Everyone I know has a big but...

With all due respect to Pee Wee Herman...

Despite having talked quite a bit about the significance of the Florida as the domino that first has to fall before we have any idea about what the first part of the 2012 presidential primary calendar will look like, FHQ is hesitant to completely wade into the back and forth about what's actually happening in the Sunshine state. The truth is, the state legislative session does not begin until March and anything that is said between now and that point will ultimately take a backseat to the debate that will take place in the legislature.

That said, there has been enough talk about Florida changing the date of its presidential primary and for various reasons (because the delegate selection rules should be followed, because the national convention is in Tampa).

...but...

And this is the thing: the temptation is there for the Republican-controlled state government in Florida to thumb their noses at the Republican National Committee's 2012 delegate selection rules. The move to the final Tuesday in January in 2007 was a permanent move. It was not a "let's try this out for one cycle and see how it goes" plan. It was a "let's stake a claim as an additional early state in the presidential primary process" plan. That will be the subject of the debate that will surround what promises to be a sure thing proposal before the Florida House and Senate. There will be a bill to move the presidential primary back to March or later, but chances are there is going to be one side that says, "let's move" while the other nods but responds by saying something like what Marco Rubio said this week:

"It's right for Florida for a lot of reasons. What's the point of Florida voters having a primary later in the year that won't mean anything? ... I think Florida is the ideal test. There isn't an issue confronting America that they won't have to address in a state like Florida. And as a Republican, I think it behooves us to have an early Republican primary in Florida. Because if a Republican can't win Florida, they can't win the presidency. So we better make sure whoever we nominate is someone who can be palatable to Floridians."

That's a tough argument to counter effectively. No, Rubio isn't currently a member of either house of the state legislature, but the junior senator from the Sunshine state perfectly encapsulates the argument against moving the primary.

So, it will be a roller coaster of speculation between now and when the Florida legislature convenes on March 8, but keep your distance and know that while the rules give Florida but one move, the legislators will be tempted to maintain the status quo even if it means ceding half its delegates to the Republican national convention.

We shall see...

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How many double-takes can one do in a split second?

I think I broke the record.

Last night as I was putting the finishing touches on the two posts I was working on, a Google Alert email came up on my phone. [Well, the buzz of my phone told me I had a message. I had to actually pick the phone up to see that it was one of the Google Alert variety.] Instead of totally interrupting my train of thought and clicking on the adjacent email tab online, I picked up my phone and this is what I saw:

Presidential Primary Process Reorganized

Kansas City Star

Instead of the traditional Iowa-New Hampshire-Super Tuesday trifecta, the 2012 cycle will be the first to use a rotating system among four region: ...

WHAT!?! How did I miss this? How was it not being more widely reported than in the Kansas City Star (No offense Star employees.)?

At that point my posts were forced to take a backseat to this new and necessary investigation. I switched to the computer, found the relevant Alert message in my email queue and clicked on it. Rapidly, I scanned the article for the headline I had seen on my phone. I located it and this is what I read:

Presidential Primary Process Reorganized

WASHINGTON | The two major political parties have announced the implementation of a regional primary system for presidential nominations. Instead of the traditional Iowa-New Hampshire-Super Tuesday trifecta, the 2012 cycle will be the first to use a rotating system among four regions: Northeast, Southeast, Northwest and Southwest. The first region to hold primaries next year will be the Northeast, which will go last in 2016.

This plan is the culmination of efforts from disparate advocates, including the National Association of Secretaries of States and former Florida Gov. Bob Graham. The intention is to increase diverse participation by ensuring that all areas of the country get an early say in the nomination process.

Again, what!?! First of all, how had a near impossibility -- the fact that both major parties had quietly altered their 2012 delegate selection rules after having settled on them already -- been left unreported to this point? Secondly, why was this only in the Kansas City Star?

It was then that I looked up at the true headline (and just a section heading masquerading as one on a smartphone):

Headlines that America deserves to see this year

Oh, well that explains it. Perhaps this should be amended to read "Headlines that America deserves to see in 2014". That will be the next time we will see any sort of headline on a definitive change in primary organization. And maybe you've seen over the years, I'm not entirely bullish on that happening then or any other time. But 2014 would be the earliest possible time that we would see that.

