Sprawling, Diverse California Poses Special Challenge for Candidates

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Ground Level
Sprawling, Diverse State Poses Special Challenge for Candidates
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: January 31, 2008

....Voters here, engaged by the foreclosure problem and fearing a recession, are ready to lay eyes on candidates, or at least see their faces on television. The goal of the state Legislature in moving California’s primaries to Tuesday was to end the endless practice of candidates bivouacking into Los Angeles and San Francisco for money or debates, skirting the cities that rest in the hills and valleys beyond....

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Since the 1968 primaries — won by Robert F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon — California has been viewed by presidential aspirants as a microcosm of the country. From economic issues to trends in health care, immigration, urban infrastructure and education, the state has proved to be a great incubator for prescriptive policy and a test of the political winds. This year, with two other large states on Tuesday ostensibly spoken for by hometown favorites — Illinois for Senator Barack Obama and New York for Senator Hillary Rodham — California looms even larger for the Democrats.

The presidential candidates know the state, flush with delegates, cannot be easily discarded. But the vastness of California, the high cost of advertising here — a statewide television buy can run over $2 million for a week — and the sheer impossibility of traversing its myriad Congressional districts in a day, even with the help of chartered aircraft, have forced the candidates to keep their distance from here. For those who would be president, California is like an inaccessible love interest, stared at from across the country with both longing and frustration, its suitors aggrieved by their fumbling inability to connect.

The candidates cannot find Mr. Hodge in a pancake house, à la New Hampshire, and an evening at a house party in Loma Linda means precious time outside of nearly two dozen other states which are smaller, cheaper and closer to others voting Tuesday. It requires creativity. On the Democratic side, Mr. Obama has cultivated some 700 microgroups in the state (how’s it going, cat lovers for Obama?) and scores of weekend phone banks and neighborhood canvas volunteers. Mrs. Clinton has focused on Hispanic voters both with personal appearances, and with things like a “Bring Your Own Phone” party in San Diego — in which volunteers bring cellphones and make calls to potential supporters....

But unearthing the truth about the state’s political contours is as complex and multifaceted as its physical geography. Just as presidential candidates are often as close to a snow-capped mountain as an incoming Pacific wave, they are almost always equidistant from a pious environmentalist on his way to lunch at the Ivy and a young mother who says Christian values are the most important thing a candidate can possess....

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In interviews with Democrats and Republicans and those who are unaffiliated with a party, the state of the economy — specifically the rising costs of gas and food, and the high rate of home foreclosures — trumped nearly every other issue....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/us/politics/31calif.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all