Newt Gingrich’s California Factor
EmailLOS ANGELES – When Newt Gingrich announced he would be spending the majority of the week in California it was assumed the candidate, who is low on funds, was heading west to collect money.
While Gingrich’s California political director said fundraising this week likely pushed the campaign to its $2 million goal in the state since the beginning of the campaign, there is another strategy is in the works to rack up votes as the state awards proportional delegates for the first time.
The California Republican primary isn’t until June 5, but Michael Schroeder, Gingrich’s state political director, said if by Super Tuesday the race is still a three or four man split, California could suddenly come into play.
Gingrich has long said he’s in the race until the convention, even saying Thursday his goal was “to go to Tampa.”
California awards 172 delegates, and was a winner-take-all state in previous Republican presidential primary elections. This election cycle the state will award proportional delegates for the first time, and delegates are bound based on a win in one of the 53 congressional districts. Each district awards three delegates, and an additional 10 at-large delegates are bound to the state-wide winner.
“If you win a couple of congressional districts, you get can get as many as you would have gotten in New Hampshire just out of two congressional delegates,” Schroeder said. “So everything’s going to change in terms of how California’s campaigned to. We’ll be campaigned to like we’re several different states.”
Schroeder said there are districts with only four or five thousand Republicans, such as in the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles.
“Most of them are either Asian, African American or Hispanic. And so you’re going to see for the first time presidential candidates aggressively campaigning to Asians, blacks and Hispanics in California, because they can win significant numbers of delegates,” Schroeder said.
Gingrich held eight fundraisers throughout the week, mostly charging a $250 to $500 admission for photo opportunities and a speech, but he also held a few events, all hyper focused on certain minority demographics.
Gingrich held a Hispanic town hall on Tuesday in El Monte at a Mexican restaurant, where many of the questions from the mostly Hispanic crowd were centered on immigration and other Hispanic issues. Thursday, He campaigned at the office of the Korea Times, near the Koreatown district of Los Angeles. Many of the guests and journalists were of Asian descent and asked Gingrich questions centered on his foreign policy.
Rick Santorum has not yet campaigned in the Golden State, while Romney has spent time fundraising there and held a few campaign events in the summer. Gingrich’s state political director, Schroeder, was Romney’s state political director in 2008.
Gingrich said today his trip to California was a success for his campaign, though some questioned why he wasn’t spending his week focused on the upcoming primaries of Arizona, Michigan, Washington, and Super Tuesday states.
“I hope to leave with affection, votes, fond memories and money, all of those things coming together,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich heads back to California on Feb. 25 to speak at the California Republican Party Convention in Burlingame.
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Still nothing has changed: Obama sucks. And he’ll still be sucking just as much when November barrels into town.
Posted by: sai | February 17, 2012, 9:35 am 9:35 am
Gingrich isn’t for me, but I wouldn’t even dream of voting for Obama again.
Posted by: lawrence | February 17, 2012, 9:37 am 9:37 am
LOL! Love the generic and tiresome ‘Obama sucks’ line from the drones on the Right. Especially while watching the utter morons they get to choose from for their candidate. And ESPECIALLY since every single caucus or primary the Republicans have held so far has been a hilarious joke, replete with recounts, miscounts, missing ballots, uncounted counties – you would think this was the first time the GOP has ever gone through a primary process to select a candidate. So keep on hating Obama, losers. It is ALL you’ve got going for your Party today.
Posted by: Disgusted with gop | February 17, 2012, 9:48 am 9:48 am
LOL! The lib-drones drone on, and on. Obama is an absolute failure. Perhaps this is because he was never even remotely qualified to be president. From crooked community orgamizer, shakedown artist and con man, to a mostly absentee senator, on to prez. lol. No real job — ever — not even when he was far younger.
Posted by: disgusted with those who are "disgusted" | February 17, 2012, 9:58 am 9:58 am
LOL. Simple facts really “disgust” some folks. Obama, no REAL job EVER — a simple fact. It’s like…accurate biography.
Posted by: barb | February 17, 2012, 10:24 am 10:24 am
All of this is getting most of us nowhere. My main concern is that I sometimes feel that it is bad that I crank it hard and fast to pics and vids of Obama. Perhaps I shouldn’t?
Posted by: DISGUSTED WITH GOP | February 17, 2012, 10:28 am 10:28 am
Yes, simple facts…
From Factcheck.org:
“The nation’s total debt stood at $10.6 trillion on the day Obama took office, and it had increased to nearly $15.4 trillion by the end of January 2012 — a rise of more than $4.7 trillion in just over three years.
