At first, I toyed with the notion of claiming my 15 minutes of fame by announcing that I have not formed a presidential exploratory committee, nor do I intend to form one under any circumstances.
Such a statement should have enough novelty value to lead the evening news, since we’ve been inundated by candidate proclamations in recent days: Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson; and Republicans Ron Paul, John McCain, Sam Brownback, Mitt Romney, Duncan Hunter, and even our own Tom Tancredo. And I have doubtless left some out, because even a hard-core political junkie could not keep track of all these potential presidents.
In theory, the sooner you jump in, the more time you have for raising money, and every dollar raised is a dollar that won’t go to a rival. And you get more media attention, just because you’re exposed longer.
But in practice, there’s no advantage if everyone announces early. Instead of tending to their business in the U.S. Senate or wherever, the would-be presidents are trying to make themselves known in Iowa, home of the first caucuses, and New Hampshire, home of the first primary.
Those states are hardly representative. Iowans are significantly more literate and they don’t get divorced as often. The Granite State is much more white and rural than most of America.
Back in April 2004, Atlantic Magazine published an essay by Cullen Murphy. He posed the question: Which state is so representative of America as a whole that it should hold the first presidential primary?
His answer was Missouri. In physical and cultural geography, it connects North and South, East and West. During the Civil War, the slave state barely stayed in the Union. The major trails into the West – the Santa Fe, Oregon and Overland – all departed from Missouri.
The U.S. population is 300 million, meaning an average state would have 6 million residents, and Missouri has 5.8 million. Murphy also pointed out that in every presidential election since 1900, with the sole exception of 1956, Missouri has voted for the winning candidate.
In other words, if we wanted to hold an early primary or caucuses in a state that looked like the broad sweep of America, we’d do it in Missouri. Unlike its neighbor Iowa, Missouri is not dominated by any single economic factor.
Coloradans have made some half- hearted efforts to get such attention. We had a March presidential primary from 1992 to 2000; then the General Assembly killed it to save money, and it never made any difference anyway. Jerry Brown won it the first time, and in 2000, we were seeing McCain ads on TV even though he had by then conceded the nomination after George W. Bush sandbagged him in South Carolina.
Now some of our neighboring Western states are proposing early primaries for 2008. Since the Republican Party has turned into the Southern Party, the Mountain West is the new frontier for the Democrats, and Denver will host the national convention.
Even so, Coloradans won’t have much to say about who gets nominated. No early primary is planned here, and with all those early announcements of exploratory committees, it will be settled long before the first delegate arrives.
There is a way around this, though. Our General Assembly could jump the gun on all the other states, and pass a law setting Colorado’s presidential precinct caucus date for April 25 of this year.
Caucuses don’t cost the state treasury anything. That’s a good time of year because ski season is over and the summer tourism hasn’t started, so lodging is cheap for the visiting media, candidates and their entourages; it’s a great shoulder-season boost for the tourist industry. Media coffers would overflow from campaign advertising income, perhaps allowing columnists to get pay raises.
Candidates would be found on street corners throughout our state, from Yellow Jacket to Ovid, from Maybell to Springfield, promising to end recreational access fees on public land, to speed hay deliveries after blizzards and to honor the Second Amendment.
And no one could reasonably complain that our April caucus, in the year before the election, was too early. After all, if the candidates would hold off their announcements until a reasonable date, then we could hold off our caucuses.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
