Bill Gardner Responds to Utah Presidential Primary Bill

"...and I wish they wouldn't."

-- New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner on the bill making its way through the Utah state House to move the Beehive state presidential primary to first in the nation.

FHQ was wondering if and when a response from Secretary Gardner was going to come on this Utah presidential primary bill. We now have an answer to that question. And it was not an atypical response from the secretary. He is compelled by New Hampshire state law to keep the presidential primary in the Granite state first in the nation. Let the record show that he is batting 1.000 in that effort since 1976. Threats may come and go, but New Hampshire (and Iowa) remain at the head of the queue. There really is no reason to think that that will change in 2016.

...even if the Utah bill contains a novel threat: online voting that offers the Beehive state the sort of potential ease of movement (on the calendar) that New Hampshire has.

Why?

Well, Gardner is right to trumpet the Granite state tradition of going first. Everyone knows what they've got in New Hampshire -- for better or worse. There is certainty in that knowledge from the national parties' perspectives and from the candidates' and campaigns' perspectives. In a system that contains a great deal of uncertainty, that one little bit of certainty helps. That is why in the days before Florida was threatening the early states on the calendar -- and the national parties frowned on that type of leapfrogging rogue behavior -- New Hampshire was able to essentially blackmail candidates into coming to the Granite state rather than heading off to rival states (such as Delaware in 1996).

In other words, come here or pay the price.

Here, again, is where that certainty of New Hampshire being first reenters the picture. That certainty usually translates into candidates spending a lot of time, money and effort there in the year before the presidential election year; knowing that New Hampshire will be first. Few campaigns are willing to cut bait on all that effort to go to another state and basically start over. That is especially true if they know -- or think they know -- that New Hampshire is going to jump right back to the top at presumably the last minute anyway.

This is Gardner's trump card. He pulled it on Nevada Republicans in 2012, and he will continue to use it until state-level actors learn threatening New Hampshire is futile.¹ The only thing is that this lesson has to be relearned over and over again.

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Recall that there are only four days left in the legislative session in Utah. HB 410 has to pass the House and carve an expedited path through the state Senate before next Thursday (March 13). Recall also, that even if it passes the legislature, it still has to be signed into law. Should it pass, expect to see another RNC delegation make its way to the office of Utah Governor Gary Herbert (R). That is what happened last year when a bill in Arizona threatened to anchor the Grand Canyon state presidential primary to the Iowa caucuses. That isn't to suggest that the RNC would be attempting to intimidate Utah into complying with the RNC delegate selection rules. Rather, it is more likely an effort to explain the nature and seriousness of the severe penalties associated with a timing violation.

Both Secretary Gardner and the RNC have the luxury of sitting back to watch the final week of the Utah state legislature first. Then they can move on to the next step if necessary.

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¹ Keep in mind that it is even more difficult for potential rivals now that the national parties have codified the calendar positions of the carve-out states. That doesn't operate as a decree on high that keeps states in line so much as it is an added layer of protection that New Hampshire and the other carve-out states can use in their defense of their positions.

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An SEC Primary in 2016? Not so fast… (Part II)

A couple of weeks ago FHQ examined the likelihood that the states most closely associated with Secretary of State Brian Kemp's (R-GA) southeastern regional primary proposal would be able to implement a presidential primary move. That was more of an internal look at what may affect the calculus in each state. The post touched on outside factors that may affect that decision-making process, but only in passing. Obviously, there are other matters that may intervene to complicate things.

There is some history here. The idea of a southern regional primary is not a new one. Barely a year after the reformed presidential nomination process got its first trial run in 1972, Jimmy Carter was out laying the groundwork for a nomination bid on the Democratic side in 1976 but was also trumpeting the strategic virtues of holding a collective southern regional primary. The benefits seemed clear. The South would speak with one voice and propel a more moderate-to-conservative candidate to the Democratic nomination who could, in turn, better compete in the general election.

As it turned out, it took the states of the South a decade and a half to coordinate this, bringing the idea to fruition. It took some cajoling from the Carter folks ahead of the 1980 renomination run against Ted Kennedy to convince legislators in Florida to hold pat in March and legislators in Alabama and Georgia to move up to coincide with the primary in the Sunshine state. That subregional primary was to serve as a counterweight to the delegate gains Kennedy was likely to win in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.¹

Four years later, several southern and border states adopted caucuses for the competitive Democratic nomination race, joining Alabama, Florida and Georgia in March, though not all on the same date. Only the Oklahoma Democratic caucuses were on that same second Tuesday in March date. Caucuses in Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and South Carolina followed later in the month. Collectively the South spoke with something approximating a single voice, but the result was not support for a more moderate candidate.² Rather, it was support for Walter Mondale.

There was, then, no alignment between the notion of a strong, unified regional voice in the process and a homegrown, southern, moderate-to-conservative candidate. The former seemed more likely with a southern bloc of contests, but that did not happen until the 1988 invisible primary. Even then -- with everything lined up -- the South did not speak with one voice in the 1988 Democratic primary. The unintended consequence was that three Democratic candidates emerged from the Southern Super Tuesday with a claim to victory -- Dukakis in the populous South (Florida and Texas), Gore in the peripheral South and Jackson in the Deep South -- all while George HW Bush used a sweep of the region on Super Tuesday to consolidate his hold on the Republican nomination.

