a

Jay Donde, a Republican in San Francisco, describes his experience in the liberal bastion as frustrating.

But that may soon change due to a quirk in the way the Republican Party allocates delegates in presidential primaries. Donde and other GOP voters in liberal parts like the Bay Area and Los Angeles could have a bigger vote in choosing their party’s 2024 presidential nominee than their counterparts in the most conservative corners of the state, like the Central Valley.

That’s because a GOP presidential candidate gets three delegates for every California congressional district they win. It doesn’t matter if it’s former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosis in San Francisco, home to 29,150 registered Republicans, including Donde, or

Leader of the majority of the house

current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s district, centered in Bakersfield, home to 205,738 GOP voters.

“It’s exciting,” says Donde, 39, an attorney and cofounder of the San Francisco Briones Society, an organization of centrist Republicans, moderates and independents. “Not many Republican voters in California realize that the state is going to play such an important role in selecting the next Republican Party nominee.”

While California’s GOP presidential delegate allocation system has been in place for nearly two decades, it’s poised to make an impact next year, largely because the state’s primaries are early, on March 5, and there

is

an open race for the Republican nomination.

We are a highly delegated state, said Jessica Millan Patterson, the chairman of the Republican State Party. An incredible blue [congressional] a seat in Los Angeles or San Francisco has as many delegates as a strong Republican seat in other parts of the state.

With 169 delegates, California has the most of any state in the country and nearly all of them are awarded by the congressional district. Candidates need just over 1,230 delegates nationwide to win the party nomination.

If a candidate wins less than a fifth of California’s 52 congressional districts, that’s still a greater number of delegates than if he or she wins several other states. New Hampshire, which receives inordinate media and campaign attention because it traditionally hosts the country’s first primary, has a total of 22 delegates.

If you can come to California and build out a few media outlets where you can spend a lot of money, or you can put together a lot of volunteers and build a [small number of] Republican votes in mostly Democratic congressional districts, you have a great opportunity to pick up delegates, said former GOP chairman Jim Brutte. And if you get 15 or 20 or 30 delegates from California, that’s more delegates than some other states.”

Republican voter registration in 20 of the state’s 52 congressional districts is 20% or less; none have 50%, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. Statewide, Republicans make up 24% of the electorate, Democrats 47%, and voters not expressing a party preference 22%.

Historically, the statewide winner received all of California’s delegates, resulting in uncompetitive races due to the high cost of campaigning in such a sprawling state with some of the nation’s most expensive media markets. Candidates visit regularly to raise money from the large number of wealthy donors who live here.

Nobody came here to campaign,” Brute said. “They brought their vacuum cleaners and they sucked out all the money.”

A quarter of a century ago, conservatives, hoping to make the state more competitive and attractive to Republican presidential candidates, proposed drastic overhauling of the primary system and allocating three delegates per congressional district. An additional 13 delegates would be awarded proportionally based on statewide results.

I wanted to get California more in the game, and I felt that winner-all was a drag, said Mike Schroeder, a state party leader, as he launched the effort to change the delegate allocation rules. I thought if we created a situation where even if you couldn’t win the whole state, you could get a reward for winning part of it, that would have the effect of California coming into play.

An added bonus in a state amid dramatic demographic changes was that this move could lead Republicans to reach out to voters in communities they had traditionally ignored, Schroeder said.

It created a reason to do it, he said. It’s almost like a mayoral race, true

you

have to learn how to get to each of these neighborhoods. You could also call any voter for much less than TV commercials.

Although the effort was first proposed in 1998, supporters of then-GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush, including Brutte, a legislative leader who co-chaired Bush’s campaign in California, declined because it was widely expected that the then-governor of Texas would win the 2000. stands GOP primary, and such a rule change could dampen his lead as a delegate.

They were successful: the new rules for assigning delegates did not come into effect until 2004. And since then it has largely gone untested

Than

because of the nomination race

s were largely

before the California primary, there was a sitting Republican president, a candidate had a commanding leadership, or the primary was scheduled so late that the candidate was effectively selected.

But now, for the first time, I think California is really in play, Schroeder said.

However, he said a key question was whether East Coast political consultants, who typically run campaigns in the White House and are schooled in the weeds of delegate rules in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire, but are unfamiliar with California statutes , would organize in time. If so, their candidates could be rewarded with “a huge haul” of delegates, Schroeder said.

No 2024 candidate is actively pursuing this strategy, but their visits to California so far have focused on meeting with donors and power brokers, and performing at prominent GOP sites such as the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley. The party’s second presidential primary debate will take place there later this year, although former President Trump has suggested on social media that he should not participate because Fred Ryan, the library’s chairman and former Reagan chief of staff, is the publisher of the Washington Post. .

But state party officials and Republican strategists say they have received questions about the process of assigning delegates from the campaigns of Trump and former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, as well as a likely candidate they declined to name because this person has not officially announced a candidacy.

Spokesmen for Trump and Haley’s campaigns did not respond to requests for comment.

Nevertheless, Republicans living in the most liberal areas of the states are thrilled by the prospect of being courted by White House hopefuls.

If someone actually employs that strategy, it would be a nice bone to throw at San Francisco’s long-suffering Republicans, said John Dennis, the city’s GOP chairman.