all day. You go and vote. It's quick. You can do it by mail if you're an absentee voter.

• But a caucus you have to physically go to the meeting at the specified time. So, maybe at the most, one-tenth of the potential elector participates in a caucus system.

What does it mean to win a state, and if a candidate gets second, what does it mean to their campaign?

What all this means is you get a lot of media attention. Why is that good? Voters in other places notice, and campaign contributors notice.

• Barack Obama got a huge influx of money after he won Iowa; and after New Hampshire, both Clinton and Obama are getting over $1 million a day in contributions, usually online, in fairly small amounts - $50, $100, $250.

• Eventually if you're not winning, you're losing … like Dennis Kucinich didn't get invited to the last debate because he's too far out in the Democratic field, and they want people who have a reasonable chance of winning. So that's the first thing winning means.

• Then it means some apportionment of delegates to the party conventions. The delegates are the ones who actually at the conventions in the summer choose the party nominees.

That was going to be the next question - defining the delegates.

A delegate is somebody who gets chosen at a primary, for a caucus, to go to Denver for the Democrats and Minneapolis for the Republicans and vote on who the candidate will be.

• Delegates are pledged. Some states are winner-take-it-all, which means if you win by 32 percent (or more), you get all of the delegates for the state - usually that's the Republican side.

• (On) the Democratic side, the delegates would be divided up according to the proportion of the vote. We're a big state, so just winning that many would be more than all the delegates that has been decided so far in the other states.

• Taking first doesn't mean you get all the delegates … For example, John Edwards, although he hasn't won anyplace yet, I think he will stay in until the California (primary) and all the primaries on Feb. 5, because if he gets 10 percent in California that would be 10 percent of the delegates.

So he still has a fair chance?

He has a chance. It's not a great chance, but he has a chance. See, what could happen is, normally through a sequence of primaries one candidate emerges as the leader, and they accrue sufficient delegates to assure that they get the nomination … After Feb. 5, they're going to be adding up the delegates to see where all the different candidates stand. Usually by March or April we know; somebody's got a majority of the delegates at the convention.

But I think what's going to happen this time, nobody's going to have that clear majority because we've got several good candidates in both parties. Nobody's the clear, single frontrunner right now, so it could all split up and the convention really could decide.

Are winning delegates more important than winning a state?

You've got to win somewhere. You want the delegates, but you also want to win.

• In the long term winning the delegates is the most important thing because that's what's going to count in the convention.

• But if you win a state, it helps you win the next state and the state after that … you get what's called momentum, so it helps you raise money and keep competitive.

Why are the Republican and Democratic Conventions so important?

What's going to be different this time is I think the conventions may not be predetermined, so the decision is really going to be made at the convention in Denver (Democratic) or the convention in Minneapolis (Republican)

• Historically, they haven't been very important for the last 40 years or so, because usually the decision is predetermined through the primaries because they're allocating the delegates.

• Normally the conventions just become rallying, like a great big campaign rally for whoever the nominee is going to be.

• But it's going to be a lot different and very interesting. We haven't seen this in years and years, maybe since 1960.

Are there any California-specific rules concerning our primary?

One is that "decline-to-state" voters can vote in the Democratic primary. The second thing that's different is that California is proportional; the delegates reflect the proportion of the vote you get, and that's not true for Republicans.

• On the Republican side it's winner-take-all, although it's by congressional district. So let's say in this congressional district Rudy Giuliani gets more votes than anybody else - he would get all the delegates from this district. But in the next one over, lets say in the Central Valley, Huckabee gets slightly more than Giuliani, so the Republicans could be divided up too.

• It's winner-take-all by congressional district - there are 53 districts - but it's not winner-take-all for the state … This is one of the confusing things about primaries. Almost every state has different rules about who can vote in a primary and also about how the delegates are apportioned.

Do you think that it's important for SJSU students to vote in the primary? Why should they care?

If they care who the president is: yes. The primary elections are where the candidates come from, and normally California is at the way end of the cycle, like in June, so normally what we do in California doesn't matter very much. It hasn't mattered, I think, since 1972, because by June the leading candidate usually has enough delegates. This time's different. So this time California could really determine who the party nominees would be. You know, on the Democratic side, there are various shades of liberal and the Republican side, there are various shades of conservative.

There are issues that I think college students should be concerned about, like health care; and it's going to affect them all of their lives, and it actually affects a lot of college students now because they don't have health care. Unless their parents cover them or they rely on the school clinic and that's not good for serious illnesses … There's also the war, which a lot of students are concerned about, and there's financing college educations, the Democrats have proposals to make it easier to pay off loans.

This is the first election that I think environmental issues are going to be at the forefront, and I think that's something that college students are very focused on. So, I think there are definitely issues that matter, and young people are usually less likely to vote than old people, which is one reason why candidates often talk about social security and stuff that old people are interested in because older people vote … but young people are voting in higher numbers this year.

And that makes a big impact?

Yes. That does make a big impact. It could change election outcomes. If 5 percent, 10 percent, or 20 percent more young people participate, it could change the outcomes, and we have candidates who are inspiring young people.

• Barack Obama I think most of all, Hillary Clinton for young women, and so on, you can go through the list, most of the candidates reach somebody, Mike Huckabee for evangelical Christians and so on.

• So I think we have seen higher turnout among young people and will continue to do that. That is going to matter.