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South Carolina Has State Funded Presidential Primaries

Richard Winger over at Ballot Access News today -- in describing the introduction of a bill in Oklahoma to have the state parties pay for presidential primaries* -- mentioned that South Carolina remained the only state where the state parties still picked up the tab for presidential primary elections. That did used to be the case. However, in 2007 the South Carolina legislature passed S 99 (text and history of the bill below) which gave the funding power to the state while keeping the date-setting control in the hands of the state party committees. The bill passed and was later vetoed by Governor Mark Sanford. But that veto was overridden by the legislature. At no point during the remainder of that 2007-2008 session nor during the subsequent 2009-2010 session did the legislature act to reverse what it had accomplished in S 99.

Should Oklahoma pass HB 1057, it would become the only state where the parties pay for their own presidential primaries.

...just like South Carolina used to.

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Text of S 99:

AN ACT TO AMEND SECTIONS 7-11-20 AND 7-13-15, BOTH AS AMENDED, CODE OF LAWS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 1976, RELATING TO PARTY CONVENTIONS AND PARTY PRIMARY ELECTIONS CONDUCTED BY THE STATE ELECTION COMMISSION AND COUNTY ELECTION COMMISSIONS, SO AS TO PROVIDE THAT THE STATE ELECTION COMMISSION CONDUCT PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCE PRIMARIES, THAT THE STATE COMMITTEE OF THE PARTY SET THE DATE, FILING REQUIREMENTS AND CERTIFICATION FEE FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCE PRIMARIES, TO PROVIDE A PROCEDURE FOR VERIFICATION OF THE QUALIFICATION OF CANDIDATES, TO CLARIFY CERTAIN EXISTING PROVISIONS CONCERNING PRIMARIES, AND TO SPECIFY WHICH PRIMARIES MUST BE CONDUCTED BY THE STATE ELECTION COMMISSION AND COUNTY ELECTION COMMISSION; TO DESIGNATE SECTION 14 OF ACT 253 OF 1992 AS SECTION 7-11-25, RELATING TO POLITICAL PARTIES NOT PROHIBITED FROM CONDUCTING PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCE OR ADVISORY PRIMARIES, SO AS TO DELETE THE REFERENCES TO PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCE PRIMARIES; AND BY ADDING SECTION 7-9-110 SO AS TO AUTHORIZE A POLITICAL PARTY OR STATE ELECTION COMMISSION TO CONDUCT A PRIMARY OR ELECTION, WITHOUT CHARGE, IN A FACILITY THAT RECEIVES STATE FUNDS FOR SUPPORT OR OPERATION.

Bill History.

*Note that this is a similar bill to the one introduced in Oklahoma two years ago that would have done the same thing. HB 1340 got bottled up and died in committee when the legislature adjourned for the year in 2009. The spirit of that bill lives on in HB 1057.

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Washington Primary: Moving Up, Back or Packin' It Up?

The answer, it seems, is "Both A and C", but it depends on which primary you're talking about. That Washington Governor Christine Gregiore called for the elimination of the Evergreen state's presidential primary is old news -- she did that back in December -- but the idea appears to be gaining momentum with Secretary of State Sam Reed now endorsing the idea as well. As was the speculated to be the case in California, with the proposed shift of the primary there, this effort in Washington is a cost saving measure. Of course, it makes more sense in Washington.

Why?

Well, the Washington presidential primary has been next to meaningless throughout much of its history. Both parties still use caucuses as a means of allocation national presidential delegates as well. In 2008, the Washington Republican Party allocated 49% of its delegates through the February 19 primary, but had already begun the process of allocating the other 51% during the first round of local caucuses on February 9. Likewise, the Democrats utilized both systems, but the primary was only advisory -- a beauty contest -- while the caucus carried all of the weight in terms of determining the allocation of delegates. If the best the state funded primary can do is allocate 49% of the delegates in but one party's primary, then it may probably be best for the state to save the money and let the two parties foot the bill for their own nominating contests. The Washington state parties have always seemingly valued having more control over the process through the years. [Mike Huckabee didn't think too highly of the caucus process in Washington in 2008.]

California, on the other hand, uses the primary as the, pardon the pun, primary means of allocation and while the move back to June, in conjunction with the other primaries, would save the state some money, it would come at the price of losing a significant say in who the parties' nominees would be. [Nothing, of course, precludes the state from changing its mind in the future when economic forecasts are potentially rosier.]

--

Washington Secretary of State Reed also made a request that the state legislature move on legislation that would shift the state's primaries for state and local offices up two weeks on the calendar to early August. This would pull the state into compliance with a federal law that passed in 2009 and sought to protect the voting rights of military personnel overseas. FHQ previously mentioned that amendment to a defense authorization bill here, here and here. We don't often talk about the movement of state and local primaries around here, though it is a void in the political science literature I'd like to at some point examine more closely, but this is one of the few instances of movement that has been triggered by this federal legislation. Early on in the new legislative sessions is when we are likely to see more of this sort of action take place.