That’s a huge increase to be sure — 44.5 percent. And the Congressional Budget Office now projects that it will grow to more than $16 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. At that point, the debt will have increased by more dollars in Obama’s first four years than it did in George W. Bush’s entire eight-year tenure, when it rose by $4.9 trillion. The rise under Obama would then be the biggest dollar increase for any president in U.S. history.”
Posted by: sad but true | February 17, 2012, 10:31 am 10:31 am
yes, simple facts…
From Factcheck.org:
“The nation’s total debt stood at $10.6 trillion on the day Obama took office, and it had increased to nearly $15.4 trillion by the end of January 2012 — a rise of more than $4.7 trillion in just over three years.
That’s a huge increase to be sure — 44.5 percent. And the Congressional Budget Office now projects that it will grow to more than $16 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. At that point, the debt will have increased by more dollars in Obama’s first four years than it did in George W. Bush’s entire eight-year tenure, when it rose by $4.9 trillion. The rise under Obama would then be the biggest dollar increase for any president in U.S. history.”
Posted by: Simple Joe | February 17, 2012, 10:39 am 10:39 am
Not sure where my comment went but.
To me Newt is the best candidate for the country and should continue pushing a positive agenda while going after Obama, there is certainly enough ammunition. Obama is taking us over a cliff, I just spent 30 minutes looking a new sites and found:
– 28 million citizens are unemployed or underemployed making real unemployment around 17%.
- 16.3% of 18-24 year olds were unemployment in 2011 and 54.3% who were employed earned 6% less than in 2007 to mark the worst rate since 1946
- Failed to pass a budget in over 1000 days helping to make us the most in debt nation in the history of the world with deficits at 62% of GDP in 2011 and projected to be 77% of GDP in 9 years
- From 2010 to 2011 we paid $454 billion in interest on the national debt, or 12% of the budget
- 1 in 5 Americans are receiving some form of government assistance
- 55% want Obamacare repealed, a bill that Pelosi said, “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it”
- The 1st Amendment rights of religious groups are under attack by trying to force them to pay for contraception
- Congress was bypassed when czars were appointed and again when unilateral appointments were made that are subject to Senate approval even while the Senate was still in session
- Our foreign policy that sees Iran, a country who wishes the total destruction of the US, come ever closer to developing nuclear weapons
- $1.3 billion dollars in foreign aid is sent to Egypt as they hold 19 Americans hostage
- Fast and Furious sends guns to Mexico arming drug cartels that killed a US Border Patrol Agent while the gun data is used to attack our 2nd Amendment
- 11 million homeowners have negative equity, or owe more than their homes are worth
- Students have $1 trillion in student loans or about 14 times more than 15 years ago
- 1 in 3 US students drops out of high school, in Harry Ried’s Nevada the drop out rate among high school students is %58
- Gas prices jumped from $1.61 a gallon in January 2008 to $3.51 a gallon in February 2011 and are only expected to rise while we rely on foreign oil producers
- The Postal Service lost $3 billion in the last three months of 2011
Posted by: Trey | February 17, 2012, 11:05 am 11:05 am
Treylor, good and real facts they be. Nice antidote to the constant spin and lies from the left.
Posted by: Captain Obvious | February 17, 2012, 11:35 am 11:35 am
Gingrich and Santorum want to fix Washington with the
tools of Washington. When all you have ever used is a hammer, it all
looks like a nail. They, as well as Obama come from that venerated institution Congress which is at an 11% approval rating. Washington cannot fix Washington. Cain said it best.
Santorum, however, says he regrets voting for the education reform bill,
and he would support a national right-to-work law as president. On
earmarks, the candidate has said the practice was popular among
Republican lawmakers while he was in office but now opposes it, claiming
the system has become abused.
So, according to Rick, it was OK to spend like a bat out of hell until he
has to “be conservative” and coddle to the same Tea Party he criticized
before. Two candidates I believe in, Ron Paul will eliminate most
anything the Federal government has no business being involved in and
Romney who has cut the size of government and balanced a budget getting
it to a surplus.
Santorum has peaked and the polls show him coming back to earth just like Perry, Cain and Gingrich. As he is truly vetted, he is only a social conservative. Where I live, the Tea Party people know that fiscal sanity is what is needed or we are tomorrow’s Greece. Romney has at least balanced state and Olympic budgets and gotten them in the black. Have him put Paul in charge of eliminating programs that the Feds should have left to the states to begin with. It is the economy and the 10th amendment stupid!
Posted by: MissouriConservative | February 17, 2012, 11:51 am 11:51 am