Washington
When the Florida Legislature passed a bill last week to move that state’s presidential primary to a prime early slot in the campaign calendar, it was the latest in a series of jolts to the candidates and their strategists, who are trying to grapple with a nominating process gone amok.
Eight months out, and the 2008 primary calendar remains in flux, with major players such as Illinois and Texas, and a whole contingent of Western states, still deciding when and how to stage their contests.
The only certainty is uncertainty.
“Whatever we think is going to happen is not going to happen,” says Stuart Stevens, a political consultant who worked for President Bush and now advises Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The candidates must consider all sorts of possibilities. If, for instance, Florida’s Republican governor signs the bill that defies Democratic Party rules and moves the state’s primary to Jan. 29, will the Democrat who wins there still get delegates? Or just a promotional boost for winning a beauty contest? And how much is that worth?
Strategists are studying such arcane tactical matters as proportional representation, same-day registration, early voting and New Hampshire election law, which gives its secretary of state the power to move the primary to tomorrow, if necessary, to maintain its first-in-the-nation status.
When California shifted its presidential primary to Feb. 5, many in politics felt that the West Coast giant had boosted the importance of small, early states Iowa and New Hampshire, as Californians depend on them to christen likely nominees.
But few studied California’s election law, which allows for absentee and early voting. Though their ballots may not be counted until Feb. 5, voters in California can start casting votes right after the Christmas and New Year’s holidays – before their counterparts in Iowa and New Hampshire winnow the field.
Might a well-organized and well-financed campaign take advantage of this opening and get its committed supporters to the polls before the results in other states stir things? Absolutely. The percentage of Californians who vote early may be as high as 40 or 50 percent next year.
“There are some states, California included, that have early voting – Texas is another – and that early voting may overlap the first contest, so that is going to affect resource decisions,” says David Axelrod, the campaign manager for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
And early voting is but one wrinkle that candidates must consider in the fluid, complex 2008 campaign. For the political professionals who are running the dozen and a half campaigns for the presidency, the emerging terrain looks like a pool table, with each action affecting the course of other balls in play, creating a series of cascading possibilities. The times demand flexibility, nimbleness and creativity.
Can’t predict the rules
“The rules are going to be written as the game is played this time, as opposed to going into it,” adds Ed Goeas, a pollster advising former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. “And we can’t predict what those rules are going to be.”
The lesser-known, underfunded candidates have little choice but to bet on early-state momentum, and for some of them, decision day won’t wait for winter. They may fall like harvest cornstalks.
Strategists for dark-horse candidates such as former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are quite candid: Their guy has to show demonstrable strength in the Republican straw poll on Aug. 11 at Iowa State University. With the attention and respect won there, they say, a candidate can earn a listen, finish in the top three in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 14 and garner the necessary name recognition and money as they roll through the Nevada caucuses (Jan. 19), New Hampshire (probably Jan. 22), Florida (Jan. 29, if the bill is signed) and South Carolina (Feb. 2).
They will need all that momentum, and more, for the Feb. 5 elections, which may end up as the closest thing to a national primary the U.S. has ever seen.
As of last Wednesday, the National Association of Secretaries of State, which provides the authoritative scorecard on such things, has California, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and several smaller states locked in for Feb. 5, with the potential addition of a gang of Western states (including Colorado) and titans such as Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and Georgia.
A candidate who storms through Iowa and New Hampshire and gets heralded by the media as in past years may indeed cut through his opponents on Feb. 5 like “a hot knife through butter” and secure the nomination, says Democratic consultant Tad Devine.
Splitting the vote possible
“If there are 20 states on February 5th,” says pollster Mark Penn, an adviser to Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, “then it’s pretty obvious … that the first states are going to be more important than ever.”
But Devine, and others like him, suspect that a variety of factors may keep one candidate from emerging, and that two or three candidates might fight on into the spring.
“I’m not sure the nominee will be locked in earlier than usual,” says Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean. “This is the most qualified field I have seen in a long, long time, and so I think you might actually split the vote on Feb. 5.”
