McClatchy: Rule changes add to uncertainty of California primary

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17191988.htm

Rule changes add to uncertainty of California primary
By Steven Thomma
McClatchy Newspapers

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Consider that Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee represents Oakland in Congress. She was the only member of Congress to vote in September 2001 against authorizing force in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Her district went for Democrat John Kerry over Republican George Bush in 2004 by a wide margin: 86 percent to 13 percent.

Hardly Republican turf.

Yet California's new early primary date - along with new rules for allocating Republican delegates there - has produced an unusual consequence: Voters in such liberal areas as Oakland and San Francisco could have as much say in picking the Republican nominee as those in conservative Orange County or the state's central valley.

Until now, all the state's delegates went to the winner of the statewide popular vote.

Starting next year, the statewide GOP primary winner will get only 11 of the state's 173 delegates. The three top state party officials will each get a delegate. For the remaining 159, the winner of the popular vote in each of 53 congressional districts will get three delegates.

So even though Lee's Oakland district has only about 32,000 Republican voters (the average in the last two presidential elections), it gets the same number of delegates as the southern California district of Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, which has about 116,000 Republican voters.

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