Late primaries going to get canceled?

March 5, 2007 – 8:23 pm

Apparently Washington is considering canceling its primary:

Some state lawmakers are thinking about canceling next year’s presidential primary in Washington to save the $10 million cost of the election.

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The chairman of the House state government committee, Sam Hunt of Olympia, says lawmakers should consider canceling the primary if it’s going to be nothing more than a "beauty contest."

Nice principle. Don’t let the people vote. It’s too expensive. So how would they select delegates? Parties decide:

A similar situation exists today. Democrats will choose their delegates in community caucus meetings. Republicans might use the primary to select some delegates, but they haven’t decided how many.

Now this is all premised on the idea that everything will be decided on February 5th. But let’s run  this out. What if it is not decided on Feburary 5th? What if the delegate count is close on February 6th? Then all these caucuses (MO, CO, NV on the 7th, WA, etc.) matter a whole lot.

Just a theory.

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McCain cranks up in New York

March 5, 2007 – 1:45 pm

This is interesting:

GOP consultant and former state GOP Executive Director Brendan Quinn, who was involved in the state Republican Party’s efforts to keep U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Az, off New York’s presidential primary ballot in 2000, confirmed he is now working for McCain and setting up his Empire State campaign for the ‘08 election.

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Among McCain’s other New York supporters is former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato, Quinn said.

This is interesting because New York probably has the most baroque ballot-access laws in the country. Some friends of mine make quite a bit of money off this. At CPAC a New York operative, leaning McCain, told me that he expects that only McCain and Rudy Giuliani will be able to get on the ballot across the state.

The New York showdown will be quite interesting. It could have strong upstate-versus-NYC overtones.

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Calendar stuff and new goofy GOP delegate selection processes

February 8, 2007 – 8:05 am

First, Bill Gardner, the NH’s Secretary of State is set to move up the New Hampshire primary to January 14th, 2008. Iowa would then have to move up too, as David Yepsen notes. There’s an important undercurrent here. Both of these are swing states, and the DNC rules would strip both of these states of their delegates if they move up. In both of these states, protecting their special status in the Presidential nominating process is important enough to be something that people actually vote on. If the Democrats are on record opposed to the New Hampshire primary’s status, it could make it easier to win back a lot of those seats that the GOP lost in 2006.

Second, Wyoming is fighting to tie for second with New Hampshire. Really. The Wyoming GOP passed a resolution at their last executive committee meaning to have half of their delegate selection on the same day as New Hampshire. The AP says:

That’s what the Wyoming Republican Central Committee had in mind when they voted Saturday to hold their county conventions — used to select half of the state’s delegates to the Republican National Convention — on the same day as the New Hampshire primary.

The rest will be selected in a regular primary. There are several interesting things going on here. First, this gives the party apparatus more power in the selection process. It is not clear who that favors because the Wyoming GOP is notoriously more libertarian/socially moderate than the rest of the country. In recent years, they actually stripped the abortion plank out of the platform.

Third, and perhaps more interesting, there is a similar movement afoot in California at the California Republican Convention this weekend. Last week, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, a leader of the Conservative California Republican Assembly, sent out a letter saying:

There is a 50-50 chance that the Legislature will vote to move up the June 2008 primary to February 5, 2008. This move will cost the taxpayers $90 million, more than double the November 2005 special election’s costs, because there are no regularly scheduled elections in which to consolidate that election.

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If this early election doesn’t happen, you may hear of a proposed by-laws change on the floor of the convention that will allow us, the Party’s members, to select 53 of California’s presidential delegates out of the 165 at our convention a year from now. That would be one delegate for each Congressional district.

This will fail. However, it will put a taste in people’s mouths and a thought in their minds. In September, the RNC has a rules cutoff. Until that point, any state party may change its delegate selection process. Given how tight the contests may be, with strongly differing perspectives between insiders and the primary electorate at-large, there may be more attempts to change the rules to help or hurt various candidates.

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California moving up

January 21, 2007 – 6:41 am

This is big and complicated. California is strongly considering moving up to February 5th. This will have an enormous impact on the race. First, the money barrier to entry just got a lot bigger. A lot. California is really really big.

