California wasn't expected to be a "battleground state" in this year's Presidential primary campaign.
But now it's expected to get plenty of attention on the Republican side.
"You know, you've got a huge, very diverse state with eleven media markets, and it's very expensive,” says Republican political strategist Jason Roe, who served as a national spokesman for the now-suspended GOP campaign of Florida’s U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio.
“I don't think that you're going to see a lot of advertising,” Roe told NBC 7 in an interview Thursday. “You'll see some stumping throughout the state of the two to three remaining candidates, to try to get some news media for it."
Could Donald Trump wrap up the GOP nomination by winning a big share of California's delegates?
Political observers won't say that's beyond his reach, although the numbers say he needs to win nearly 60 percent of the remaining Republican delegates.
California’s June 7 primary is part of a six-state Super Tuesday which includes New Jersey, with only one more primary the following week left in the campaign.
"Look, it might stretch out, there might be a contested election,” says Scott Lewis, editor of NBC 7’s media partner Voice of San Diego. “But we have -- what, 10 weeks until then? I think it's pretty likely that Trump consolidates his support and makes it impossible to head toward a brokered election."
On the Democratic side, "conventional wisdom" is predicting a Hillary Clinton win in California.
Her February primary victory here in 2012 kept her campaign alive for three months, before then-Illinois U.S. Sen. Barack Obama won the nomination.
