The 2024 California Presidential Primary Election is March 5, slightly more than one month away. Plenty of time to stay tuned out a bit longer, swaddled in a blanket of indifference, a warm cup of apathy in hand.
Not so fast.
Ballots for that Super Tuesday contest—when 16 states host their primary election—start going out to voters the week of Feb. 4 and that date is only slightly more than two weeks away.
The year’s first election day will be an opportunity to choose the finalists for November’s final showdown in the presidential and local contests.
In Chula Vista voters will whittle the field of candidates for city council from 11 to four and finally decide who their next city attorney is.
National City voters have the luxury of tuning out until the fall to choose their set of local representatives.
David Alcaraz, Michael Inzunza, Daniel D. Rice-Vazquez, Christos Korgan, and Leticia Munguia in the District 3 race have their work cut out for them as do Delfina Gonzalez, Andrea Cardenas, Christine Brady, Cesar Fernandez, José Sarmiento and Rudy Ramirez in District 4, with Leticia Lares listed as a write-in candidate.
It’s a safe bet that most of the voting age population has been tuned out since November, if not longer. After all, in the citywide election to decide Chula Vista’s city attorney, only 24,946 bothered to have their say. That’s out of 165,000-plus registered voters.
While candidates this winter won’t have to contend with holiday frivolities as distractions from their message they should be considering that the holidays hangover just starts to wear off around mid-January, when the reality of reality comes back into focus.
Looking at the recent Iowa caucus is not the perfect comparison given it’s focussed on the Republican presidential candidates but it garners so much attention in the news media that it reminds the rest of the country that there is an election this year.
The official list of eligible local candidates was finalized in December, that leaves campaigns a small window to get their messages out to a group of people who are just now starting to pay attention.
The rush to Super Tuesday’s March madness is on. Time for voters to wake up.