Second, the rules, on the Republican side, in California are quite strange and still in flux. California has a winner-take-all by-congressional-district system. Therefore, the guy that gets 20k votes in a hard Democratic district gets as many delegates as someone who gets 100k in a hard GOP one. So gaming out how to play in California will be quite complicated.

Third, the rules for the primary may be changed. There has been speculation in several directions. We really just won’t know until the California Republican Party convention in February.

And fourth, some background. What the LAT story does not tell you is that this is getting pushed by the legislature because there may be an attempt to repeal term limits. By making an early primary, like this, there will be an opportunity to put that question on the Feb 2008 ballot in time for legislators to file for their regular June primary if term limits are repealed.

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Florida moving … to January?

January 12, 2007 – 7:34 am

This is remarkable:

Lawmakers said Thursday they want Florida’s primary pushed up to January 2008 to increase the state’s political influence, but they may face retribution from the national Republican and Democratic parties.

If that happened, Florida Democrats would lose all their delegates at the convention, according to current DNC rules.

This will be fun. You also have to wonder who is behind this? This, again, raises the money bar quite high.

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Dems move up NV and SC, Screw NH

August 19, 2006 – 11:57 am

Hotlineblog has some of the details (unfortunately, something is screwed up with their link). The Chicago Tribune and Manchester Union Leader have the best coverage.

First, the procedure. The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee passed a resolution fixing the beginning of the 2008 Dem primary and caucus schedule. Today it will be considered by the full DNC and is expected to pass. Details from the Trib:

Unless there is unexpected maneuvering, the Democratic calendar will begin with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 14, 2008, followed by Nevada’s caucuses Jan. 19, New Hampshire’s primary Jan. 22 and South Carolina’s primary a week later. After Feb. 5, other states would be allowed to hold primaries and caucuses.

Why do schedules change? To pick winners. In 1988, Lee Atwater moved up South Carolina because he could deliver it for Bush. In 1992, Zell Miller moved up Georgia because he could deliver it for Bill Clinton.

Now Harry Reid is moving up Nevada because he can deliver it for … ? Note that Clinton is currently doing terribly in the polls in NH and is tied with Edwards in IA. But, especially in a caucus situation, Reid can almost certainly deliver his state. (On the other hand, Reid appears to have asked Clinton to take over leader in 08 because he has a tough re-elect in 2010) The NH Dem Chair confirms this (Hotline):

“Unless a rule is directly related to taking back the White House, or helping to build this party, I’m not sure why we should be considering it,” she said. “The rules and bylaws committee shouldn’t be in the business of hurting candidates for the nomination. We should be helping them.”

It also creates a more liberal and less white electorate:

While the consequences for selecting a nominee with this order of states are uncertain, adding Nevada as one of the early states could give union members a larger say, considering the number of hotel workers there. It will almost certainly also hasten the front-loading that has already transformed the contest from a months-long slog into a sprint lasting just a few weeks.

This has been reported as a big win for the labor unions, but this is a big win for SEIU and the service worker unions, not the industrial unions. The industrial unions hold sway in IA and MI. Now the other guys — the guys who are growing — have a say. NV is also much less white.

NH’s Manchester Union Leader titles this: “Dems Push Primary Penalty”. For them the story is that NH is getting the long end of the stick. You see, Bill Gardner, NH’s SOS has said, rules be damned, NH will be first. And, by law, he sets the date (more details here, care of NH Insider):

State law says the primary must be held seven days ahead of any “similar election.” Gardner has said that an additional caucus may fit into his broad interpretation that the law requires him to preserve the primary’s traditional impact on national politics, even though party-run caucuses are structured much differently than state-run primaries and may not be “similar.”

Ultimately, NH doesn’t matter because of convention votes, especially in a front-loaded, media-and-money-driven calender. It has a relatively small number in both party conventions. It matters for momentum. The press will report the winner, whatever happens. And it will have an impact on who wins the swing state in 2008 where 4 electoral votes really could make the difference:

Joining Sullivan in criticizing the measure was DNCer Alice Germond, who said she was concerned about the “unintended consequences of this,” including “repercussions that might result in our not winning that state in the general election.”

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