Hillary Clinton's campaign is opening its Silicon Valley office in Palo Alto on Martin Luther King day, which is Monday. 
Clinton's California communications director Luis Vizcaino couldn't be reached at the time of this posting for more details.
The opening follows that of Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama's, which opened its own Palo Alto office last Sunday -- one of three other new locations in San Jose, Santa Ana, and San Bernardino.
The candidates are competing neck to neck, obviously trying to reach out to each others' presumed constituencies.
Today, for example, after a morning fund-raiser in Atherton, Obama convened a round-table about working women's child-care and family issues in the context of the economic downturn in the beautiful Women's Building in the Mission. Clinton held an October rally in Oakland, where she announced a $300 million urban agenda and an endorsement from its mayor Ron Dellums. Today, Clinton's in Los Angeles, also discussing the economy.
A Los Angeles Times/CNN/Politico poll released Monday puts Clinton in the lead in California with 47 percent of likely Democratic primary voters backing the senator from
New York and 31
percent backing the Illinois senator.
Obama's campaign has previously established offices in Oakland, Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego.
The new office openings coincided with a cleverly-timed campaign advertisement, which ran this past Sunday during Clinton's television interviewwith Tim Russert on NBC's weekly political talk show Meet The Press. The ad prominently featured Obama's California headquarters web site address. 
Clinton's campaign opened its loft-like Northern California headquarters in the SOMA district of San Francisco last July. The campaign has several other offices scattered throughout the state, and has
worked hard to rev up its constituency, since the voting process in California commenced relatively early.
It began January 7 when the office of the California Secretary of State mailed out ballots to registered voters. Primary day is February 5, but as much as half of the state is expected to vote by mail.
California is the most valuable state in the nation to the candidates because it has the most delegates. Democrats have 441 and Republicans have 173.
The campaigns need the offices to support their ground troops' herculean efforts to turn out as many voters as possible -- whether it be just calling and bugging them, or to ferry them to the polls.
"A lot of money is going to be spent on the ground, particularly in a state like California" says Georgetown professor of government Stephen Wayne. "It's a very expensive media market, and the candidates are already well known nationally, so a great deal of effort is going to be spent on organizational work."
Update: The Clinton campaign's just released its first California ad, and you can see it here.
Clinton sign image: Gwen
Obama image: AP/Eric Risberg
__Political Base Image: __You can track financial contributions to the candidates by zip code and see how they stack up in the various California metro areas.