The Washington state legislature convenes on Monday (January 10).

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The Impact of 2010 State Governmental Elections on Frontloading: Part Two

Yesterday's post on the prevalence of unified government in state governments following the 2010 elections set the stage for a further examination of the influence that will have on the likelihood of proposed bills that may shift the dates on which presidential primaries and caucuses will be held. Now, there are a fair number of factors that come into play in the frontloading decision-making calculus of any state legislature (or ultimately the state government). For the time being, FHQ will focus on a handful of them.

First, presidential incumbency matters. I found as much in my research [pdf]. Over the 1976-2008 period, those cycles without an incumbent president on the ballot were three times less likely to witness widespread primary movement than in those cycles where both parties had contested nominations. 2012 will be one of those cycles with an incumbent president on the ballot.

What that tells us is that there is potentially a partisan element to all of this. As Philip Klinkner (1994) found in his book on out party committee activity, those parties currently out of the White House are more likely to tinker with their rules -- as a means of shuffling the deck and potentially increasing their likelihood of success -- than those that occupy the White House. In other words, in this cycle we would expect to see the Republicans being less content with the status quo and thus more likely to alter their rules in some fashion. While the Republican Party did allow rules changes (or the exploration of that possibility) outside of the national convention for the first -- a process that led to the adoption of rules requiring states to proportionally allocate delegates in the event a contest is held prior to April -- that effort is not really the point for our purposes here. Instead, we are looking at the secondary actors here: the state governments. To what level are the states willing to, within those rules, make changes to their election laws to impact their influence over the nomination process? When it comes to frontloading, that is the important question to ask. All things equal, the expectation would be that Republican-controlled governments would be more likely frontload than Democratic-controlled state governments.

2012 is a weird cycle, though. After having allowed February primaries, both national parties are now seeking to scale things back in 2012 and are mandating March or later primary and caucus dates for non-exempt states. For the first time, then, the parties are attempting to force states to backload as opposed to allowing them to frontload to a certain point in the past.

That leaves those 18 states currently in violation (see map below) of the national parties' delegate selection rules firmly within the crosshairs. Each has to move back to a later, compliant date or they face the delegation-reducing sanctions both parties are employing. [For the time being, I'll shunt my thoughts on the effectiveness of those sanctions to the side.]

[Click to Enlarge]

Those 18 states are either the states most likely to move into compliance or the most likely to thumb their noses at the national party rules in an attempt to influence the nominations. And that brings us full circle. Democratic-controlled state governments (of those 18 states) would tend to fall into the former group while Republican-controlled state governments would be more likely to tempt fate and stick it out despite the looming spectre of sanctions. Two Democratic-controlled states (Arkansas and Illinois) in the last legislative session moved to later dates and a third, California (a newly unified Democratic state government), has a proposal to move its primary back to a later date on the 2012 presidential primary calendar.

[Click to Enlarge]

You can begin to see the possible impact here as highlighted by the map above (especially when combined with the partisan maps from part one). The unified state governments would hypothetically be more likely to see some action if they were under Democratic control than if they were under Republican control (seeking greater influence over the nomination) or in the midst of divided control (unable to move into compliance with either national party's delegate selection rules). In other words, there is not only a line between unified and divided state governments, but between states with unified Democratic control and unified Republican control. States like California are more likely to move back, but are unified Republican states like Florida or Georgia more or less likely to move back than states like New York or Missouri with divided government? That will be something for those of us watching to keep our eye on.

The problem with focusing on the states in violation of the national party rules is that it completely disregards states -- particularly unified states -- that are currently compliant but may move to an earlier date valuing influence over the potential costs to their national delegations. Here's where that Texas bill comes into the picture.

[Click to Enlarge]

There are obviously states with unified control that may opt to move into violation of the national parties as well. But those states are much more likely to be Republican-controlled than otherwise. Pennsylvania, a state long divided between the parties and incidentally enough unable to move out of April during the post-reform period, may be worth watching along with Texas since both are Republican-controlled.

The point to take home is that while there may be some states that stick it out with primary dates in violation of the national party rules, there will also be far less movement forward than in the past. There will be movement backward, but much of that will likely depend on the presence of unified government in the state and which party is in control.


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Presidential Primary Bills Before State Legislatures

Now that California has joined Texas among the ranks of states with primary-shifting bills before its state legislature, FHQ is going to add a gadget in the left sidebar (directly under primary calendar) that will allow you to track the status of those bills.

