Newsletter: Essential Politics: Sanders supporters out in full force in Los Angeles

I’m Christina Bellantoni. Welcome to Essential Politics.

Anyone who covers campaigns usually finds the most comfort in hard data — poll numbers, raw voting totals, demographic figures and so on. But there’s also the sense that you get when you get out and talk with people about the election.

Informal polling, visible campaign energy and conversations with people who aren’t as engaged in the day to day but plan to show up on June 7 are practically impossible to quantify.

And, in Los Angeles at least, the data favors Hillary Clinton, while Sen. Bernie Sanders has captured the lion’s share of the energy.

In just one finite example, the crowd at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend was decidedly pro-Sanders.

Over the course of the three panels I moderated about presidential politics, I heard from multiple Sanders supporters who are excited about their candidate, and in many cases working for his cause less than two months before California’s primary. Sanders T-shirts dotted the audience. Bumper stickers reading “Bernie� were prominent in the parking lot. When I asked for a show of hands, his backers outnumbered Clinton’s. By a lot.

Sanders volunteers spent all day Sunday registering voters in the crowd, with one telling me he had single-handedly signed up dozens and planned to drop the forms in the mail.

I talked with many of them who are frustrated with what they believe is the media’s portrayal of Clinton as the frontrunner he couldn’t possibly topple. They prodded me as to why I hadn’t mentioned at the panel that Sanders won the caucuses in Wyoming on Saturday. (The answer: It doesn’t shift the race, since he and Clinton yielded 7 delegates each.)

Is this group just especially vocal and prevalent at an event focused on reading? Are the Clinton supporters just more quiet about their devotion? Entirely possible. The latest Field Poll in California found Clinton remains ahead, 47% to 41%.

Still, anecdotally over the last several months, it is the Sanders fans filling our inbox with emails, unhappy with our coverage of the delegate math that suggests Sanders won’t become the Democratic nominee.

I’ve responded to those notes and spoke to people at the Festival of Books by urging them to read this newsletter, which I think has been fair to all of the candidates, and to point out the data fueling our stories, including the piece David Lauter wrote last week about how much time the candidates are getting in the media.

We appreciate all of the feedback. And over the next eight weeks, we’ll be reporting on both the feeling on the ground in California and the data.

To get a little more into the nitty gritty, in his Monday column George Skelton details how the Democrats divvy things up in California. From the nine delegates in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district to the four delegates in the San Joaquin Valley district of Republican Rep. David Valadao, he explains how the system here rewards party loyalty, which makes the numbers an uphill struggle for the senator from Vermont.

Cathleen Decker reports on today’s front page that Sunday in New York served as a metaphor for the 2016 race in its entirety and that state’s raucous April 19 primary contest in particular.

While Clinton was visiting three African American churches and speaking nearly as much about President Obama as she spoke about herself, Sanders hosted a Coney Island boardwalk rally that was a visible, passionate counterpoint to Clinton’s more carefully crafted appearances.

TRUMP LOSING DELEGATES LEFT AND RIGHT

Donald Trump may have won more votes and carried more states than any other Republican, but he stands a fair chance of losing the GOP nomination because up to now he largely ignored one of the most rudimentary aspects of a presidential run: securing loyal delegates.

Melanie Mason and Mark Z. Barabrak break down how Sen. Ted Cruz was able to scoop up 13 additional delegates in Colorado last week — and why that matters.

Use our nifty chart to track the delegate race in real time.

CRUZ IN SOCAL TODAY

Seema Mehta reports Cruz will be rallying supporters in Orange County and San Diego today as he campaigns ahead of the June 7 primary.

The candidates also are starting to ask about buying ad time on television, meaning Cruz, Trump and Ohio Gov. Kasich might soon be on a screen near you.

In her Sunday column, Decker explains why California politics just aren’t like New York’s, which is one reason you can get ready to watch them play out on TV.

Keep up with what’s happening on the campaign trail on Trail Guide and follow @latimespolitics.

OBAMA DINES WITH JULIA ROBERTS

Obama raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for House and Senate Democrats on Thursday and Friday in Los Angeles. At his Bel-Air event at the home of a Disney executive and with Bob Iger among the crowd, the president said Trump and Cruz are doing the Democrats a favor by exposing the agenda of congressional Republicans.

Colleen Shalby was there and dishes on the big-name celebrities who were too.

DOUBLE-DIPPING LAWMAKERS

Republican state Sen. John Moorlach of Costa Mesa has emerged as a leading voice in the Legislature against skyrocketing debt piled up by public pension systems. But some in the pension reform movement say the former Orange County treasurer may be contributing to the problem: Moorlach receives an $83,827 government pension check from the Orange County Employees Retirement System while making $100,113 a year as a senator.

Patrick McGreevy introduces you to the 17 state lawmakers who collect two checks each month for government pensions and salaries as legislators.

UNION INFLUENCE IN THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

Keep an eye on how California’s powerful labor unions play their political hand this fall in key legislative districts where they have turned their backs on incumbent, business-friendly Democrats.

In this week’s California Politics Podcast, Sacramento Bureau Chief John Myers leads a discussion on recent non-endorsements by the unions, as well as a look at last week’s special Assembly election in Fresno and a new round of fighting over University of California out-of-state enrollment.

TODAY’S ESSENTIALS

-- Has she smoked weed? What will happen with recreational pot?: A conversation with California’s first marijuana czar, Lori Ajax.

-- Who will pay for the GOP’s convention in Cleveland? Joseph Tanfani reports that some of the party’s big-dollar donors from four years ago, unhappy about the prospect of contributing to a chaotic or brokered convention, are holding onto their money. Blue-chip corporations that helped underwrite the 2012 convention, including Microsoft and AT&T, are now facing a pressure campaign to stay away.

-- Peter Jamison finds the less celebrated, and often unnoticed, series of loopholes that cut union workers out of the very minimum wage increases their leaders have championed.

-- You are paying 11 cents more for each gallon of gas because of California’s climate change rules, according to the state’s independent Legislative Analyst’s Office.

-- Our Trump Nation series continues, with a look at man in Las Vegas, where life in these sand-blown suburbs has come to look like much that has gone wrong with the rest of the country.

-- What do you think of Trump? Readers can weigh in with our quick survey.

LOGISTICS

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