Draft Gore 2008 PAC

Here's the story -- link. Because Gov. Schwarzenegger has less than a lifetime in California politics, he can't recall that California's late primary and large delegate count made it the place for Democrats to turn to when the early primary process went awry -- Bobby Kennedy came to California, met with Cézar Chávez, and went on to win California after Hubert Humphery was already the presumptive nominee, and only Sirhan Sirhan kept RFK from facing Richard Nixon in the 1968 general election.

An early California primary benefits us, its why we're in SoCal and Nevada, not Iowa or New Hampshire, but the idea that it is beneficial to California Dems, or to the Party, is, in our opinion, illusory. It means that the early big money will dominate in the large, expensive media market, and that all the campaigns that will be competitive after the IA/NH/NV/SC sequence, but with less than enough money to buy the (Republican owned) media shares will have to chose where in the February 5th contests to be competitive, and where the earned media will be if they win everywhere but California.

The rules are its a proportional primary with 441 total delegate votes. Of those 241 are district and 81 are at large. There are 48 pledged PLEOs and 66 unpledged PLEOs, with 5 unpledged add-ons to bring the total up to 441. Its 10% of the total, see First Determining Steps.

Using the March 15th random letter order (shown in parenthesis) as an example, the California primary ballot order is:

1. Edwards (1)
2. Kucinich (2)
3. Gore (8)
4. Biden (9)
5. Obama (11)
6. Richardson (24)
7. Clinton (26)