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The dynamics of any given nomination race matter and it is difficult to gauge ahead of time -- as a decision-maker on the state level -- what those dynamics will look like in, say, two years time. That is the cautionary tale for those thinking of coordinating primaries in 2016. That past repeated itself to some degree in 2008 on the Democratic side (though not in a regional sense). Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton roughly split the logjam of national contests on Super Tuesday while John McCain significantly stretched the delegate lead he had established during the January contests.

What are the dynamics FHQ is talking about?

The candidates who run combined with the sequence of primaries and caucuses and the rules of delegate allocation are basics. And all are unknown at this point in time to those state-level decision-makers. There is a baseline calendar for 2016, but the question is how state actors view that terrain in light of the national party rules on (national convention) delegate selection. Actually, this constitutes several questions:

1. Do we want to move our delegate selection contest up (to an earlier point on the calendar)?
2. Does a new position mean incurring a penalty from one or both national parties?
3. Does a new position mean conducting an election on the same day as a number of other regional partners?
4. Does a new position mean conducting an election on the same day as a number of other states with no one dominant region? 
5. Does moving to a new position to create a regional primary (question #3) mean that other states (or regions -- see question #4) will herd toward that date; typically in the post-reform era, the first date allowed by both national parties (the first Tuesday in March in 2016)?

Now, there is no indication that state-level decision makers actually consider these matters this deeply. Rather, in most cases, state legislators (collectively) see, on its surface, a good idea -- a regional primary -- and run with it. In the process, however, there is little evaluation of the unintended consequences.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. These decisions to move a primary or caucuses are not independent of one another. The answer to question #1 depends on the willingness and ability of the state to move based on structural factors. FHQ has already discussed that for the states potentially involved in this retro-southern regional primary concept proposed by Georgia Secretary of State Kemp. Nothing in that proposal suggests that any of the southern go rogue, so the states of the South will avoid penalty so long as the Democratic National Committee retains a similar calendar to the Republican National Committee.

But there is something to questions #3-5 posed above. Partnering with other states in a region has its advantages, but it seems that that exercise has diminishing returns for the states involved as more states sign on. This needs a deeper examination, but one could argue that the most successful regional primaries have been subregional primaries; smaller clusters of contests at a point on the calendar that provides that group of states with the spotlight and is also earlier than the point at which 50% plus one of the delegates has been allocated to one candidate (effectively ending the nomination race). Contrast the 1988 Southern Super Tuesday with the 2008 Potomac Primary (Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC), for example.

The former was a mega-primary that allowed candidates to pick and choose their spots (as on the Democratic side in 1988). One could also just as easily see such a contest giving advantage to an unintended beneficiary (as on the Republican side in 1988). That is, someone of the party opposite the dominant partisanship of the region or a front-running candidate with the resources to compete in such a large number of states. Alternatively, the latter, if shrewdly scheduled (in this case a week after a rush of more than 25 contests in 2008), can draw candidates into a small area of competition with similar issues. Again, that was true in 2008 with the Potomac Primary, but one could also consider the Alabama/Mississippi cluster the week after Super Tuesday in 2012 another of these. Many have argued that those contests were evidence of Romney's poor showings in the South, but while the former Massachusetts governor lost in both, he emerged at near parity with Santorum and Gingrich in the delegate count in each. In other words, it was competitive; something a subregional cluster would desire.

This is actually an idea that the DNC attempted to nurture in 2012: clusters of primaries. Neighboring groups of three or more states that held concurrent primaries in or after April on the calendar a 15% delegate bonus. That was viewed as a way of matching up state and candidate interests but also for giving incentive to later primary and caucuses dates.

Broadly speaking, though, this is an hypothesis that needs some additional research. Is there at point of diminishing returns in terms of what states and candidates get out of a Super Tuesday pile up of contests. Smaller, distinct (date and regional proximity) clusters may be better able to accomplish this. That seemed to be part of the lesson that states seemed to have learned after 2008. Part of the motivation many states had in moving back was a change in national party rules (the February to March transition of the post-carve-out window), but the other part was that a number of states herded to Super Tuesday in 2008 and got nothing out of it.

Those are the competing interests facing those states willing to move around for the 2016 cycle: 1) Learn the lesson of 2008 and attempt to pick and choose a spot on the calendar (either alone or as a small cluster of subregional states) or 2) Move en masse to the earliest date allowed by the parties -- the first Tuesday in March.³ Those two options are not mutually exclusive. It could be that a group of southern states, for instance, cluster on March 1 (fulfilling the first option with the exception maybe of the small cluster) and that has the effect of triggering a rush on the date by other states. That reactionary group of states would be operating under the rationale -- as was the case before 2008 -- that if they do not move they will run the risk of falling after the point in the races where enough of the delegates have been allocated to have singled out a presumptive nominee.