Just as a refresher:

1) The California bill would move the presidential primary from the first Tuesday in February to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June.

2) The Texas bill is a true frontloading bill. The proposal there calls for the Lone Star state's primary to be moved from the first Tuesday in March to the first Tuesday in February.

Stay tuned on the front page for updates and to the sidebar for the status of the bills.

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California Bill Introduced to Move Presidential Primary Back to June

California State Assemblymember, Paul Fong (D-Mountain View) introduced a bill (AB 80) yesterday which would shift the state's presidential primary in 2012 and in future presidential cycles from the first Tuesday in February back to June. Details are scant at this point (as you might have been able to tell from the bill link above), but there are few things that can be said of this despite not having the text of the bill at which to look.

First of all, California did this during the 2008 cycle as well. In September 2004, then-Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill that moved the Golden state's primary from its March position back to June. Now, keep in mind that California has always been one the states that has traditionally held both its presidential primary and its primaries for state and local offices at the same time. Record low turnout in both 2002 and 2004 served as the impetus for the move. However, in 2007, when states began moving and clustering their primaries and caucuses for 2008 in February, California followed suit (see California section). But this time the state assembly decoupled the presidential primary from the primaries for state and local offices. This didn't come cheap. The early cost estimates to create the all-new, separate presidential primary placed that number at $90 million.

And that brings us to the second point. With such a high price tag and with California in poor shape economically, this current move by the assembly to "recouple" the two sets of primaries seems like a no-brainer. Of course, passing this bill would also mean that California's voice would likely go unheard at the tail end of the nomination process, a place the state's primary has not been since the 1992 cycle. This could be a point of debate once this bill is in committee (Fong is the chair of the Assembly Elections Committee.). That could be as early as February 3.

Given our post earlier today, none of the above says anything about the partisanship in the state legislature in California. It was among the states that shifted from divided to unified government with Jerry Brown's election as governor. It was also one of the few states that moved toward the Democrats in that regard. With an uncontested nomination, Democratic-controlled states may be more likely to bring their primary scheduling into compliance with national party rules because of that than their Republican-controlled counterparts in other states. We shall see. We'll have more on this point in tomorrow's post. That said, California moving back is a big deal. It is currently one of the 18 states with elections laws on the books that schedule the presidential primary in February and thus in violation of national party rules on delegate selection.

[h/t Ballot Access News for the link.]

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UPDATE: Here is the text of AB 80. As expected the bill combines all sets of primaries on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June and would move the presidential primary to that position from the first Tuesday in February.

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The Impact of 2010 State Governmental Elections on Frontloading: Part One

On Monday, FHQ posted a chronological list of the start dates for all 50 state legislative sessions. Now, from that calendar several factors, as discussed there, could be gleaned that could impact the evolution of the 2012 presidential primary calendar. However, it was only intended as the opening of an incremental assessment of the state of play in the calendar maneuvering that will take place throughout 2011. State legislatures are very much at the nexus of this decision in a majority of states -- those with primaries. As such the partisan composition of those state legislatures is an important point of departure.

The Republican wave that swept over the 111th Congress grabbed a majority of the headlines as did some of the wins the party saw in gubernatorial races. Yet, those GOP advances stretched down-ballot to state legislatures as well. Nationwide that translated into a gain of more than 675 seats across all state legislatures according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Before I get too far into this first step look into the post-2010 partisan composition of state legislatures, or more to the point, whether there is unified or divided government on the state level, I should note that this is but one of many factors that plays a role in determining if a state ultimately opts to shift the date on which its presidential primary is held. In the models I ran in my dissertation research [pdf], I repeatedly found that structural factors had a greater influence a state's propensity to frontload in the 1976-2008 period than what I deemed political factors. In other words, matters such as whether a state held its presidential primary concurrently with its primaries for state and local offices was of greater import than divided government. It should be noted that another political factor, the presence of an incumbent president running for reelection, had a larger impact than either a divided state government (legislature and governor) or a divided legislature. The theory behind all of this is that rationally acting decision makers would utilize a cost/benefit analysis when deciding whether to frontload their primary. Those state-level decision makers with less structural, political, economic and cultural impediments standing in the way of the decision were found to be more likely to have shifted their primary (or caucus) over the period mentioned above.

While inter-chamber partisan division within a legislature would hypothetically serve as a deterrent to frontloading, it was never the statistically significant factor that inter-branch partisan division (between the executive and legislative branches) consistently proved to be.

That said, what impact did the 2010 Republican wave have on the presence of unified or divided government? First, it is instructive to examine the executive and legislative chamber flips in partisan control during the 2010 elections.

