Monday, July 18, 2011

Idaho Republicans Drop Presidential Primary in Favor of Super Tuesday Caucuses

In an effort to bring presidential candidates into the Gem state, Idaho Republicans on Saturday, July 16 at their summer State Central Committee meeting, voted in favor of a resolution to drop the state-funded May primary as the means of allocating delegates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. The May contest, already a beauty contest for Idaho Democrats, is now completely meaningless with Idaho Republicans joining the their counterparts across the aisle in allocating delegates via caucuses. And all of this comes after the Idaho legislature moved the primary up a week in May during the 2011 session as part of an elections consolidation bill. As Idaho Republican executive director, Jonathan Parker said (via the Spokesman Review):
“It would just make it irrelevant. ...So (Idaho Secretary of State) Ben (Ysursa) and I have talked about reaching out to the Democrats … (about) getting a bill through that would just eliminate it altogether.”
That is one thing to come out of this vote. There are a handful of states where one party uses a state-funded primary option for delegate allocation while the other uses caucuses. Idaho Democrats have traditionally used party-funded caucuses in lieu of the primary. Similarly, both Montana Republicans and Democrats have moved back and forth between the two options in the post-reform era. And just this cycle, Washington state's legislature was prompted to eliminate the Evergreen state's presidential primary for 2012 because neither state party has fully utilized the primary option since a ballot initiative brought the contest into existence in the 1990s. Idaho, then, joins Washington in some respects as a state that has completely transitioned this cycle to holding caucuses in both parties with a meaningless or eliminated presidential primary.

The other item to come out of the vote in Moscow, Idaho over the weekend is the proposition that this move was made to attract attention from the candidates. Again, Parker via KTVB.com:
"I don't know why it took so long for the Idaho Republican party to make this move."
...and..
"By moving up to Super Tuesday, it's the hope of the central committee and the state party to attract presidential candidates to Idaho, not just to raise money, but to actually campaign for Idaho's votes."
The intent is not new, but in execution, this sort of move rarely or never works out as planned. If Idaho Republicans had chosen a date on which their caucuses would have been the only ongoing contest, they may have had more luck in gaining attention. As such, they will have one among many contests on March 6, and most of the many are states in a different region of the country (the South). That said, I suspect Idaho will gain a few visits from Mitt Romney. As FHQ speculated in the context of a potential Utah move to the same date and later the early talk about the vote on this Idaho resolution, Utah, Idaho and Colorado would serve as something of a Romney firewall on a day when the former Massachusetts governor is likely to suffer a fair number of setbacks in the other contests in the South (and setbacks is putting it rather diplomatically depending on how the early contests in this race go). Romney did win in Utah and Colorado in 2008 and was out of the race by the time the Republican contest got to Idaho in May of that year. Now, it should be noted that caucuses are indeed a different ballgame, but if the other candidates are focused on the southern contests, Romney may be ceded the caucuses out west that day. He would start out with something of an organizational advantage in each. Will Idaho Republicans get the boost they are looking for? That depends. If they are looking to get multiple candidates into the state, probably not. But if they expect to bring in Romney, they will probably get what they are after as most of the other candidates will focus on the southern contests on the same date.

Thanks to Tony Roza at The Green Papers for sending this news along to FHQ.


Friday, July 15, 2011

Gardner Speaks: New Hampshire Might Not Stick with Feb. 14 Presidential Primary Date

Rare are the times that New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner says much of anything about the presidential primary in the Granite state. ...unless or until, of course, he sets the date for the contest. It was more earth-shattering, then, that he gave a recent interview with Shira Shoenberg of The Boston Globe on the subject, than it was that Gardner indicated that February 14 is not all that likely to be the date on which the New Hampshire primary will be held in 2012.

Indeed, that date always depended upon other, non-exempt states moving their primaries and caucuses in line with the guidelines for delegate selection. And that's something FHQ has been saying was a low probability since last year because of all the states that had to move to comply with national party rules. The list of states has been whittled down, but there remains a handful of states that may serve as a threat to New Hampshire or any of the other early states. Again, as I said earlier this week, the most likely scenario will see the four earliest states in January with a smattering of rogue, non-compliant states mostly in February but perhaps slipping into the end of January. Every other state will follow on or after March 6.