There may also be the added layer of indirect involvement from the national parties as well; coaxing some states to move around. And this goes both ways; not Democratic and Republican so much as moving up and back. In 2012, there was some talk about national Democrats urging some states to move back to negatively affect the Republican process. Northeastern states would move back, making the front half of the calendar more southern and conservative. That would, in turn, hypothetically hurt Romney. The result was something of a mixed bag. Romney had a somewhat rough path to the nomination, but that was not a function of a conservative first half of the calendar. There was a good regional mix of early contests even if a group of mid-Atlantic/northeastern states moved back into late April. The real culprit for the drawn out Republican contest was the dispersion of contests across the entire calendar.

Assuming we witness some movement on Secretary Kemp's southern regional primary on March 1, we could see Republicans (nationally or the RNC quietly) urge just the opposite of what Democrats wanted in 2012. The idea of a southern regional primary isn't new as discussed above, but neither is the idea of a regional primary in this cycle. It was just last November that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus was talking about a midwestern regional primary. If contests in the South begin moving up to March 1, there could very quickly be a quiet yet concerted effort to find a group of contests to serve as a counterbalance on the Republican calendar either on March 1 or not long after. Ohio is already scheduled for that week after Super Tuesday.

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States once were slow to react to primary/caucuses movement in other states. A move in one cycle was met with a move in a the next subsequent cycle (if a state was compelled to move at all). That process has sped up over the last several presidential election cycles and reaction time had decreased. Since California moved its presidential primary from June to March in the 1996 cycle -- shifting with it the center of gravity in terms of the balance of delegates allocated over time across the primary calendar -- states have begun reacting within cycle. In other words, moving to a date that looks ripe for the taking now does not necessarily mean that that same date will not be jam packed with a number of other contests in the near future.

This hypothesis fits well in the policy diffusion literature. It also is something that FHQ has explored to some extent in a regional context. If one state moves its primary or caucuses, does that increase the likelihood that a neighboring state moves as well? What we found across a limited dataset -- the 2004 and 2008 cycles -- was the exact opposite: That if a neighboring state moved up, it decreased movement in surrounding states. At this point, FHQ is willing to chalk that up to a limited number of observations in just primary states across just a couple of cycles. It bears further research.

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Again, it is easy to look at the surface issues here and move on if you are a state-level actor. Move up, bring along some regional partners, get more attention and affect the nomination. Under that surface, though, there is a lot to think through. It can quickly become a complicated series of unknowns. The changes to the Republican delegate selection rules have limited the world of possibilities by adding some penalties with teeth, but that does not mean that there are not 50 states -- some with multiple actors involved -- that are attempting to reduce uncertainty, game the system and gain an advantage for themselves (in terms of gaining attention and influencing the process). One move by a state or a series of states can set off any number of possibilities in reaction.

That's the take home message in this jumbled mess: unintended consequences. One move begets another move that may negate your original move. And there usually is not a rejoinder to the response. There isn't time.

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¹ As it turned out, Carter won New Hampshire and all three southern states in the 1980 primaries and it was not until later in the calendar that Kennedy began to close the delegate gap. Even that was too little too late.

² Jesse Jackson's win in South Carolina and Gary Hart's in Oklahoma were the only two holes in an otherwise unified South. Those exceptions were early (March) contests and undercut the idea of the South collectively influencing the process by backing one candidate.

³ There is a third option as well. States could simply hold their ground and stay where current state law has the primary scheduled. Many states will do this as well.

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From Utah, a Bill to Potentially Disrupt the 2016 Presidential Primary Calendar

Buckle up. This is an interesting one.

With just a little more than a week left in the Utah state legislative session, the state House is considering a bill that would shake up elections in the state. No, FHQ is not talking about the legislation that would alter the caucuses/convention process that provided so much drama during the Lee-Bennett Republican Senate nomination race. Instead, HB 410, (sponsored by Rep. Jon Cox (R-58th, Ephraim)), if passed and signed into law, could potentially overturn the applecart that is the carefully constructed 2016 presidential primary calendar.

How?

First, FHQ should note that everything here -- whether the bill passes or not -- is contingent on the Utah legislature appropriating funds for the presidential primary election; something the body did not do for 2012. But let's assume for the a moment that the legislative body in the Beehive state provides funds in the 2016 budget -- which it will have to pass during the winter session in 2015 -- for the 2016 presidential primary. How does this bill change that?

In arguably the most provocative change, HB 410 would require the Utah lieutenant governor to schedule the Utah "Western States Presidential Primary" on a date "that is earlier than the scheduled date for any meeting, caucus, primary, vote, or other method used in any other state or territory of the United States that constitutes the first determining stage of selecting a presidential nominee."¹ Compounding that is an additional provision in the bill empowering the Utah state legislature with the ability to declare by resolution that the presidential primary vote be conducted as part of an online/electronic voting pilot program.

Structurally, then, this bill has to not only pass both chambers of the Utah state legislature, but it has to be signed into law by the governor. Then, assuming all of that occurs, the state legislature has to separately appropriate funds for the election and also pass a resolution qualifying the presidential primary election for the online voting pilot program. That may or may not be a high bar, but at a minimum, that is an awful lot of legislative process. And it is all sequential. If there is an impasse at any point in that chain, everything falls apart. Keep in mind also that Utah has very short legislative sessions. That further reduces the probability of all of this coming together prior to 2016.

