California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring commented, after the results of the New Hampshire primary tonight that, “It’s clear following tonight’s results that Californians will vote before it’s clear who will carry each party’s banner into November. As a result, Californians have more influence over the ultimate result of this primary contest than at any time in recent memory.”
This is very true. As we get closer to the February 5 Super Duper Tuesday voting where California along with 23 other states will be holding their primaries, it becomes more and more likely that no candidates will have a real lock on their respective party’s nomination.
Before I pen some thoughts about the GOP Presidential primary, I want readers to know that as an elected officer of the California Republican Party, I have neither endorsed nor do I support any individual candidates in the race for the nomination…
As I reflect on the GOP results in the Granite State with John McCain coming in first place, nearly six points ahead of his main New Hampshire rival, Mitt Romney, I thought to myself – there is no front-runner emerging from these early primaries. This on the heels of the bizarre Mike Huckabee win in the Iowa Caucus, and Mitt Romney’s blip of a win in Wyoming. Next comes Michigan, where Romney’s dad was an icon, and then South Carolina, where they say that Fred Thompson is supposed to prove his mettle as a candidate.
It seems to me that if I were Presidential aspirant Rudolph Giuliani, I could not have asked for these early contests to be going any better. After all, Giuliani’s strategy of focusing on more of the delegate rich states such as Florida, New York and California, and virtually ignoring these first-to-vote states is a risky one. I mean, for nearly a month, Giuliani will be out of the spotlight, working those states that don’t start voting until Florida’s late January primary… That is a lot of missed earned media.
But it seems to me that the one outcome that would be the worst case scenario for Giuliani, in my opinion, is not materializing. If Mitt Romney’s strategy of winning in Iowa and New Hampshire had occurred, he is the one candidate with vast personal wealth, and the ability to “light up tv sets” in all of those Super Duper Tuesday states with coverage of his early victories, creating the “Mighty Mo” of politics – momentum, that is. Now, with as he puts it “two silver medals” in those states, Romney in no way is an early front-runner – arguably that title might reside with John McCain (at least until South Carolina). Of course, McCain is hamstrung financially, which will make it difficult to parlay his New Hampshire win.
I had an opportunity, in advance of the New Hampshire vote, to chat on the phone with Mike DuHaime, the Campaign Manager of the Giuliani for President campaign. Earlier in the week I blogged about which candidates were serious about California, and about their resource commitments. In response to that, the Mayor’s campaign reached out to set up this interview.
Before I talk about our chat, I thought I would convey a bit about DuHaime, who is considered to be one of the “rising stars” in terms of political strategists/technicians on the GOP side of things. He cut his teeth as an Regional Political Director in President Bush’s 2004 re-election, and then spent the 2006 election cycle in the important position of Political Director at the Republican National Committee. Now, at the age of 35, he is managing the campaign of a major candidate for the White House. Impressive by any standards. More impressive, still, is that he frequents that FlashReport (yeah!).
We chatted for a bit about the national race and such, but for the purposes of this blog post, I wanted to convey his thoughts about California.
DuHaime was quick to mention that Giuliani’s first major campaign trip of 2007 was a five day swing through California (hitting our California Republican Party convention, a major state agriculture exposition, etc.). He has made numerous trips back through the Golden State since (including a trip where I conducted a one-on-one video interview with Giuliani).
“California was the first domino that changed the way we look at this race,” DuHaime told me, referring to this cycle’s massive shift in when states are holding their primaries. “We have always looked at California as being critical to the success of our winning the nomination.”
“We’ve build great endorsements in California. We have both major candidates who ran as Republicans for Governor in 2002, Bill Simon and Richard Riordan. We also have the support of former California Governor Pete Wilson. In additional, we have more California Congressional endorsements than any of the other candidates.”
We spoke about hard-committed resources on the ground. DuHaime talked about many Giuliani campaign offices around the state and said that their campaign has close to twenty paid staffers on the ground up and down California and added that they have been there for a while. “We believe that our early focus on California will pay huge dividends for us.”
I asked about the Giuliani campaigns efforts to reach absentee voters in California, who are already starting to receive their ballots. DuHaime told me that the campaign has an interest phone call program taking place, calling absentee voters. He said that much of the effort of their extensive field staff has been to organize volunteers around making these calls. He added that they have put a lot of time into growing their volunteer organization.
DuHaime closed out our chat about California by adding two final points. He said that their campaign had made a serious investment into gathering e-mail addresses, and that e-mails had already gone out to hundreds of thousands of California voters, emphasizing their campaign messages. Also, he said that their campaign was up with a major national television buy on Fox, which of course would include their stations in California.
“New York City is 5-1 Democrat to Republican, but yet Rudy Giuliani was elected Mayor. He did it by doing things his own way, not the way others told him it was “supposed” to be done,” DuHaime said. “Our strategy of focusing on the delegate rich states, instead of the smaller early states, is controversial, but it is ‘Rudy’s way’ and we believe it will ultimately put us in a great position to win the nomination.”
The rules at play for delegate selection in California engender to Giuliani’s favor right now, as the candidate who has held onto a plurality of the GOP vote in public opinion polls. Despite the efforts of many conservatives, California’s GOP primary is still basically a winner-take-all situation. Yes, for the lion’s share of the delegates, its winner-take-all at the Congressional District level, but it is not, say proportional. It is very likely that one candidate will emerge with a significant majority of California’s 179 delegates.
We’ll see how it all plays out. But let’s remember that California is a VERY expensive state in which to campaign. It will take a lot of money to shape the opinion of Republican voters (remember, it’s a GOP-only primary – unlike New Hampshire, independent voters cannot vote for the Republican candidates). Given the sheer volume of states voting between now and February 5th, it will be interesting to see if any Republican candidates, besides Giuliani, make the serious resource commitment here.
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