Tulsi Gabbard’s decision to spend Saturday afternoon surfing off Linda Mar beach in Pacifica was exactly what Democratic legislators hoped for in 2017 when they voted to move California’s presidential primary from June to March 3.
With the early primary Tuesday, the Hawaiian congresswoman is only one of the Democratic presidential hopefuls visiting California in an attempt to grab some of the state’s 415 pledged delegates, the biggest prize of the primary season.
In past years, California’s traditional June primary often took place after the presidential race was decided, with voters in the nation’s largest state reduced to ratifying decisions made in places like Iowa and New Hampshire.
An early primary “puts California voters in the front seat in choosing our next president and will change our elections for the better,” former state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County), said in September 2017, after then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed his bill moving the primary.
Assemblyman Kevin Mullin of San Mateo, co-author of the bill, said Sunday that the “primary gamble” has paid off.
“This robust California primary is what I and others envisioned in moving the primary to Super Tuesday,” he wrote in an email. “While the fundraising is still happening, California is proving to be much more than merely a political ATM machine, and has planted itself right in the heart of the nominating contest.”
Democrats got what they wanted and more. As the lead player of the 14 states casting ballots on Super Tuesday, politicians and prognosticators across the nation are focusing on California and suggesting that a victory here could virtually clinch the nomination for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“California is going to decide whether Bernie Sanders is the nominee,” said Dan Pfeiffer, former White House communications chief under President Barack Obama, on The Chronicle’s podcast, “It’s All Political.”
The state’s importance hasn’t been lost on the candidates.
Sanders, fresh off a rally in Richmond two weeks ago, was in San Jose on Sunday afternoon and in Los Angeles that evening for get-out-the-vote rallies. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren will give a speech in Monterey Park (Los Angeles County) on Monday. Former Vice President Joe Biden will be in California for an event Monday.
The other candidates also have been making the rounds and sending their top surrogates to the state.
Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Ind., mayor who dropped out of the race Sunday, was in Turlock (Stanislaus County) in February, speaking to 700 people at a fundraising dinner. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar had a campaign event in San Francisco’s Mission District a few weeks ago. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has made stops in Fresno and Stockton and sent his longtime partner, Diana Taylor, to talk to Democrats in Walnut Creek.
Biden’s wife, Jill, was in San Francisco on Friday, making her husband’s pitch to a crowd of about 60 in a home in the Marina district.
“For months, we’ve seen candidates visiting California, reaching out to voters and trying to earn our support, not just treating our state as a political ATM,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a supporter of the early primary, said in a statement Saturday. “From the San Francisco Bay Area to the Central Valley, from L.A. to the Inland Empire, Californians are hearing much more from presidential candidates than they have in decades.”
Gabbard’s stop may have been the most unusual campaign event of the year.
The congresswoman, who has been surfing since she was a teenager, put on a wetsuit and paddled out off the Pacifica coast with young people from the City Surf Project, which uses surfing to get youth to respect nature, build healthy habits and find personal growth.
She spent about three hours on the beach and in the water with the young people, some of them surfing for the first time.
“It was priceless seeing the joy in the eyes of kids this morning, many who come from a challenging background, getting to experience surfing and the healing qualities of the ocean for the first time,” Gabbard said in a statement Saturday.
The stop at Linda Mar beach, with the temperature in the 60s, had to be an improvement over her last political surfing stop on New Year’s Day in New Hampshire.
Accompanied by people carrying campaign signs, Gabbard hit the waves of the frigid Atlantic Ocean, likely making her the first presidential candidate to ever surf in New Hampshire.
John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth
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