{"id":13209,"date":"2023-08-07T02:06:30","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T02:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13209"},"modified":"2023-08-07T02:07:16","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T02:07:16","slug":"the-battle-for-californias-20-million-voters-came-early-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13209","title":{"rendered":"The Battle for California\u2019s 20 Million Voters Came Early This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Jennifer Medina <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing magical about \nCalifornia,\u201d Michael R. Bloomberg declared after a day flying through \nthe state \u2014 or Iowa, for that matter, he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here he was in California, not any of the four early nominating states, trying to make the magic happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\n there were free carne asada tacos in front of Fresno City College, \nalong with free Mike 2020 T-shirts, designed to draw a lunchtime crowd \nto hear the former New York mayor speak in a courtyard lined with citrus\n trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have never backed down from a bully or run away from a fight,\u201d Mr. Bloomberg said, standing in front of dozens of signs urging supporters to \u201cvote early.\u201d Then he turned to the core of his appeal: \u201cI\u2019m the un-Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is simple math\n \u2014 with 415 delegates, California has more electoral power than all four\n early states combined. And while the political world waited for, then \npored over, the partial results from not quite 170,000 voters in Iowa, \nthere are currently about 20 million registered voters in California, \nand roughly 15 million of them received mail-in ballots this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typically\n a late-spring afterthought in the nominating contests, and largely \nignored in the general election because their state is so reliably blue,\n the voters of California aren\u2019t accustomed to culling national \ncandidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this year, state officials moved voting day to Super Tuesday, the earliest the California primary has been since 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

California\n matters now. And the earlier primary means that presidential candidates\n are spending time and money in parts of the state that rarely see \nbig-name politicians of any kind. Democratic Senate candidates and \nwould-be governors often skip over the Central Valley, the agricultural \nheart of California, reasoning there are far more votes to be had \noutside the relatively rural and conservative part of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Appalachia of California,\u201d is how Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles, referred to the Central Valley as he traveled with Mr. Bloomberg Monday in Fresno, the region\u2019s largest city by population, after offering his endorsement and becoming a national political co-chair for the campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the coastal\n cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco have long been treated as \npolitical ATMs, the less wealthy Central Valley and Inland Empire have \noften struggled for attention and power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now California\u2019s Inland Empire, as the region about 50 miles east of Los Angeles is known, is a must-stop. Senator Bernie Sanders and Mr. Bloomberg, the candidates who have devoted the most resources to California, have both come to campaign in person and opened up field offices in the area, as well as in the Central Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople here have\n been beaten down for so long that they feel like their vote doesn\u2019t \nmatter,\u201d said Michael Gomez Daly, the executive director for Inland \nEmpire United, a left-leaning political advocacy group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smaller\n communities in other parts of the country have gotten attention from \npoliticians for years, he said. \u201cNow it\u2019s our turn to say: \u2018These are \nthe issues and what are you going to do about it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like\n many other local leaders, Mr. Gomez Daly lists homelessness, poverty, \nimmigration and the environment as some of the most pressing concerns \nfor the region. In an area packed with warehouses used to distribute \nimported goods all over the country, activists in the region have been \nfocusing their ire on Amazon, blaming the behemoth for stagnant low \nwages and pollution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Mr. Sanders visited, he too spoke out against Amazon by pitching the Green New Deal, which would crack down on truck emissions that pollute the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as in other Super Tuesday states, \nMichael Bloomberg is spending lavishly to get on the airwaves here \u2014 so \nfar paying nearly $34 million to advertise on television across the \nstate, including roughly $1.8 million on Spanish-language stations, \naccording to Advertising Analytics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His\n money is by far eclipsing other candidates who remain focused \nelsewhere. Only the other billionaire in the race, Tom Steyer, has come \nanywhere close, spending nearly $15 million since last summer. Mr. \nSanders\u2019s campaign has spent roughly $3 million on television in \nCalifornia so far, and has said it plans to spend over $2.5 million \nmore, spread between California and Texas, another delegate-rich Super \nTuesday state. (None of the other top candidates have advertised on \ntelevision so far.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the attention \ngoes beyond the airwaves. The Sanders and Bloomberg campaigns are \ntesting the theory that California is not a place that can be organized \nwith foot soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, Mr. \nBloomberg has 220 staff members throughout the state, a number his \ncampaign expects to grow to 800 by the end of the month. Mr. Sanders\u2019s \ncampaign, which has operated several offices throughout the state, has \nabout 90 organizers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though longtime political operatives in the state dismiss the notion that reaching out to individual voters is effective in a statewide election, the Sanders campaign boasts of knocking on 400,000 doors and making 3.5 million phone calls in California in the last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both the Sanders and Bloomberg campaigns \nare specifically targeting the Inland Empire and Central Valley, two of \nthe only regions in the state that still send Republicans to Congress. \nWhile Mr. Bloomberg\u2019s supporters believe he can attract moderate voters \nfrom the area, Mr. Sanders\u2019s staff is focusing on voters who backed \nBarack Obama and then switched to Donald J. Trump in those regions \u2014 \nespecially white working-class men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRiverside is our Des Moines,\u201d said Anna Bahr, a California spokeswoman for the Sanders campaign, describing efforts in the Inland Empire city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other campaigns seem to be taking a more traditional approach, waiting for more results to shake out in the early states before pouring money into California. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senator Elizabeth\n Warren has held several large rallies in the state, but so far has a \nsmaller staff operation. Advisers to former Vice President Joseph R. \nBiden Jr. say that their internal polling shows that he consistently \nmeets the 15 percent threshold \u2014 the number needed to secure delegates \u2014\n in each of the state\u2019s congressional districts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Current polling shows<\/a> Mr. Sanders leading, ahead of Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren<\/a>. Both Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and Mr. Bloomberg have yet to break into the top tier in the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\n candidate needs to capture at least 15 percent of the vote in a \ncongressional district or statewide in order to win delegates in \nCalifornia. Because the state has such a large number of delegates, it \nis possible for a candidate to rack up many delegates toward the \nnomination, even if he or she does not win the popular vote here. And if\n the race is tight, it is possible it will take days or weeks before the\n final results are clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. \nBloomberg, thanks to his resources, remains the biggest unknown factor. \nCampaign officials say they are confident they have more time to ramp \nup, with many voters still undecided and Mr. Biden\u2019s top-tier standing \nin question after a weak performance in the Iowa caucuses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jerry Brown, the former governor who remains one of the state\u2019s most popular political figures, said he believes the Democratic nomination may not be decided until the summer convention, but that Mr. Bloomberg could easily shift the dynamics with his spending alone. Though California has a history of rejecting self-funded candidates, Mr. Brown recalled watching his own internal polls steadily tick up during his 2010 race for governor, as he began spending heavily on television ads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had been \nbehind from May to September, then we started on television after Labor \nDay and I started going up a point or two every week,\u201d he said. \n\u201cCalifornia voters are swayed by what they see on their televisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At\n his rallies across the state Monday, several people in the crowds said \nthey remained undecided, but were considering Mr. Bloomberg in part \nbecause of his willingness to spend lavishly to beat Mr. Trump and his \nexperience in running the largest city in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, there were signs of Mr. Bloomberg\u2019s uphill battle, particularly among people of color, several of whom mentioned the stop-and-frisk policing tactic<\/a>\n that he pursued for a decade and that disproportionately targeted black\n and Latino men. Mr. Bloomberg defended the policy for years before apologizing late last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve heard a lot of candidates make a lot of promises to the African-American community and then no follow through,\u201d said Nina Childs, 36, a writer who lives in Compton. \u201cA lot of people I know, a lot of black millennials are really excited by Sanders. Are they going to get excited by someone who supported stop and frisk, like Bloomberg? No.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latinos make up roughly 24 percent of likely voters in California, and the Sanders campaign has made getting their votes a cornerstone of its strategy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far, Mr. Sanders\u2019s campaign has spent roughly $1.7 million on Spanish-language television advertising, according to Advertising Analytics, about the same as Mr. Bloomberg. And Mr. Bloomberg is aggressively courting moderate Latino and black voters, touting the backing of Mr. Villaraigosa and Aja Brown, the mayor of Compton and one of several African-American leaders to endorse him in recent days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCentral Valley issues are Latino issues, and Latino issues are American issues,\u201d Mr. Bloomberg told voters in Fresno.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr.\n Bloomberg, who is known for his earnest but halting attempts to speak \nSpanish, shied away from speaking the language on the stump through his \ntour of the state. Then, in Compton, he riffed on the Super Bowl \nhalftime show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think we know which \nteam put on the most impressive performance,\u201d he said. \u201cShar-eek-ah and \nJLo.\u201d The crowd laughed politely, seemingly forgiving the mangled \npronunciation of the Colombian superstar Shakira\u2019s name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n some ways, the campaigns\u2019 California plans seem to echo the \u201cfishhook \nstrategy\u201d Republicans tried to use in the state decades ago, targeting \nthe central region of the state and inland Southern California, said \nKarthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy and politics at the \nUniversity of California, Riverside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\n think this region is getting to a stage where people here expect to be \ntreated better, in terms of having candidates actually visit and paying \nattention to them,\u201d Mr. Ramakrishnan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rusty\n Bailey, the mayor of Riverside, describes himself as a moderate and is \nregistered as \u201cno party preference\u201d but plans to vote in the Democratic \nprimary. He was leaning toward Mr. Buttigieg until Mr. Bloomberg came to\n stump in Riverside in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The top issue in the region is homelessness, Mr. Bailey said, and he believes that Mr. Bloomberg understands the concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Gomez Daly, \nthe policy director of the Inland Empire advocacy group, said that the \ninfusion of attention was a \u201cdream for the local political \ninfrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, he said, he sees other benefits too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody I know seems to have been hired by the Sanders and Bloomberg campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer Medina is a national political reporter fro the NY Times covering the 2020 presidential campaign. A Southern California native, she previously spent several years reporting on the region for the National desk. <\/em>@jennymedina<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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