SAN FRANCISCO — Stephanie Burns and Ben Parkinson strolled down sun-drenched Fillmore Street with political thievery on their minds.
Both are grass-roots volunteers for Republican presidential contender Ron Paul, a Texas congressman whose libertarian views might seem to make him a tough sell in this legendarily left-wing city.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, October 30, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Ron Paul candidacy: An article in Monday's Section A about GOP presidential campaigning in the Bay Area gave the wrong last name of Collins for volunteer Jerry Cullen.
But Burns, Parkinson and other Paul supporters have been spending their weekends marching, staffing tables and knocking on doors in an improbable quest: picking up some of California's 173 convention delegates in the Feb. 5 primary.
On the surface, the plan seems quixotic given general assumptions about California: that the state is too big for retail politics, and that campaign victory requires expensive TV ads in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento.
But for the Republicans, that changed when the state party amended its rules before the 2004 primary. Instead of awarding all the state's delegates to whomever wins the statewide vote, the GOP doles out three delegates to the winner of each of the state's 53 congressional districts. (Eleven at-large delegates also go to the top vote-getter in the state, and three more delegates are unpledged.)
The rule change might seem arcane, but it has forced campaigns to reach into the state's nooks and crannies beyond key media markets.
And it has emboldened Paul supporters to organize here in San Francisco, across the bay in Oakland and in other districts with relatively few Republicans, under the theory that it's easier for a small fish to campaign in a small pond.
"We don't have to chase that many people," said Burns, a construction site manager from Sausalito who leads a 345-member group of Bay Area Paul supporters who came together through Meetup.com. "That's what makes it attractive."
Under the rules, whoever wins in San Francisco's District 8 -- represented by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and containing 34,000 registered Republicans -- will receive the same number of delegates as the top vote-getter in Orange County District 48, held by John Campbell, with 200,000 Republicans.
In Pelosi's district, the winning threshold is low.
Primary voter turnout historically is less than 50%, which means fewer than 17,000 Republicans are likely to vote. With a wide field of candidates, the number of votes to win a plurality -- and the district's three delegates -- is likely to be just a few thousand.
