Will New Hampshire Get Company in Early Democratic Primary?
WASHINGTON, Oct. 1-A special Democratic National Committee panel recommended Saturday that at least two states be allowed to join Iowa and New Hampshire as early battlegrounds for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
Even if the panel’s plan is adopted, however, Iowa and New Hampshire laws require that their nominating elections come before those in any other state.
The Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling’s recommendations are tentative. Its final recommendations will be submitted to DNC chairman Howard Dean in December.
Some critics have argued that New Hampshire and Iowa voters are not representative of the national electorate and that other states should be allowed to lead the presidential nominating parade.
The Democratic commission did not single out any states to join Iowa and New Hampshire in holding primaries or caucuses before the official “window” that the party establishes every four years for its presidential nominating contests.
Michigan, after the 2000 election, challenged New Hampshire’s primary status, and California, Delaware and New York also have made bids to be first to hold their primaries.
“We want to at least create the framing of a consensus position on the part of the commission members,” said former Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, who co-chairs the commission.
Though the commission decided to recommend the expansion of the so-called pre-window period, it will meet once more in the coming months to determine the criteria to be considered for states to join Iowa and New Hampshire.
At Saturday’s commission meeting, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan argued for adding more states to the pre-window of early primaries and caucuses for the sake of racial and geographic diversity and to represent a cross-section of the country.
“There is no way we can achieve diversity with one state, no way we can achieve diversity with two states,” said Levin, who has long said Iowa and New Hampshire have had unfair influence in deciding presidential nominees.
Former New Hampshire Governor Jeanne Shaheen and former Ambassador Terry Shumaker, a New Hampshire resident, said New Hampshire should continue to hold the first presidential primary while allowing a few other states to enter the pre-window period. They cautioned that too many states with such early primaries would cause “frontloading” in campaign schedules, drawing out the primary election season and making it more likely the candidate with the most money would win the party’s nomination.
‘What we really need to do is move this process back,” Shaheen said. “As much as we all support diversity…the more states in a window, the more it will contribute to the frontloading of the process.”
This was the commission’s fourth meeting and was intended to narrow down the different timing scenarios that had been proposed to expand the pre-window period.
Though the DNC cannot force a state to hold a primary or dictate when to hold it, it can disregard the results of an unsanctioned primary or refuse to seat National Convention delegates chosen based on that primary. The DNC can decide when a caucus is held.
Traditionally a controversial topic, the timing of the pre-window period became an issue again in the 2000 election when the Republican National Committee and the DNC used different windows, leaving some to speculate that more media attention may have been focused on the earlier Bush-McCain race than on the Gore-Bradley race several weeks later.
Some Granite Staters remain skeptical that the DNC will ever approve the recommendation or that its approval would make much difference.
“There is still the question of what the candidates will do even after the decision is made,” said Ricia McMahon, a New Hampshire state representative. “The candidates know they’ll get a fair shake in New Hampshire. Senator [Russell] Feingold [a potential candidate] is up there this weekend.”
McMahon is also skeptical of what she said was the effort to “unseat” new Hampshire as the nation’s first primary.
“It is in our state law,” she said. “They’ll just change the day so it is seven days earlier than any other primary.”
The Republican National Committee window in 2008 opens the first Tuesday of February, and no one on the commission argued that the RNC would not begin their races in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“It is decision time. and we need to begin to narrow down our options… and make what may be some hard decisions for all of us,” said Rep. David Price, who also co-chairs the commission.
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