--
On another note, the mention of Michigan, Florida, Arizona and now Missouri being possible threats to New Hampshire is not new, but the talk of of West Virginia and Wisconsin is. The legislature in Wisconsin has a bill that has passed the Senate and another that originated in the Assembly before the lower chamber now, but those probably will not get a vote until later in the summer. There is, however, bipartisan support for the legislation and the Republican majority in both chambers has sponsored it. As for West Virginia, there was talk out of the Mountain state earlier in the week that indicated at least some likelihood of West Virginia Republicans adopting a convention system beginning with January county caucuses and ending with a Super Tuesday (March 6) state convention. This is the same system Mountain state Republicans used in 2008. The sticking point for New Hampshire in the West Virginia proposal is the January 24 county caucuses. But those caucuses only select non-binding slates of delegates to move on to the state convention. With that said, in 2008, West Virginia Republicans held county caucus meetings across a two week period as opposed to one day. That may give New Hampshire Secretary of State Gardner pause. After all, Iowa's caucuses are similarly non-binding, as are the February 7 caucuses in Minnesota.

The main point remains that none of this is really a surprise. Given the lack of any real meaningful penalties on non-compliant states, there were bound to be a few states -- even beyond Florida and Michigan -- that would challenge the national parties (especially the RNC). In that environment, New Hampshire was a near certainty to move up ahead of the proposed February 14 date.


Thursday, July 14, 2011

California Senate Passes June Presidential Primary Bill

Tory Van Oot at Capitol Watch has reported that the California Senate today passed AB 80 by a 34-3 vote. The bill would eliminate the separate February presidential primary and consolidate it with the primaries for state and local offices on the first Tuesday in June. The cash-strapped Golden state would save almost $100 million from the move.

Assuming the Senate made no changes to the bill on the floor, AB 80 has now cleared the legislative hurdle and will head to Governor Jerry Brown (D) for his consideration.


Second April Presidential Primary Bill Signed in Rhode Island

A great many links came into my inbox yesterday about the presidential primary bill that Rhode Island governor, Lincoln Chaffee (I), had signed into law Tuesday. However, none of the items ever specified which bill had been signed. As such, it was difficult to determine whether the bill in question was the little-discussed presidential primary bill signed on July 1 (S 399) or the unsigned H 5653. Rhode Island's General Assembly web site today provided the answer, indicating it was the latter that Chaffee had signed. As I indicated last week, the second, just-signed bill was superfluous in light of the fact that S 399 had already moved the 2012 presidential primary in Rhode Island. Yet, H 5653 was among the extensive group of bills signed on July 12.



Message to News Outlets: Cite Your Sources

Here at FHQ, we go to great lengths to cite any and all sources we use in our posts. Please call me vain or a gloryhog, but I prefer to be called an academic that operates under a standard where sources are cited and expects some measure of reciprocity in return. Where FHQ is vulnerable to being accurately called vain, perhaps, is in the fact that we regularly check our site stats. I'm unapologetic about being a stats -- of any kind -- nerd.

That said, I take note when IP addresses from various news outlets pop up. This morning it was CBS News (via Sitemeter):


Look, I don't want to make too big a deal out of this, but I do want to point out this continuing trend (The AP routinely hangs out at the site and someone at the Daily Rundown was on the site for quite a while a couple of weeks ago researching prior to a rather feeble roundtable discussion of the primary calendar situation. Yes, I complained about that, too.). But someone from CBS was on the FHQ this morning at around 10:45 and lo and behold an article appeared on CBS News an hour and a half later. Now, sure that's only 49 seconds, but Sitemeter tabulates time between clicks, not overall time spent on the site. In other words, it doesn't accurately depict how long said CBS employee was on the site. But you'll notice that Texas (the search term via Google) and Super Tuesday are layered into the discussion in the item. And furthermore, the next stop was the overall 2012 presidential primary calendar.

I have worked amicably in the past with several other sources that have done their due diligence on this front. I appreciate the efforts that those at Politico, The Boston Globe, The LA Times, The Fix (at The Washington Post) and The National Journal among others have made in not only talking to me in the past but in citing FHQ in their posted items. I only wish there was a uniform standard that was used and applied across all outlets.

