Last week a
story appeared in newspapers that probably seemed to most readers to be the
ultimate inside-baseball kind of story that politics produces. South Carolina's
Republican Party announced it would hold its presidential primary on Jan. 19,
2008, an earlier-than-planned date.
Setting aside the issue of why South
Carolina allows its political parties to decide the date of state elections, the
decision was the talk of political circles. It portends a speeded-up primary and
caucus process next year that could end up producing the Democratic and
Republican nominees for president so early that the issues of the campaign are
not yet known.
Some background is in order here: In 1968 the process of
selecting delegates to the Democratic National Convention was begun so early
(Michigan started the ball rolling in 1966!) that it was one of the reasons the
system was so unresponsive to the potent issues, notably Vietnam, that emerged
in that important year.
The Democratic Party ended up adopting a rule for
future delegate selection that forbade starting the process before the calendar
year of a presidential election. In 1982 the party went further and created a
13-week primary schedule putting all primaries and caucuses between the second
Tuesday in March and the second Tuesday in June. There were two permanent
exceptions - two small states, Iowa and New Hampshire, were permitted to hold
their traditional first in the nation caucuses (Iowa) and primary (New
Hampshire). The Republican Party later developed a similar schedule.
Then
last year the Democratic Party approved changes that breached this sensible
schedule and allowed Nevada to hold caucuses on Jan. 19 (after Iowa on Jan. 14
and before the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 22) and South Carolina to hold a
primary on Jan. 29.
January thus became more frontloaded and events were set
to run in this order: Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
Democratic Party leaders assumed that New Hampshire secretary of state Bill
Gardner would sit still for these changes. They apparently didn't get such an
assurance from him. Gardner is required by state law to set the date of his
state's primary at least a week before any other "similar election." Whether
that language means primaries or also caucuses is within Gardner's
discretion.
New Hampshire's tradition as first in the nation goes back to
1920. Iowa's goes back only to 1972. New Hampshire tolerated one caucus state in
front of it, but it's unlikely it will tolerate two, demoting New Hampshire to
third place. Soon after Nevada's elevation it was being widely reported that
Gardner would move the primary not just ahead of Nevada but also ahead of Iowa.
(The South Carolina GOP's decision will already force Gardner to move the date
to Jan. 12, ahead of Iowa.)
Then state legislatures started meeting this
year. The decision to move Nevada so far forward turned out to be a blunder of
monumental proportions. State after state decided that if the longstanding
agreement to hold all contests off until later in the year could be broken by
party leaders on Nevada's behalf, all wraps were off. State after state moved
its primary date to February 5 (the first date on which other states were
allowed to hold events under Democratic Party rules). Soon half the states were
holding a quasi-national primary on that date, a superprimary so big and
expensive that it made the race for president all about money and may well make
it impossible for second-tier candidates to compete.
Then Florida went even
further. It leaped over February 5 and scheduled its primary for Jan. 29.
Florida is a big population state, and its change made it even more difficult
for non-frontrunners, frontloading the process by an order of magnitude.
Now
it appears more likely that New Hampshire and possibly Iowa will push their
events into 2007. A few states, like Washington, have responsibly resisted
jumping on the bandwagon of early events. But most gave no thought to national
implications, instead treating delegate selection contests like a form of
economic development. A cascade of criticism has hit the Democratic Party for
triggering this fiasco.
Democratic
Party leaders may never live down the blunder of violating its prohibition on
January contests by foolishly putting Nevada's caucuses into that
month.
Pahrump Valley Times
August 15 2007
