January 26, 2007

"California Rush Reflects Primary Front-Loading Trend"

"The push to shift California’s 2008 presidential primary to the earliest date possible in February — promoted by popular Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — has reached the state’s legislature, where passage looks increasingly likely.

If enacted, the rescheduling of California’s primary alone would take the “front-loading” of the presidential nominating process to unprecedented levels.

And California, by far the nation’s most populous state, may very well be joined by other sizable and delegate-rich states, as reported Thursday by Adam Nagourney of the New York Times.

Together, these states, self-motivated by a desire for more influence over who wins the nominations, may accomplish a goal long shunned by the national political party organizations: seriously diluting the primacy of the traditional first-of-the-nation events in less populous states, the Iowa caucuses (currently scheduled for Jan. 14) and the New Hampshire primary (slated for Jan. 22).

The proposed Feb. 5, 2008 primary in California not only would take attention from the contests in those states, but also from two states that the Democratic National Committee has itself moved up to address complaints that Iowa and New Hampshire have had too much say: Nevada, where Democratic caucuses are currently scheduled for Jan. 19, and South Carolina, whose primary is penciled in for Jan. 29.

Lawmakers in both the California Assembly and Senate introduced legislation that would move the presidential primary to the first Tuesday in February.

The shift would not be without recent precedent. Although the statutory date for the primary remains the first Tuesday in June, the state, acting under temporary measures, has progressively moved its presidential primary earlier and earlier: from June 2 in 1992 to March 26 in 1996 to the first Tuesday in that month (March 7 in 2000 and March 2 in 2004).

But in the front-loading frenzy of each of those years, enough states leapfrogged California to determine the nominees even before the Golden State weighed in."

Posted by Randy Riddle at January 26, 2007 09:20 AM