Florida is joining the parade of states considering moving their 2008 primary earlier in the election cycle. Proponents say an early Florida primary would increase the state's power in the campaign, but others say kicking off the campaign earlier and earlier increases the chances of voter burnout. The Herald Tribune reports:
If Florida succeeds in moving its presidential primary to January or February, the biggest beneficiaries are likely to be the candidates you already know: Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Despite opposition from national party leaders, state lawmakers are pushing for the change, saying it would make the state more relevant in primary voting. Political experts say the effects of an earlier primary would go beyond that, improving the chances of the best-known and best-financed candidates because it is so expensive to campaign in a state as big as Florida.
With other major states like California, New Jersey and Texas talking about moving their primaries into early February, the need for money to advertise will be "awesome," said political scholar Rhodes Cook.
By Feb. 5 of next year, as many as 19 states are likely to have voted. By contrast, in 1996 not a single state had held a primary as early as Feb. 5. To blitz 19 states in just over a week would raise the ante, said Cook, author of "The Presidential Nominating Process: A Place for Us?"
Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, calls the situation "pure chaos" and says that, "if the job of scheduling the presidential nominating contests were assigned to an insane asylum, this is pretty much what the patients would come up with."
California also is considering moving its primary earlier, and may join a traffic jam of other states - Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Utah - that may all be voting on the same day.
Phillip J. Trounstine, director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University, says that would create, in effect, a national primary - but might not boost California's influence as much as proponents hope for.
If Super-Duper Tuesday does occur, California would still represent the biggest bloc in what would be, in effect, a national primary. But ironically, instead of reducing the impact of the earliest states, the creation of Super-Duper Tuesday is more likely to increase the importance of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
It's the slingshot effect. The candidates with momentum coming out of these states will ride a huge media wave. They will have the momentum, and that could prove crucial. "Whoever's got the biggest head of steam is going to have a tremendous advantage,'' said Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, who has advised and managed several presidential campaigns. "It makes the earlier states even more important."
The rush to create Super-Duper Tuesday may "screen the field, even before a single vote is cast," Trounstine says, adding, "That's not necessarily good for the process -- or for America."
"Insurgent candidates have to concentrate on one state at a time," said Republican strategist Dan Schnur, who was spokesman for Arizona Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign in 2000. "A compressed calendar gives a huge advantage to candidates with financial and organizational resources."
New Hampshire state law requires it to hold the earliest primary, and tradition has always allowed Iowa to have the first caucus vote. But other states seem less and less interested in tradition.
Prediction: New Hampshire and Iowa's traditional roles at the start of the primary season is doomed, either in 2008 or 2012, as the mad rush to be earlier and more relevant continues unabated - resulting in ever more advantage to the big-name candidates who can raise the most money the fastest and giving little time for a relatively lesser-known unknown candidates like, say, a Georgia peanut farmer or an Arkansas governor, to catch the attention of the public.
At this point I'm not sure what the solution is. A national primary scheduling commission? Scheduling by lottery?
An end to the parties' winner-take-all rules for apportioning each state's convention delegates, combined with a single nationwide primary on, say, the first Tuesday in June, might level the playing field - and leave time for lesser-known candidates to raise funds and get noticed.
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