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There has been a good deal of activity on the
presidential primary front lately and the West has been right
in the thick of it.
The most recent development is a
recommendation to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from
its "Commission on Presidential Nomination and
Timing."
That commission held its final meeting Dec. 10, and its
recommendations now go to the DNC?s rules committee.
The most controversial recommendation would
allow one or two states to hold caucuses between Iowa's
first-in-the-nation caucus and New Hampshire's early-bird
primary. This possibility has New Hampshire all in a froth,
but more on that later. A few mechanics are in order first,
just to understand the game.
First, even though most of
the action is currently on the Democratic side, this is not
fundamentally a partisan matter, and there will be plenty of
Republican action in due time.
Second, the role of the national parties is
limited, because they can't make law setting primary dates or
tell state parties when they can hold caucuses.
What the national parties can do, though, is to
control how many delegates any state can send to the national
convention. (That's why the DNC action now moves to the rules
committee.) The national party rules can either penalize a
state for holding a primary or caucus at the "wrong" time or
reward it for picking a "good" time. The DNC commission's
recommendations do both.
The proposed rules change would allow one or two
state parties to hold presidential nominating caucuses between
Iowa and New Hampshire without suffering a delegate penalty,
as they would under the current rules. This is what has New
Hampshire in such an uproar. (I was even asked to participate
in a call-in show on New Hampshire Public Radio, where I did my
best to soothe the fears of the "Live Free or Die" folks.)
The reason so many Democrats have wanted to
dilute Iowa and New Hampshire's influence in the nomination
process is because neither of those states reflects the
diversity of America (and especially not the ethnic diversity
of the Democratic Party). The DNC commission wants that
diversity reflected earlier in the hope that it will help
their party choose a candidate with the broadest possible
national appeal.
If this rules change is adopted, then one
Southern state and probably one Western state would be
permitted to hold January caucuses without losing delegates.
Nevada seems to be the frontrunner for the western slot,
although Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado may be in the
running.
Mike Stratton, the Colorado Democrat who
helped engineer Ken Salazar's election to the U.S. Senate in
2004, has served on the DNC Commission, where he has taken the
lead in advocating the region's cause.
Speaking of the possibility of an early Western caucus, Stratton claimed, "We
had, for the West, a great success here."
A very early caucus in one Western state might
indeed help to focus national attention on Western issues. But
in those terms, the greater promise lies in the ongoing effort
to coordinate several Rocky Mountain primaries or caucuses on
or near the same day.
Those efforts were very much in evidence a week
before the DNC commission's meeting, when the entire DNC met in Phoenix Dec. 1-3. There,
Stratton, along with Democrats for the West, mounted a major
effort to rally support for a coordinated western primary or
caucus. They distributed hundreds of lapel stickers and
circulated petitions that Democrats for the West later posted on their
web site.
This effort, like the bipartisan Western Governors Association resolution
adopted in 2004, aims at bringing together as many of the
eight Rocky Mountain states as possible. This would be an
early set of primaries or caucuses (the current target date is
Feb. 5, 2008), but it would follow New Hampshire and it would
(barely) fall within the "window" where the DNC's rules do not
impose penalties.
But there's a catch here, and it's one that
could put Western solidarity to the test. A little-noticed
feature of the DNC commission's recommendations would prohibit
(or punish) any group of more than five states holding
primaries or caucuses in the same week. This is an
understandable effort to even out the primary season, but
Westerners should think twice about supporting this rules
change, since regional solidarity is key to making a Western
primary effective.
Unless there is a critical mass of Western
states involved, the effort of coordination would hardly be
worth the trouble. And the worst scenario would be one where
the least populous Western states are pushed to the sidelines
by the bigger ones because of something like a
five-state-per-week cap.
Maintaining a reasonable amount of regional
solidarity over the next few months will be a major challenge.
That was already obvious in Phoenix, where the chair of the
state Democratic Party supported a regional caucus or primary,
while his Republican counterpart worried that Arizona's
influence might be diluted by sharing a primary date with
other Western states.
Neither party has a monopoly on such concerns;
Montana Democrats helped kill an early primary bill in the last
session of the Montana legislature. Their concerns, like those
of Arizona's Republican chair, were perfectly legitimate
either from a partisan, a single-state or a financial
perspective.
The question is whether the broader interests of
the region will manage to trump narrower but real concerns. So
far, the West is continuing on the path toward a regional
primary, in spite of all the tempting detours. The last two
weeks took us farther along that path.
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