...only Republicans can participate in the primary process in the nation’s largest state, and California has a winner-take-all-by-district system that may allow Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97%
to mount a comeback against frontrunner Donald Trump.
In 1998, Michael Schroeder was Chair of the State GOP. Schroeder was instrumental, as a member of the RNC’s Rules Committee, in securing language that was adopted into the official Rules of the party:
Any state Republican Party may set the date for any primary, caucus, convention or meeting for the purpose of voting for a presidential candidate and/or electing, selecting, allocating or binding delegates to the national convention. … To the extent a state Republican Party’s rules are in conflict with its state laws with respect to this rule, the provisions of this rule and the state Republican Party’s rules shall control.
Schroeder also successfully led an effort to amend the California GOP rules to make it clear that only Republicans can vote in the primary....
Also in 1998, then-State Senator Ray Haynes, a prominent California conservative, was lamenting the atrophy of GOP infrastructure in parts of the state from which Republican legislative representation was receding. Haynes worked with a member of his staff, Tom Hudson, to shift California’s delegate selection process to winner-take-all-by-district....
“By giving presidential candidates an incentive to develop that infrastructure in every congressional seat in the state — that is, the incentive of delegates — the California Republican Party will be strengthened.”