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Californians suffering from lassitude in the face of political campaigns, be careful: Tuesday night would have been the end of the mid-term elections of 2018, but it also marked the beginning of the presidential race of 2020.
California's move to a March 3 main date, starting in June, means the state will once again be at the center of a national political battle, this time to help determine the Democratic nominee for President Donald Trump .
"California will have a shining light like never before," said Steve Smith, spokesperson for the California Federation of Labor. "We really want to use this opportunity to get the candidates as much as possible and allow them to address important issues not just for the workers in California, but for all workers."
With a large number of potential Democratic candidates, expenses to run in California and a year or so before having to announce their intention to run, Trump's aspiring contenders have little time to waste to launch their campaigns here.
Indeed, many candidates have already taken initiatives. Here's a look at five influential Democrats envisioning a presidential race in 2020 and their results in California.
Kamala Harris
The young California senator should declare his candidacy for the presidency in the coming weeks. – She said she would make a decision for 2020 after the end of the 2018 elections. Harris will debut as one of the first favorites of the Democratic primary in California, thanks to her experience of three wins in the US. whole country, said Bob Shrum, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Policy Institute of the University of Southern California. She won the state attorney general's campaigns in 2010 and 2014 before defeating a Democratic colleague in the race to replace Senator Barbara Boxer in 2016.
As a junior member of the minority party, Harris was not very fortunate to develop a national policy in a polarized Washington state. But the former prosecutor has drawn national attention for his harsh interrogation of Trump administration officials, most recently Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In the Senate, she played a leading role in defending the rights of immigrants, particularly on behalf of undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers, who came to the United States as children and got the legal status that will allow them to stay under President Barack Obama.
Harris has taken all the steps expected of a presidential candidate. She built a long email list and raised millions of dollars for her fellow Democrats via this list and other organizations, such as MoveOn.org. Shortly before the election, she crossed southern California with governor candidate Gavin Newsom, and Democrats ran for Congress seats, the most hotly contested ones.
Harris, however, must perform well in some of the early states of the primary electoral calendar just to travel to California. If a state candidate survives the first four primaries, in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, "it will be a big problem to have a California candidate considered as one of the best competitors, "said Bill Carrick, longtime Democratic consultant in California.
It is not surprising then that Harris made high-profile campaign stops in Iowa and South Carolina last month.
Eric Garcetti
Another Californian, Garcetti, has been Mayor of Los Angeles since 2014. Like Harris, he exposes all the telltale signs of a presidential candidate, such as trips to Iowa and New Hampshire and fundraisers for fellow Democrats. This includes the allocation of $ 100,000 each to the democratic state parties in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
Garcetti used his platform as mayor of a large city to define himself as an innovative, solution-oriented decision-maker, particularly with regard to issues such as climate change and infrastructure. But it could also be caught up in some of the problems that plague Los Angeles and California as a whole: growing inequality of wealth, rising cost of living, and homelessness.
Garcetti's Hispanic legacy will help seduce Latinos, an electorate block that the Democrats desperately need, but who struggle to mobilize regularly. This could be particularly critical in California, Nevada, and Texas, all of the first primary states. Even if he does not win any of these states, he can obtain a proportionate number of delegates.
One of Garcetti's main challenges will be keeping pace with fundraisers such as Harris and other Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He will also need to expand the notoriety of his name, which is limited beyond his home in Southern California. He has never run across the state in California.
Elizabeth Warren
The Massachusetts senator and former law professor at Harvard was elected president in 2016. But she is sending out clear signals, she is planning a bid for 2020, recently releasing the results of DNA tests to confirm the claims of Native American heritage. It's a direct replica of President Trump, who derisively ridiculed Warren as "Pocahantas" on Twitter.
The new details are not likely to silence the president, but it will likely provide coverage to Warren, who may be able to point to findings that she had Native American ancestry "6 to 10 generations ago".
Warren's willingness to confront Trump, often acerbically, and his reputation as a consumer advocate at the expense of big financial interests have made her a rock star among the Liberal party's liberal base. His advocacy for medicare for all and other populist issues is among the best party voters in California. She also regularly performs at political rallies and fundraisers in the state, Democratic strategists said, including at a teleconference with the Democratic Party of California a few days before the elections. It was only one part of a massive campaign operation led by Warren to help the Democrats midway through.
Bernie Sanders
The aforementioned Sanders originates from a state as far from California as possible in the continental United States. But the independent Vermont senator enjoys a dominant position in the West thanks to his grim candidacy for president in 2016. Sanders eventually lost the Democratic presidential primary in California in favor of Hillary Clinton 53 to 46%. But it has garnered nearly 2.4 million voices and developed a dedicated customer base, particularly in the more rural areas of northern California and along the coast.
Thanks to this previous presidential campaign, Sanders also has a national name: he ranked among the two or three best candidates in the first elections of the battlefield of the Democrats. And it has a small fundraising base to organize a competitive campaign in California, where the media markets are among the most expensive in the country.
Shrum, however, warns that in a fragmented Democratic primary, some of Sanders' support in 2016 could go elsewhere, particularly to Warren, another liberal lawman.
Joe Biden
The former vice president is leading the national polls, but it is unclear whether he is really ready to run for the White House (he had already run in 1988 and 2008). Biden will be 76 years later this month and, although he is a year younger than Sanders, it would still make him the oldest one-mile president.
The long-time Delaware senator acknowledged in an October TV interview that his age would be a problem should he run a presidential campaign. But he certainly did not exclude it. Over the past few weeks, he has nurtured speculation about a possible mid-term run across the country.
Strategists say Biden enjoys a mix of brand name recognition and long-standing relationships with the Democratic donor community, to defeat even California's native girls and sons in state primaries. His biggest challenge would be to overcome the growing pressure among young democrats for a new generation of leaders, which is particularly striking in California given the longevity of its leading democrats.
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