EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — In Iowa, they pause for coffee at the Kum & Go convenience stores in crossroads scattered around the state. In New Hampshire, they engage voters in school gymnasiums and on town street corners. Here, they appear on television.
They've been doing it this way for a third of a century. The greatest insight in modern California political history may have come in 1986, when Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston was fending off a challenge from GOP Rep. Ed Zschau. "A campaign rally in California," Democratic political strategist Robert Shrum said at the time, "is three people sitting around a television set."
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