So does it make sense for Colorado to move into the glut on Feb. 5? Yes, according to Colorado Democratic Party head Pat Waak.
There are two reasons to move up the caucuses to Feb. 5, she says. First, nearly all of the eight interior Western states have moved up their caucuses or primaries to that date.
“We will be part of a solitary bloc of Western states,” she said.
Additionally, she said, candidates will have to come through Colorado on their way to other states and to show some presence in the interior West. That will help not only candidates raise money but the state party as well, she said.
Dean suspects that his party’s eventual nominee will emerge from the grueling primary campaign “broke – no matter how good their fundraising is,” and so plans to raise $20 million on his own to sustain the Democratic standard-bearer, “and not allow us to be defined by others” at that crucial point.
In 2000 and 2004, early victories by Al Gore and John Kerry gave them unstoppable momentum, but the better model for the 2008 contest, says Devine, may be 1988, when three challengers (Dick Gephardt, Al Gore and Jesse Jackson) with adequate resources fought the eventual nominee, Michael Dukakis, well into the spring.
Forces coming together
“I believe the nominating process is fundamentally different this year. There are a lot of forces coming together that could lead to a whole different dynamic,” says Devine, an expert on the delegate selection process.
Those forces:
No hierarchical favorite. For the first time since 1928, there will be no incumbent president or vice president running in either party this year.
Fundraising depth. At their current pace, there are probably eight to 10 candidates who will raise enough money – about $20 million – to pay for the necessary travel, staff and advertising to qualify as national candidates, and six who may raise $75 million or more. That increases the chances, Devine says, that the first four or five contests will yield split decisions.
Proportional representation. Both parties have done away with winner-take-all primaries and award delegates on a proportional basis, with fewer convention seats reserved for elected officials and other power brokers. Even a candidate who finishes third in the Feb. 5 primaries might still pick up hundreds of delegates and stay in the race.
Favorite daughter and sons. If, as expected, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, Arizona and Michigan all decide to vote that day, the top three presidential candidates of each party will have a home state anchoring their campaign on Feb. 5. (Because his father and mother were both prominent Republican officials in Michigan, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney counts it as one of his “home” states.)
Historic candidacies. The GOP’s Romney, Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would shatter various ethnic, gender or religious ceilings if elected. Their supporters, therefore, may be expected to stick with them even if their candidacies hit rough seas.
Independents a key group
Independents. Some states, such as New York, let only Democrats vote in the Democratic primary. But in other states, including New Hampshire, independents can declare themselves Republicans or Democrats as they head into the voting booth. The swing voters, who played a crucial role in the 2006 election, could shake things up in unexpected ways next year.
Early voting. Voters in states such as California that offer early voting and have generous absentee voting rules increasingly find it an attractive alternative and may not wait for the results from other states. According to the California secretary of state’s office, the share of votes cast early by mail in party primaries has risen from 10 percent to 47 percent in the past two decades, and that doesn’t reflect early voting by machine.
Late starters. Some political analysts predict that Gore, or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on the Republican side, may launch a candidacy this fall and further scramble the race.
The Web. Paid television advertising used to be the pre-eminent means of political communication, but it’s now just a piece of presidential politics. The Internet can make or break candidacies – just ask former Virginia Sen. George Allen, who was expected, this time last year, to be his party’s front-runner in 2008. An Internet video triggered a fall that cost him his seat and sank his presidential aspirations.
“Advertising in a presidential campaign – we hate to admit it – it’s just less influential,” says Clinton adviser Mandy Grunwald. “In a presidential campaign (the voters) have just a ton of sources of information and the Internet has multiplied that exponentially.”
“We are all losing control,” says Alex Gage, a Romney adviser. “It used to be you could control it – you had advertising … (but) it’s just a whole different world out there now, and it changes every day.”
Staff writer Karen Crummy contributed to this report.
Washington Bureau chief John Aloysius Farrell can be reached at 202-662-8920 or jfarrell@denverpost.com.