This remains a possibility and nothing more.

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But assuming all the above benchmarks are hit, what impact would that/Utah have on the 2016 presidential primary calendar?

The main impact would be that the Utah primary would be first in the nation. The lieutenant governor would be tasked by law with scheduling the Western States Presidential Primary for a date earlier than any other contest; Iowa and New Hampshire included. We have played this game of chicken before, however. Remember that bill in Arizona last year that anchored the primary in the Grand Canyon state to the date of the caucuses in Iowa? This sort of action would likely trigger a game of chicken that advantages Iowa and New Hampshire. In the Arizona case, as long as Iowa could outlast the drop dead point at which Arizona had to set a date -- a point that would provide the state with enough lead time to prepare to conduct an election -- then they (Iowa) win.²

...and leave Arizona in the lurch in terms of when to actually set the date.

In other words, as long as Iowa and New Hampshire can wait out a state attempting to encroach on their early turf, they can retain their positions at the front of the queue. And because none of the (failed) proposals to anchor primaries or caucuses to either Iowa and/or New Hampshire or before them have contingencies in place in the very likely event that the two earliest states wait them out, those states are even further disadvantaged. There would be no guidance from state law as to when the primary should be scheduled.

Yet, the Utah proposal offers a new twist: online voting. If part of if not the main problem of successfully challenging Iowa's and New Hampshire's positions is that they have a competitive advantage in being able to more quickly organize caucuses or a primary, respectively, then why not reduce those costs? The Utah proposal in HB 410 does that on two fronts. First, online voting is cheaper. A separate presidential primary would have cost Utah up to $3 million in 2012. According to the fiscal note tied to HB 410, the infrastructure for secure online voting would cost $1.6 million up front. One would imagine that maintenance would also be required in subsequent years, but would/could be less than the original start up costs. That reduces costs relative to the flat -- yet increasing with inflation -- budget appropriation for an election with physical polling locations.

Second, the costs associated with attempting to play the brinksmanship game with Iowa and New Hampshire would be reduced to almost nil. It is much easier to move around the date of an online election than it is an election that requires reserving polling locations, organizing and paying poll workers, and reimbursing counties and/or local political units.

This is not unprecedented in presidential primary elections. The Arizona Democratic Party utilized online voting in its 2000 presidential primary/caucuses. That was more an effort to try the format than challenge the earliest states. The voting took place in the first full week of March, during a window from Tuesday through Friday before the caucuses on Saturday, March 11. That was well after Iowa and New Hampshire that year. It should also be noted that Arizona Democrats did not retain the online voting procedure for the 2004 cycle.

But the potential Utah of 2016 is not Arizona in 2000. This plan has the effect of turning the screws on Iowa and New Hampshire in a way that the post-reform system has not witnessed. Sure, there have been challenges over the years, but none of them have been successful. And no states have employed a method that streamlines the process enough to quickly adapt to anything that Iowa and New Hampshire might do. Utah may not be there. Certainly the proposed system of online voting is adaptive, but the decision-making process is fraught with the potential for legislative roadblocks. The decision on the date of the primary is not centralized as it is in New Hampshire and Georgia (with the secretary of state).

Still, we're assuming that this actually comes to pass. If that is the case, then there is one more factor to layer into this.

What about the national party delegate selection rules? There is a new super penalty (in the Republican National Committee rules) that is supposed to deter states from queue jumping like this, isn't there? There is, but that rule may have a problem. By reducing states' delegations to just 12 delegates if they have more than 30 total delegates and 9 delegates if they have fewer than 30 total, penalized states may end up with the same reduced total in the end, but different rates of reduction. Stated differently, big states take a larger hit than smaller and medium states do. A reduction of 99 delegates to 12 is a lot different than 40 delegates to 12 delegates. Florida is the 99 and Utah is the 40. Is a 70% penalty really all that much different to Utah than the 50% penalty that existed in 2012? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, states on the smaller side of the median number of total delegates have an incentive to potentially gamble on this and that is exactly what is at stake in this Utah discussion.

It is an open question and at least one Utah legislator is of the opinion that the 70% penalty is not steep enough to deter him from introducing this bill. Time is running out in the Utah legislative session, but even if this plan goes nowhere, it may be a blueprint for future challenges to Iowa and New Hampshire.

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Hat tip to Bryan Schott at Utah Policy for sending information on this bill FHQ's way.

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¹ This moniker is a relic of an effort by Utah and a number of other mostly Rocky Mountain states to hold a concurrent regional presidential primary in 2000. The tag has been a holdover in the state law referring to presidential primary since then. The primary is not conditioned on other states also holding delegate selection events on the same day as Utah.

