SACRAMENTO — The chutzpah award for this summer has a runaway winner. It's the small team of Republican operatives trying to rig the 2008 presidential race.
"Rig" means tilting the playing field to assure continued Republican occupancy of the White House -- perhaps for a very long time.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, September 06, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 34 words Type of Material: Correction
Electoral college: The Capitol Journal column in Monday's California section about an initiative that seeks to divvy up the state's electoral college votes misspelled the last name of initiative spokesman Kevin Eckery as Eckerly.
The GOP would do this by ending the winner-take-all system of parceling out electoral college votes in Democratic-leaning California. Instead of all 55 of California's electoral votes being awarded to the candidate who wins the popular vote statewide -- presumably the Democrat -- they'd be divvied up by congressional district. Whichever candidate carried a congressional district would get that district's one electoral vote.
The 53 congressional districts are mostly Democratic, but at least 20 favor Republicans. In fact, President Bush carried 22 in 2004. So the GOP scheme would seize 20 or more electoral votes that otherwise would go to the Democratic nominee. That's tantamount to losing Ohio.
The two other California electors, pegged to the two U.S. Senate seats, would be awarded to the winner of the statewide vote.
Meanwhile, all other states -- except midgets Maine and Nebraska -- would continue to allot their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. That includes Republican Texas.
To put this in perspective, California's 55 electoral votes represent 20% of the total needed to win the presidency.
"It would be virtually impossible for a Democrat to win the White House if we had to cede 22 votes in California," says strategist Chris Lehane, a veteran of presidential politics who's currently in the camp of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).
Indeed, the fight over the GOP ploy -- embodied in a ballot initiative -- could turn into a shootout between the prospective presidential nominees. The sponsors' goal is to qualify the measure for the June state primary ballot. By then, the nominations should be virtually settled. At stake in the initiative outcome for each potential nominee would be at least 20 electoral votes.
So the GOP operatives -- led by state party attorney Thomas Hiltachk of Sacramento -- are seeking financial support from the bankrollers of Republican candidates.
"A lot have expressed interest and a lot want to know more," says initiative spokesman Kevin Eckerly, a GOP consultant.