I will continue to raise this issue when these incidents occur. I've worked hard to put together a resource that all can and should be able to use if properly attributed.

Thank you.
Josh

Cuomo Signs Bill Moving New York Presidential Primary to April 24

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed into law S 5753, moving the Empire state's presidential primary from the first Tuesday in February to the fourth Tuesday in April. New York now joins Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island on the last Tuesday in April and will be the biggest, most delegate-rich prize in a northeastern regional that should later include Delaware as well.

New York had traditionally held an April up until the 1996 cycle when Republicans chose delegates in a March primary. The New York legislature moved the presidential primary in the state to February for 2008 but had bipartisan support for the move back to April and into compliance with the national party rules.

This law is set to expire on December 31, 2012 which will leave New York without a presidential primary date for 2016; something that will require legislative action (...probably in 2015). That is all the more interesting considering the speculation surrounding a potential Cuomo run in 2016.



Tuesday, July 12, 2011

West Virginia Republicans Eye Super Tuesday (March 6) State Convention for Delegate Allocation

West Virginia Republican Party chairman, Mark Stuart, has indicated that the state party is likely to vote later this month on a proposal to repeat their 2008 method of delegate allocation: a Super Tuesday state convention. The process will begin on January 24 with county conventions to select slates of delegates to represent the counties at the state convention in March.1 Chairman Stuart via Joselyn King at The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register:
"The first date eligible for state convention is March 6, 'Super Tuesday,' and I would propose that date," Stuart said. "We would be the fifth state in the country to select a nominee. I don't think it will be possible to run for president without coming to West Virginia to discuss the issues."
FHQ doesn't know how much the Republican candidates will pop in to visit West Virginia on such a crowded date with a slew of mostly southern states holding primaries, but that March 6 date may be a better option than gambling on the May 8 state-funded primary and finding it outside of the period in which the Republican nominee is chosen.

The matter of the timing of the state convention will be taken up at the West Virginia Republican State Central Committee meeting on July 22-23.

--
1 To be clear, those county convention slates will be unpledged, keeping West Virginia Republicans, as was the case with their Super Tuesday convention in 2008, in compliance with national party rules.


Follow Up on Missouri Presidential Primary Situation

The reactions are starting to roll in to Missouri Governor Jay Nixon's decision last week to veto an elections bill that included a provision to move the Show Me state's presidential primary back into compliance with national party delegate selection rules. Democrats in the state are largely indifferent with very little on the line in next year's nomination process. Missouri Republicans in the General Assembly, however, are crying foul and over-exaggerating the severity of the situation in the process:

"If I was a candidate and I knew that I could campaign in Iowa and be sure to have delegates and make an impact, or campaign in Missouri and the delegation might not even be seated, where would you choose?" asked Sen. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, sponsor of the elections bill.

Veteran Republican consultant John Hancock said the veto "makes Missouri irrelevant in the presidential primary process."

Sigh.

Engler has a right to be upset, especially since there was really no direct evidence from the governor that Engler's bill would be vetoed at any point during the bills journey through the legislature. But his line of logic above is deeply flawed. The Iowa to Missouri comparison is just flat out wrong. Ideally, the RNC and DNC would have their way and Iowa's state parties would hold caucuses on February 6. That would be one day before where the Missouri presidential primary is currently scheduled by current Missouri state law. That said, it is naive, as I have tried countless times to point out, to assume that Iowa is going to idly stand by and allow Missouri to go just a day later. And that doesn't even mention the very likely negative reaction from New Hampshire. In other words, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina will move up and past Missouri if the Show Me state maintains its current position on the calendar.

Now, let's look at political consultant, John Hancock's statement above as it builds on Engler's flawed apples to oranges comparison of Missouri to Iowa.

Irrelevant? Not likely.

Less relevant? Perhaps.

Let's follow the trail on this one and assume that the Missouri primary situation cannot be resolved in either a special session or by a veto override from the legislature in September. That means that Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina move up to at least January. It also likely means that Florida will stick with at least the January 31 date on which their presidential primary was originally scheduled before the Presidential Preference Primary Date Selection Committee was formed. Missouri on February 7 would also likely affect the plans of Michigan Republicans as well, who would, it stands to reason, more seriously consider a January date for their primary or caucus as a result as well.1

Take a step back and look at that calendar now.

