If there's an election coming up, where are all the candidates?

Moving the presidential primary up to February was going to make California a player in the nomination process. Or so advocates of the early primary argued. Maybe that's how it will turn out on Feb. 5, but there's little evidence of any impact at all in the Valley. That's the conclusion from a story today by The Bee's John Ellis.

Only one candidate -- Hillary Clinton -- has bought air time on local TV. No one is seeing the mailbox stuffed with candidate junk mail -- perhaps that's a blessing. Some candidates visited the region early on, but mostly that was for fundraising. We haven't seen hide nor hair of any of them in some time.

Money may be an issue with many of the candidates. It's particularly expensive to campaign in California because of the huge population and size. The state has several distinct regions and media markets -- it would cost more than all of them have combined to hit every area.

There's still a week to go, so things could change. But to this point all the early primary seems to have done for California is give us an extra election to pay for in this cycle.