² The Arizona bill was bottled up in committee, but would have set a 90 buffer for elections administrators between when the date of the election was set and the election itself. Iowa Republicans set the date of their 2008 caucuses with under 80 days of time between that decision and the caucuses. Iowa Democrats left only about 65 days between those two points in 2008. Both Iowa Democrats and Republicans left similar windows in 2012. New Hampshire did even better in whittling down that window. Secretary of State Bill Gardner (NH-D) allow 69 days of preparation in 2012, but just 48 days in 2008.

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Iowa. Still a Winnowing Contest. ...to Clinton and everyone else.

The news stories about the 2016 Iowa Democratic caucuses are less deja vu these days than they are like the constant, repetitive backgrounds in cartoon chase scenes. The pattern is pretty clear at this point:

1. Some combination of Hillary Clinton lost Iowa in 2008 and/or frontrunners often "stumble" there. 
2. Iowa is terrible at picking nominees/presidents.
3. A new poll is released showing Clinton up on any and all Democratic challengers.
4. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

Presumably, this will continue until Iowa in 2016. Maybe the cycle will begin anew for 2020 shortly thereafter.

Mark Z. Baraback has the latest fuel for the fire that powers this perpetual motion machine; cautioning a prospective Clinton campaign about what might lie ahead in the Hawkeye state.  The problem is that there is little caution in there. The problem from a political science perspective is that we're dealing with a small N problem. There are so few observations -- competitive nomination races in the post-reform era (1972 and after) -- that it is difficult to make generalizations in a sea of idiosyncratic presidential election cycles we can chalk up to the dynamics/fundamentals of any given year.

The point is that it is relatively easy to find examples of frontrunners losing (relative to expectations) in Iowa. [That game can be played with New Hampshire too!] Within that group there are two subgroups: 1) those frontrunners who "lose" Iowa and go on to win the nomination and 2) those frontrunners who "lose" in Iowa and lose the nomination. The latter group is fairly limited and often leads to the conclusion in #2 above. [More on that momentarily] There are, though, other groups of cycles that often get short shrift in this discussion. Most people remember recounts in 2000, but understandably forget the two (mostly) cakewalk nomination races that year. Many also fail to include the favorite (regional/state) son phenomenon that hit Iowa in the 1988-1992 period when Gephardt, Dole and Harkin won the caucuses.

So, there are exceptions. Regardless, frontrunners are typically successful in their quests for nominations no matter if you quantify that -- being a frontrunner -- as a mixture of poll position and funds raised (Mayer) or as a combination of those two and endorsements from party elites/insiders (Cohen, et al).

[And keep in mind that no one in Iowa wants to say that Hillary Clinton is inevitable. As Richard Skinner has noted in response to Peter Hamby's story from Iowa, it hurts their bottom line -- encouraging interest in the (competitive) Iowa caucuses. It is same there as it is in newsrooms where writing "Clinton is inevitable" stories gets old quite fast.]

The logical follow up is to ask why Iowa is first when it is so bad a choosing nominees/presidents. But please don't do that. That's just keeping Fred and Barney running past that doorway and potted plant. Iowa just does not derail front-running candidates with any level of regularity. It tends to winnow the field, leaving the determinative job to some subsequent state or series of state contests. That is the cycle we should be paying attention to.

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Missouri Once Again Initiates an Attempt at Presidential Primary Calendar Compliance

For the fourth consecutive year now efforts are underway in the Missouri General Assembly to move the Show Me state presidential primary from February into a compliant position later on the primary calendar. The state legislature was actually closest to shifting the primary back in 2011 when a bill designed to move the presidential primary back to March passed both chambers but was vetoed by Governor Jay Nixon (D) for reasons unrelated to the primary. Since that point in mid-2011, the legislature has been stuck in place or seemingly moving in reverse on the matter of the presidential primary scheduling. Efforts during a special session in the late summer of 2011 and during the regular sessions of 2012 and 2013 failed to gain any traction.

Will the fourth time be the charm?

Considering none of the primary-specific bills even got out of committee -- much less had hearings -- in 2012 and 2013, this current second session of the 97th General Assembly is heading in the right direction. There are two bills -- one in the House and one in the Senate -- that would shift back the date of the Missouri presidential primary. Both HB 1902 and SB 892 originally called for pushing back the primary date from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in February to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in April. The House bill -- introduced last week by Representative Tony Dugger (R-141, Wright, Webster) -- has already made it through the Committee on Elections in an amended form on a 10-0 vote with a "Do Pass" designation. The committee substitute now heading to the House Committee on Rules now differs from the Senate version in that the landing spot for the primary on the calendar is no longer in April. Instead, the Committee on Elections passed a version that would shift the presidential primary to the second Tuesday after the first Tuesday in March. That would be March 15 in the 2016 presidential election cycle.

There are a couple of things to note about these developments in the Show Me state:
1) To the extent the efforts to move the presidential primary have been derailed in the time since late 2011, it has been a function of a difference of opinion across chambers in the Missouri General Assembly. The House and Senate were in agreement about the move to March during the regular session in 2011, but that was the point of the last agreement on this issue between the chambers. Now that the House and Senate versions of these two related presidential primary bills differ, one has to wonder whether or if recent history will repeat itself.

