With the eastern wall of the Santa Ana Mountains as a backdrop, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney spent 12 minutes answering reporters' questions earlier this week before ducking into Corona's Eagle Glen Golf Club for a private fundraiser -- part of a three-day swing through Southern California in which the Republican presidential candidate spoke exclusively to paying guests.
Democratic hopeful Barack Obama popped up for a media-only event on Tuesday at a Brentwood gas station to talk about low-carbon fuel standards, the Illinois senator's sole public sighting during a two-day California fundraising trip.
On Wednesday, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona took some swipes at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of earmarks in defense legislation before stepping into a fundraiser atop the Wells Fargo Tower in downtown Los Angeles.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson also cruised through California in recent days as part of the mostly private scramble for cash before the next campaign finance-report deadline on June 30.
This wasn't how the campaign was supposed to unfold in California, according to the chatter earlier this year when the state Legislature moved up the 2008 presidential primaries to Feb. 5, near the front of the electoral calendar. An early primary was supposed to mean that the candidates would take the state and its issues seriously and not just stop by to pick up cash to spend elsewhere.
Yet seven months before the first absentee ballots can be cast, California voters' interactions with the candidates have been few and far between. And although the candidates talk about the political importance of California, some, at least, acknowledge the state isn't a top priority.
"The key for me, of course, and for all of us, if you look at the history of presidential politics, is to do well in the very early primaries" before Feb. 5, Romney said Monday. "We each have to focus a lot of effort on those first [states], as well as run a national campaign in all 50 states."
Giuliani put a sardonic spin on the fundraising ritual Sunday as he spoke to some 1,100 Republicans at the Orange County Republican Party's biggest annual fundraiser, a Flag Day Salute in Irvine. It was his fourth recent trip to the county to raise money; the other three were to add to his own campaign coffers. Almost all the Californians he talked to were donors or reporters.