[Click to Enlarge]

Understandably, this is a map that trends red, but only shows two instances (Maine and Wisconsin) where the Republican Party gained control of the executive branch and both the upper and lower chambers of the legislature. Overall, the map does not tell us much more than the map the National Conference of State Legislatures provides other than the fact that it adds gubernatorial gains to the equation. But let's add in a map that shows the prevalence of unified government and then create a hybrid of the two that demonstrates not only the presence of Republican-controlled unified government, but the gains made on that front during 2010.

[Click to Enlarge]

Again, this second map shows us the extent to which unified government extended following the 2010 elections. On the surface, the midterms proved to be a boon to Republican fortunes nearly nationwide. It would, theoretically, have an impact not only on frontloading but on redistricting as well. Unified Republican-control on the state level translates into fewer hurdles between a party making congressional seat gains through redistricting or making an advantageous move of a primary ahead of a presidential nomination cycle that will only see a competitive Republican race.

But what was the impact of 2010?

[Click to Enlarge]

Well, the state that already had unified government prior to 2010 are shaded in either dark red or blue. The gains in unified control by either party are in the lighter shades. If we were a truly enterprising blog, FHQ would go ahead an layer in the new electoral college map as a means of discerning the states where unified control was established and where redistricting will have to take place. Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are the big ones on that front and sadly for the Democratic Party, California is neither redistricted by its state legislature nor did it gain any seats in the latest reapportionment. Redistricting aside, however, this series of maps does set the stage for an examination of how the partisan shifts in control at the state level will potentially impact the frontloading process during the 2011 state legislative sessions.

With so many states now under unified Republican control and with the Republican nomination being the only contested race, the potential exists for quite a lot of primary movement. But FHQ will delve into that tomorrow with a wider discussion of other factors that could influence state legislative decision making in terms of presidential primary timing.

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Headline Writers Need to Be Stopped

Earlier FHQ linked to an article from the Columbus Dispatch that correctly identified the news in its article on the possibility of a later 2012 presidential primary in Ohio. In fact, the headline was good enough in our opinion to repeat here.

"Slow redistricting could delay Ohio's presidential primary"

That story has since been picked up in part by the Associated Press and has morphed from the incoming secretary of state pointing out a potential timing issue between the redistricting process and the presidential primary into said secretary of state contemplating moving the presidential primary himself.

"Secretary of State might move Ohio's 2012 presidential primary date"

or

"Ohio Elections Boss Considers Later 2012 Primary"

I'm no expert -- well, I suppose I am -- but the last time I checked, in Ohio, as in many other states, the state legislature is responsible for moving the date on which the state's primary is held. And that move has to be signed off on by the governor, not the secretary of state. New Hampshire is the only state where the secretary of state plays a direct role in the scheduling of presidential primaries. The state legislature in the Granite state ceded that power in 1976 in an effort to assure the state maximum flexibility in maintaining its first in the nation primary. Now this isn't to suggest that secretaries of state, under which typically resides a state board of elections, has no role to play in this process. However, that role is rarely anything other than an advisory role. And that seems to be the case in Ohio. The state legislature will be the entity to act on this if it cannot quickly draw the congressional district lines. [Let's keep in mind that Ohio is now under unified Republican control following the 2010 elections.]

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"Slow redistricting could delay Ohio's presidential primary"

From the Columbus Dispatch this morning:

"Ohio's 2012 presidential primary election might have to be moved to later in the year if state lawmakers are slow to draw new congressional districts this year, incoming Secretary of State Jon Husted said yesterday."

There is always a domino effect. Ohio state law requires petitions for candidacy to be filed at least 90 days in advance of the March 6, 2012 primary (December 7, 2011), but both congressional and state legislative districts will have to have been drawn by then so candidates -- both incumbents and challengers -- know where they are running. This obviously puts a bit of pressure on state and local boards of elections to solidify the field of candidates and then print (or prepare electronic) ballots for the primary.

It remains to be seen if this news will actually filter down to members of the state legislature, some of whom may opt to introduce a bill that shifts the date on which the presidential primary (and those for other offices as well) is held. Though it didn't go anywhere, a group of Democratic state senators proposed a bill that would have moved the Ohio primary into January for the 2008 cycle. That would have been in violation of both national parties' delegate selection rules (And wouldn't it have been fun to tack Ohio onto the Florida/Michigan mess?). Of course, that didn't stop the bill's introduction.

File this one away and be on the lookout for other similar situations in other states where reapportionment has forced district redraws.

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