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)

These are the "first determining steps" of the delegate selection process. Those shown with (1:number) are in our Tier 1, those with (2:number) are in our Tier 2, and those with (3:number) are in our Tier 3. Because of changes in the field (Russ Feingold's withdrawal, Tom Vilsack's withdrawal, Mark Warner's withdrawal) and changes in the schedule (California's move to March, Florida's move to February, ...) we will be revising our plan. Potential changes are chown as (?:number). Note: totals need recomputing.

CQPolitics reports that Tom Tancredo will be doing an exploratory tour of Iowa's GOP, and "is scheduled for several book-signings at Barnes & Noble stores in the Des Moines area, where he will discuss his hard-line views on illegal immigration."

We spent last summer working in the IA-01, IA-02, and IA-03. There are thousands of bi-lingual Spanish-English native US citizens (from Texas/Tejas) working in the meat packing industry in Eastern Iowa. Joyce Schulte ran against Steve King in the IA-05 with no DCCC money, did rather well with what little she had. Steve King works the same rhetorial vein of xenophobia, paranoia, and privilege as Tom Tancredo, and does very lettle else, even when his party controlled both Houses of Congress and all three branches of government. In Western Iowa drought is a profoundly important issue, and we hope that when it comes to a choice between a candidate running on race and fear, and a candidate running on water and work, that water and work will win in '08.

Of course, we'll have to work to realize that hope. It won't be enough to just cherry pick delegates in Iowa then rush off to the next show. We have to work there in the Fall of '08 to win what we, and others, will promise, in the Winter of '07/08.

There are 433 delegates, 371 pleged, 72 unpleged, 242 by district (and this weekend's elections for the Democratic State Central Committee (DSCC) do matter, we expect the Progressive Slate to do well in many of the districts it is contesting) 48 pleged PLEOs and 67 unpledged PLEOs, and 5 unpledged add-ons.

Fortunately, we've been working California since we left Iowa last August.