California's presidential primary wasn't always anticlimactic

Scenario: California moved its primary up to February from June, when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were still slugging it out for the Democratic nomination. The mood: "To California political activists who have labored for years under the mantra that the state doesn't matter in the presidential primaries, 2008 has been the campaign that brought back wonderment," The Times wrote at the time.

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-1228-close-california-20141228-story.html