January2
Iowa
New Hampshire
Nevada
South Carolina
Florida
Michigan
Georgia3

February
7th Missouri
21st Wisconsin4
28th Arizona

Is Missouri irrelevant in that speculative calendar alignment? Absolutely not. Not unless the nomination has been wrapped up in those January states. In other words, it could happen, but is not likely to. Now, FHQ is tempted to make the argument that Missouri would be less relevant in that scenario, but looking at the above calendar has me very strongly reconsidering that position. Even with a half delegation penalty, Missouri would very likely hold a fairly significant amount of sway over the Republican nomination race if it was still undecided heading into February. First of all, Missouri would be the only game in town on February 7 as opposed to having to share March 6 with a growing number of states. Secondly, even with the penalties, candidates are not going to be dissuaded from paying Missouri any attention. No, if anything, if the Republican nomination is still active and close, it will draw candidates to the state to divide up any delegates from the state.

That's the lesson of the 2008 Democratic nomination battle: Candidates fight for what delegates they can get (where they are most likely to get them) and move on to the next battle. Missouri would be very attractive to a wide swath of Republican candidates and would likely see a strong candidate presence there; not a lesser one.

In that light, Missouri General Assembly Republicans should probably be thankful for the veto. And considering that one version of this bill tethered the Show Me state primary to New Hampshire's (scheduling it one week after the Granite state primary, whenever it was), they probably are. But they have to publicly wring their hands over the veto as a means of not risking further sanction from the RNC (The move, or non-move, would have huge impact on the overall calendar.). The presidential primary may come up at a special session if one is called, but FHQ is skeptical of how hard Republicans will work for a resolution to this or for those four House Democrats' votes necessary to override Govenor Nixon's veto.

Only time will tell, and in the meantime, this development only adds to the uncertainty of the calendar.

--
1 Of course depending on the decisions in Florida and Michigan, the first four states could be pushed into very early January or even December.

2 I won't include dates here because it would be total guesswork, but this would be the order of contests with maybe Florida and Michigan holding primaries on the same date.

3 Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp has indicated that the Peach state could move to coincide primaries with Florida. Most of the discussion was in the context of Florida holding a late February contest just outside of the national parties window for non-exempt states to hold contests.

4 FHQ's expectation is that this one will get moved in the late summer or early fall. It hasn't yet, though there was bipartisan support for the move. The need to get the FY2012 budget done in the Badger state superseded the need to move the presidential primary.


Monday, July 11, 2011

Governor Malloy's Signature Moves Connecticut Presidential Primary to April 24

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On Friday, July 8, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy (D) signed HB 6532 into law. The legislation moves back the Nutmeg state's presidential primary from the first Tuesday in February to the fourth Tuesday in April. Connecticut now officially joins Pennsylvania and Rhode Island on that April 24 date. Legislation has passed the legislatures in both Delaware and New York to bring those states' primaries in line with those in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. This five state regional primary (along with several other Democratic caucus states plus primaries in Maryland and Washington DC) makes the month of April on the 2012 presidential primary calendar much more crowded than it was in 2008.

Pennsylvania's primary was the only contest scheduled in April during the last presidential election cycle.



Friday, July 8, 2011

Nixon Vetoes Missouri Presidential Primary Bill, Primary Now Seemingly Non-Compliant

On Friday, July 8, Governor Jay Nixon (D) vetoed SB 282. The bill would have moved the Missouri presidential primary from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in February to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March. Nixon agreed with that provision in the law but did not approve of the additional sections of the legislation. Among the issues the governor took with the bill was the fact that the bill stripped the governor of the power to make appointments to fill vacancies to US Senate and other statewide offices. This was something that was raised by a state representative back in early June and proved to be part of the ultimate downfall of the bill.

More problematic is the position in which this not only leaves Missouri, relative to the national parties' delegate selection rules, but what this will do to the overall presidential primary calendar. If Missouri is, indeed, locked into February 7 next year, it significantly affects what will happen in Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Michigan (states looking to break in on the early presidential primary process) on the one hand, but obviously Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina as well. The only -- and it seems to be increasingly likely -- recourse is a special session where the presidential primary issue could be raised.