2) One thing that might gird against the notion of inter-chamber division this time is that the change in the committee substitute in the House is clearly a nod to the recent RNC rules changes. Missouri Republicans, before the caucuses diversion in 2012, have traditionally allocated delegates in a winner-take-all manner. The move to April was presumably designed to protect that. But now that the RNC has narrowed its proportionality window a bit, there is no need to move the Missouri primary back to April. March 15 is where winner-take-all allocation is first allowed on the 2016 primary calendar; right where Missouri would be under HB 1902.

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An SEC Primary in 2016? Not so fast… (Part I)

Last week at the National Association of Secretaries of State meeting in Washington, Georgia secretary of state, Brian Kemp (R), rolled out a proposal for the alignment of southern presidential primaries on the first Tuesday in March in 2016. And Secretary Kemp has gotten some "positive feedback" on the plan from others in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.¹

That's all well and good, but let's have a bit of a look under the hood on this thing. In the first part, FHQ will look at those states named above that have expressed an interest in the possibility of a southeastern regional primary.

The date that Secretary Kemp has proposed for what has been affectionately called the SEC primary is March 1. That is the first date on which states other than the four carve-outs -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- can hold delegate selection events under the actual (RNC) or expected (DNC) rules. In other words, that may be an attractive landing point for any number of states (see Super Tuesday on February 5, 2008). As of now, March 1 already has a southern flavor. Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia are scheduled for that date according to current state laws in each. Adding Georgia to the mix gives the South the clearest and strongest regional voice on that date. That would make five out of the eight states southern with Massachusetts and Vermont serving as only a token regional counterweight.

But what is the likelihood that others (from the South) join those four (or five if one counts Georgia) on March 1?

Georgia is unique in that the state legislature ceded the authority to set the date of the Peach state presidential primary to the secretary of state in 2011. That makes Georgia like New Hampshire in that regard. Basically what that transfer of power means is that Georgia, like New Hampshire, is better able to move its presidential primary around without the potential for gridlock or just inaction on the part of a state legislature. Getting Georgia to March 1, then, is an easier task than it will be for other states.

And there will be something of a dilemma in the other states to whom that Secretary Kemp has reached out. Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi will have push a date change through their legislatures. Secretaries of state in each of those states can (attempt to) initiate the legislative process on such moves, but that is no guarantee that there will actually be any shifting. The reason there is no guarantee is that such a proposal raises questions about the expected utility of a move. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are already in March.

What difference does it make to move up a week (as is the case in Alabama and Mississippi) or two-ish (for Louisiana's now customary Saturday primary)?

In Alabama and Mississippi, the expected cost or benefit of a move may or may not be financial. Both are already in March, so the trade-off is more a matter of going with a larger group of southern states and risking getting lost in the shuffle or sticking with a smaller subregional primary on a date a week later when they may collectively and effectively counterbalance the Ohio primary on the same date. That is a tougher question to answer when both dates -- the first and second Tuesday in March -- are potentially attractive landing points on the calendar for a number of states. Getting lost in the shuffle may be a foregone conclusion when it is all said and done and the calendar is finalized in late 2015.

The gamble is similar in Louisiana in that the internal debate is a function of choosing between a date where they may have a greater share of the spotlight later on (if the nomination races are still going in late March) and a date when many other southern states hold their contests; a proposition the nets the Pelican state some regional clout but not necessarily direct attention from the candidates. The situation in Louisiana is complicated by the fact that the state has utilized a Saturday primary the last two cycles. Part of that is designed to reserve a spot on the presidential primary stage where Louisiana stands alone or with other smaller and/or caucuses states. The spotlight favors them.

Legislators in Arkansas face a slightly different calculus. First of all, the new RNC rules almost force Arkansas to consider moving up. Currently scheduled for the next to last Tuesday in May, the Arkansas primary falls at a point on the calendar after the cutoff for when primaries will need to be held to accommodate a late June or early to mid-July Republican convention. But that only adds to the classic late state dilemma: move everything up (presidential primary, state and local primaries and all) or create a separate presidential primary that is easier to move around (but also costs the state additional election funds)? Arkansas has twice gone the latter route (1988 and 2008) and twice has gotten essentially no bang for its buck, the extra expenditure got the state nothing in the way of advertising dollars or candidate attention. How ready and willing is Arkansas going to be to repeat that pattern? The alternative -- moving a consolidated set of primaries to an earlier date -- has its own pitfalls. Such a move impacts state legislators tasked with making the move in the first place. Moving a consolidated primary up lengthens a state legislators general election campaign. It also potentially means that the primary campaign overlaps with the state legislative sessions which means the primary phase campaigning will be happening during the state legislative session. Both potentially make legislators' decisions that much more difficult.

Despite officials being open to the idea of a regional primary in the southeast, that does not necessarily mean that it will be enough to overcome the questions that will be raised during state legislative efforts to move primary dates for 2016 around. Those questions represent potential roadblocks in the legislative process that could derail movement to earlier positions on the primary calendar.

Of course, that is not all that complicates the potential effectiveness of this proposal or its intended implementation. FHQ will examine the other issues attendant to this proposal that may pop up in the intervening period between now and 2016 in part two.

