California's 172 delegates could finally make a big difference

LOS ANGELES -- California Republicans are about to experience an event many of them have never seen -- a primary that could determine a presidential nomination.

Because Donald Trump lost Ohio's primary Tues

day night, ceding the state's 66 delegates to its governor, John Kasich, the race to claim the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination seems unlikely to be settled before California votes June 7.

The Democratic battle this year between Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also will almost certainly come to California, since Sanders has made clear he intends to fight until the primary season is concluded. He will be meeting, in Clinton, a candidate who rallied women and Latinos in this state to win the 2008 primary against Barack Obama.

Because of the party's nominating rules -- the proportional allotment of delegates coupled with Clinton's edge with so-called superdelegates who are not bound by voting results -- Sanders would have to amass big wins in several large states to have a hope of catching up.

Barring another big shift in the race, such as a decision by one of the three remaining candidates to drop out, the contest for California will be critical to the outcome.

How important is it?

So important that Kasich gave the state -- home to one of every eight Americans -- a shout-out in his nationally televised victory speech Tuesday night.

"I'm getting ready to rent a covered wagon, we're going to have a big sail and have the wind blow us to the Rocky Mountains and over the mountains to California," Kasich told cheering supporters outside Cleveland.

California's 172 delegates -- 14 percent of the 1,237 required to win the nomination -- will be chosen on the last big day of the presidential calendar, which also features voting by New Jersey and a smattering of other states.

California has moved up its primary day in past cycles in order to boost its importance, but now appears ready to seize that role on its traditional voting day: the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June.

"California's primary delegates became the pot at the end of the rainbow for the campaigns," said Ben Ginsberg, a veteran GOP lawyer who has long been involved in the nomination process.

The party now looking at an outsized role has been losing heft in California for years. The most recent registration numbers show 4.76 million Republicans registered in the state, or 27.6 percent of registered voters. That represents a loss of nearly a million voters from the party's registration peak in 2004.

The Republicans who will decide this year are more similar to their counterparts in other states than they are to California as a whole. Republicans in this majority-minority state are 76 percent white, 62 percent married and 33 percent over the age of 65, according to a September University of Southern California Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

In all those areas, those numbers greatly exceed the percentages among registered voters.

The USC/Los Angeles Times survey, conducted less than three months after Trump entered the race, had him in the lead, with 24 percent compared with the next finisher at the time, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, at 18 percent. The other two candidates who now remain in the race, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. Kasich, barely registered.

A more recent January survey by California's Field poll found a very different race: Among likely Republican voters, Cruz had 25 percent to Trump's 23 percent, a statistical tie, with Kasich nearly invisible.

A GOP candidate could get three delegates by winning House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's liberal San Francisco district, which contains 30,000 Republicans -- the same number he would capture for winning the sprawling Northern California district of Elk Grove conservative stalwart Rep. Tom McClintock, home to 175,000 Republicans.

That could mean 53 separate fights, in theory, although in practice much of the warring will be conducted via the state's dozen or so media markets.

At this point, the California scenario for 2016 looks remarkably similar to what occurred in 1964, when the state handed Republican Barry Goldwater a victory, giving him momentum heading into the national convention.

To avoid a contested convention in July, Trump would have to capture more than half of the delegates who remain in play.

This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "California's 172 delegates could finally make a big difference ."