Women, latinos key in California

SAN FRANCISCO -- They're done with the hog farms and those quaint hamlets pumping out maple syrup.

And now that the surviving presidential candidates have put Iowa and New Hampshire in the rearview mirror, they're speeding toward a very big, very Western political panorama where Nevada voters caucus on Jan. 19 and Californians offer the largest delegate prize of all on Feb. 5.

The political map is quickly morphing from the intimate retail settings in the farms of Iowa and the town squares of New Hampshire into the broad expanses of the West, where urban areas and swelling "exurbs," expensive major media markets and burgeoning populations of minority voters will shape the race.

There was Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton going house to house in Nevada last week, sitting down with the family of a Latina hotel maid in Las Vegas. Then on Friday, the New York senator was talking up her economic agenda in Los Angeles .

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama also went West last week, spending Friday in Las Vegas, where he met with the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union -- a new endorser. This week in California he'll hit the Bay Area, including Silicon Valley -- a powerhouse urban arena and political fundraising center that has a population bigger than all of New Hampshire.

With just a week until the Nevada caucuses and little more than three weeks until California's primary, candidates are already figuring out formulas and strategies to win voters and collect money -- particularly in the Golden State, which will dole out 441 delegates -- 20 percent of all the delegates needed for the Democratic nomination.

"California is not about grange halls and living rooms," said Phil Trounstine, who heads the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University. "This is a vast territory, and candidates have to appeal to an enormous array of perspectives and interests that don't exist in places like Iowa and New Hampshire."

The candidates had better work fast: Voters in California began casting ballots last week by mail, and "nearly half will have voted before election day," said Democratic strategist Christ Lehane, a Clinton supporter.

Political observers say there are a handful of key factors at play as the dates approach that will define the West's unique role as new territory for presidential candidates on both the Republican and Democratic side.

Among them:

-- Female voters: They constituted 57 percent of the vote in New Hampshire and are certain to be a factor in California, where they also outnumber men. And in a state that has elected two female U.S. senators and a crowd of congressional representatives, the XX chromosome may be the X factor for both Republicans and Democrats. Women also make up the bulk of the likely absentee voters in California.

-- Latinos: The fastest-growing constituency in California and an acknowledged political force of the future -- as Clinton's choice of campaign events last week demonstrated.

Both sides are doing everything to maximize the outcome, with Clinton's campaign tying down major endorsements -- Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa , United Farmworkers' co-founder Dolores Huerta -- and Obama aiming direct appeals to younger, inspired Latino voters.

-- Independent or "decline-to-state" voters: They were key factors in Iowa and New Hampshire, but the equation is different in California, where state GOP leaders decided to bar independents from voting in the 2008 primary. That means nearly 20 percent of potential voters can't cast a ballot for a Republican -- a bad thing for Arizona Sen. John McCain, who is popular among independents, but a good thing for Obama, who has proved more attractive to those voters than Clinton.

-- Early voters: Californians have been casting their ballots in the 2008 presidential race by mail, even as the results of Iowa and New Hampshire were percolating.

Clinton's campaign has targeted permanent absentee voters for months -- for a reason, said Lehane. "The vote by mail is disproportionately women, and one-third is in the first 10 days, as we speak -- on the heels of the New Hampshire primary," he said.

-- The delegate battle: GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani is one of the few who has done what passes for retail campaigning in California -- hitting small diners and cafes in places like Burlingame, Oakland and San Francisco.

His eye is on the prize in a state where the GOP will dole out its delegates winner-take-all by congressional district -- three delegates from each of the 53 districts regardless of the number of registered Republicans in any given district. The formula is different for the Democratic primary, which awards roughly two-thirds of delegates proportionally by congressional district and most of the rest on a statewide winner-take-all basis.

-- The role of former President Bill Clinton.

"There's one thing you have to take into account in California," said Garry South, a longtime Democratic strategist who was chief of staff to former Gov. Gray Davis. "Bill Clinton is still highly, highly regarded here by Democrats. He's the 800-pound gorilla. He's carried this state twice, he's tended to California like he was a county supervisor, and he knew the state like the back of his hand."

E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci(at)sfchronicle.com.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)