SACRAMENTO — A few Fridays ago, Hillary Clinton visited Antonio Villaraigosa and his family at the mayor's official residence in Windsor Square for what a mayoral aide described as a "relaxed and personal" conversation.
But the evening's competitive courtship of Villaraigosa had just begun: Later that night, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina took him to dinner.
California's politicians, used to being largely ignored in presidential politics, are being wooed with vigor as candidates for the White House look for guidance, endorsements and money in the Golden State's newly relevant 2008 presidential primary.
Candidates have also stepped up their public appearances in usually forsaken areas of the state and are starting to show keen interest in issues that national candidates have rarely bothered to learn about.
Soon Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to sign a bill advancing the presidential primary to Feb. 5. That will mean only four states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada -- will hold their votes before California.
Though many other large states may also hold primaries the same day as California, this state will inevitably offer the largest number of delegates, transforming a place that has often been an afterthought in the primary campaigns into a meaningful player.
"The state needs to be harvested in a political way that hasn't happened in a long time," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic political strategist close to Clinton, the junior senator from New York.
Campaigns that until recently had been focused elsewhere are now rushing to do just that.
On the Democratic side, much of the courting has been aimed at Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez of Los Angeles and Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata of Oakland. Though the legislators may be less known to the public than Villaraigosa or San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, their endorsements are valued because they have sway with the state's unions and their armies of voters and potential campaign workers.
In Washington earlier this month, Nunez was invited to Barack Obama's Senate office for a half-hour chat. He has also met privately with Clinton at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. When the speaker and a contingent of Assembly members go to Washington next week to lobby for more federal money for California, they will also meet with both of those candidates and Edwards.
