California's GOP primary defies easy predictions

SAN JOSE, Calif. — No one would have guessed who's lining up behind whom in California's GOP presidential primary contest. It's got lots of people scratching their heads.

Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York, is getting endorsements from key California conservatives despite the fact he is pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-gay rights.

The 2000 maverick candidate John McCain, crusader for campaign finance reform, has attracted the state's biggest GOP fund-raisers.

And Mitt Romney, ex-governor of Massachusetts, is trying to transform his blue state image, pushing hard in California's conservative strongholds.

"If I would have sat down two years ago and made a list of the people who would be supporting John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney," said Duf Sundheim, a lawyer who recently finished his term as head of the state Republican party. "I would have had better odds going to Las Vegas."

And there are other intriguing twists and turns.

A fight is brewing over whether the state's burgeoning number of decline-to-state voters, about one in five of all voters, should be allowed to vote in the GOP primary. That, combined with a new GOP delegate allotment system, could give Democratic-leaning places like the Bay Area a place in Republican politics they don't usually enjoy.

This time, GOP delegates in California will be divvied up by who wins each congressional district, three delegates for each of the state's 53 districts. Without a statewide-winner-take-all system, it makes sense for candidates to show up in liberal as well as conservative enclaves.

Recently, Giuliani made a very brief campaign stop in downtown Oakland, home district of liberal anti-war Congresswoman Barbara Lee. Though only 10 percent of the voters in that district are Republicans, Giuliani noted "it's just as important to win a Democratic congressional district, to get the Republicans there, as it is to win a Republican congressional district."

Standing outside a Jack London Square restaurant, he told reporters, "that's a little different than the rest of the country. But maybe there's something good in that. You have to have a broad message."

And, Santa Clara County could become a battleground among moderate GOP candidates if decline-to-state voters are allowed to participate since one in four voters there fall in that category. Some of the seemingly strange alignments have to do with old friends, new rules, and the unpopularity of the war in Iraq.