Giuliani is messing with California's electoral votes

Via Phalarope in comments, an opinion piece in the Ventura County Star:

[Giuliani's] confidence of winning his party's nomination and his conclusion that he can't win if California goes Democratic are the logical explanations for the way his camp is now trying to revive a Republican-sponsored plan to split up this state's electoral votes, something only two other states now do — thinly-populated Maine and Nebraska.

Leading GOP lawyers and consultants originally sponsored the effort to award almost all this state's presidential Electoral College votes by congressional district. Such a plan would likely give 20 additional votes to the Republican and take 20 away from Democrats, a 40-vote swing easily could determine who becomes president. But those GOP operatives gave up the idea in September due to miserable poll showings (the proposed measure trails by a 3-1 margin in every survey) and a paucity of donations.

For months, those sponsors kept the identity of their single large donor a secret, before revealing last month that New York hedge fund CEO Paul Singer was the source of a $175,000 donation to Take Initiative America, which relayed the money to the break-up-California's-vote campaign. Singer is a major policy adviser to Giuliani.

Assuming Giuliani is the Republican nominee, this is quite a way to circumvent the federal law limiting individual campaign donations to $2,300 in the primary season and another $2,300 for the general election.

But Singer is far from the only Giuliani cohort involved in the newly revived effort. Leading the initiative's fundraising efforts is Anne Dunsmore, whose immediate previous job was as Giuliani's top fundraiser. There's also Jonathan Wilcox, a GOP consultant in California who was Take Initiative America's spokesmen in the months it refused to reveal Singer was essentially the sole donor to the split-California measure. Wilcox previously was an aide to Bill Simon, the former Republican gubernatorial candidate who now chairs Giuliani's state campaign.

And there's James Lacy, attorney for the initiative, who has donated the legal maximum of $2,300 to the Giuliani campaign. Essentially, all this means the revived effort is a Giuliani affair, designed to benefit him if and when he becomes the Republican nominee.

Great. Giuliani can't win the old fashioned way, he's got to break California into pieces first. Thanks.