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¹ Below is the press release from Secretary Kemp's office yesterday:

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May Presidential Primary Could Be on the Move in Nebraska

Add Nebraska to the list of states reacting -- directly or indirectly -- to the recent Republican National Committee (delegate selection) rules changes.

As it stands now, Nebraska is slated to have a presidential preference primary election on the first Tuesday after the second Monday in May. That would be May 10, 2016. There is, however, a movement afoot to add an amendment to a broader elections bill before the state legislature that would shift that date up by a month into April. From the vantage point of early 2014, that may be a shrewd decision on at least one front: The first Tuesday after the second Monday in April, 2016 is in the middle of an otherwise vacant portion of the the 2016 presidential primary calendar. If state actors, then, are seeking to maximize the impact Nebraska voters may have on the nominations processes in 2016, moving to a date on which Nebraska is the only game in town, may work to their advantage.¹

Of course, there are potential roadblocks to this.

Moving the primary up, triggers the classic dilemma for the late (presidential primary) state -- like Nebraska -- with concurrent primaries for the presidential nomination among a host of state and local offices. Move everything up or create and fund a separate and earlier presidential primary? As the article from the Omaha World Herald indicates, the former affects state legislators' primaries while the latter may be viewed as less than cost-effective. Moving everything to April extends the general election campaign for state legislators by a month, meaning more work for the very people making this change. And creating a separate presidential primary does not seem to be on the table.

Nebraska Democrats also seem to have indicated that they are going to continue operating outside of the state-funded primary option. Since 2008, Nebraska Democrats have selected delegates through a party-funded caucuses/convention format that allows them to begin their process earlier than is possible with the May primary funded by the state.

But it is on that particular point where this gets even more complicated. The bill (LB 1048) that will supposedly contain the amendment provision that would move up the date of the primary also sets the parameters around other parts of the delegate selection process in the Cornhusker state:

1. State parties have to submit delegate selection plans to the Nebraska Secretary of State by December 1 in the year prior to the presidential election.
2. Those plans should allocate at least 80% of the total number of delegates to candidates based on the results of a primary or caucuses.
3. The plans must also specify how or if those delegates would be bound to particular candidates.
4. Finally, those plans must also set a minimum threshold of 15% in the primary for a candidate to eligible for any delegates whether allocated proportionally or in a winner-take-all manner.

All of this mostly aligns with how both Nebraska Democrats and Republicans allocated delegates in 2012. The one exception is that the Republican primary process has always been advisory to the caucus/convention process.² LB 1048 seeks to end the advisory nature of the primary, eliminating the provisions concerning the state conventions from the current law and adding a binding mechanism to any primary or caucuses utilized by the parties.

What may look like a good idea on paper -- moving the date up -- may not look as good once partisans (in the nonpartisan, unicameral Nebraska state legislature) get a closer look at what some of the other provisions in the bill will do to the delegate selection process. There are a number of items that may not sit well with various groups.

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¹ It is also true that that position may not prove advantageous at all. Such an incremental shift may still come after the point at which the nomination has been decided, depending on how other states move around and how the preceding contests have allocated delegates to the various candidates.

² Truth be told, there is a Democratic primary election as well on that May primary ballot, but Democrats abandoned it for the 2008 cycle, meaning that the primary vote in both the major party presidential primaries was next to meaningless.

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Oregon Republicans are Rethinking May Presidential Primary Date

The new 2016 delegate selection rules from the RNC have the Oregon presidential primary right on the new 45 day line between when primaries can be held and when the Republican National Convention may be held in 2016. That has Republicans considering their options.

They may find moving the primary tough with Democrats controlling all the levers of power in the state government.

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With RNC Rules Revised, the Ball is Now in the Democrats' Court

Now that the Republican National Committee has seemingly settled on the rules that will govern the selection of delegates in the 2016 presidential nomination race, it is time for the Democratic National Committee to get to work.

The history of the rules give and take between the two national parties in the post-reform era is an interesting one, and this latest iteration is more active, perhaps, than things have been for more than a decade. After all, it was the Democratic Party that fundamentally reformed the manner in which it selected delegates and determined presidential nominations following the messy 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. But four years later, in 1972, only the Democrats had a competitive presidential nomination race. The changes brought about by the McGovern-Fraser Commission had little to no effect on the Republican process that renominated President Nixon. Four years later, however, the Republican Party was dragged into the ad hoc and still developing -- from the states' perspectives -- post-reform nomination process.¹ The Republican Party was largely on the sidelines again as Democratic-controlled state governments in the South shifted up the dates of their delegate selection events in 1988 in concert as a means of exerting maximum influence over the Democratic nomination process.²

[Now, the 1988 dynamics were not the result of a concerted national party effort to entice southern states into earlier slots on the primary calendar, but it was a move within the existing Democratic Party rules that had a fairly significant impact on the Republican race that year. George H. W. Bush was able to use a sweep of the contests in the southern states to take a commanding lead in the race for the Republican nomination that year.]

It was the DNC or Democrats, then, that had proven more progressive in altering the rules by which not only their nominees were chosen, but the Republican nominees as well. But that relationship did not and has not stayed the same over time. The Republican Party, for instance, allowed states to hold February contests well before the Democrats followed suit, allowing similar activity in 2004. The 1996 and 2000 cycles saw Democratic state parties forced into a caucus/convention systems in lieu of too-early and non-compliant primary dates that Republicans were able to take advantage of (but Democratic states were not due to DNC delegate selection rules). Take notice of the number of contests that Republicans had between New Hampshire and Super Tuesday in 2000. The Gore-Bradley contest had a long layoff between those two endpoints.

The RNC also flirted with a more fundamental reshaping of the rules governing the delegate selection process in both 2000 and 2008. The Bush campaign quashed the Delaware Plan at the 2000 Republican National Convention. Then, the McCain campaign basically followed that same script in 2008, shooting down the Ohio Plan that the RNC had given the thumbs up to earlier in the year.

The unique thing about both the 2012 cycle and to some extent the 2016 cycle is that both the DNC and RNC are informally coordinating their processes. The national parties are not moving in lockstep, but they are at the very least communicating about a set of shared problems across their respective processes. This was clearer to see in 2012 when the two parties agreed on the basic structure of the primary calendar.³ And while those best laid plans were ultimately dashed by a handful of rogue states, the failure did point to a glaring deficiency in the Democratic and Republican rules: penalties. Just as 2008 had done to the Democrats, 2012 highlighted the fact that the RNC did not have an adequate penalty in place to deter states from moving into non-compliant points on the calendar.

With the rules it passed last week, the RNC addressed the penalty issue by solidifying a more severe penalty on states that might violate the party's rules on (primary/caucus) timing. The party also moved to shift the back end of the calendar as well to accommodate an earlier convention. Both moves affect the Democratic Party and what the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee may think about when it meets at the end of February to more officially begin hammering out the DNC delegate selection rules for 2016.

Both the DNC and RNC are on the same page where the front end of the calendar is concerned. The parties have voiced a preference for a process that begins with a limited number of small states kicking the process off in February and the remaining states falling somewhere after the first Tuesday in March.⁴ But the back end of the calendar is not in synch across parties given the changes the RNC just instituted. That may or may not matter to the Democratic Party. It is not entirely clear what the DNC reaction to an earlier Republican convention will be. If the party is enticed into having a similarly early convention, then the Democrats may also move to push late states a little earlier on the calendar. [But the Democrats may not want to do that.]

That is one matter the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will have to consider. Another is the penalties point. There was a discrepancy between the DNC and RNC sanctions on rogue states in 2008 and 2012, but not one that amounted to much difference. Despite the fact that candidate delegate totals were directly penalized (if a Democratic candidate campaigned in a rogue state), that did not significantly affect the calculus on the state-level. This was complicated in 2008 by partisan control of state governments as well. Republican-controlled Florida, for example, moved into violation of the DNC rules (with Democratic state legislative votes). Even the Rules and Bylaws Committee move completely stripping Florida of all of its delegates did little other than point out how little control one national party has when a state government is controlled by the opposition party.

That does also highlight the problem of states (governments or parties) being able to exploit the differences across the two national parties. That is exactly why the RNC last week made an allowance for late states -- those that may have contests that fall in the window 45 days before the convention -- controlled by the Democrats. But if there is a significant amount of variation between the two parties' sanctions on rogue states, it does potentially provide the states with another point of exploitation.

Now that the super penalty is set in stone, the Democrats may consider following suit. In fact, FHQ has been told that such an item -- a more severe penalty -- will be on the table when the Rules and Bylaws Committee convenes to begin hashing out the Democratic delegate selection rules. That said, there may still remain an issue where enforcement is concerned. There is a philosophical difference about enforcement that exists across the parties. The RNC has taken a hardline approach, enforcing its penalties directly at the convention. Break the rules, lose the delegates. The DNC approach is less severe and may hamper even a more severe penalty if enacted.

Assume for a moment that the Rules and Bylaws Committee recommends to the DNC a penalty similar to the RNC super penalty. While the RNC would strip a state delegation down to twelve or fewer delegates (depending on the size of the state) at the convention, the DNC would not.⁵ The DNC views this as a penalty for the primary phase of the campaign. The party sees the damage as having been done if the penalty merely affects the delegate count in real time during primary season. The assumption is that by the end of the process, the party will have settled on and lined up behind one candidate and the delegate count is a non-issue at the convention and reducing delegations only serves to hurt those who are working hardest on the state level. In truth, history is on their side despite the quadrennial rush of brokered convention stories in the news. Still, such a view does potentially lend itself to festering conflict between two presidential aspirants. The type that would not necessarily bode well for the party overall.⁶ The delegate issue would not be closed until the convention if it is unsettled.

But again, the invisible primary phase the 2016 cycle is currently in and the primary season itself typically resolve those matters. Regardless, there are a couple of fairly significant matters the RNC has given the DNC to think about now that it has settled on its delegate selection rules. Such is and has been the give and take between the two national parties over the presidential nomination process over time.

Now it is the DNC's turn.

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¹ The short version of this is that the Democrats had for 1972 made the votes in state-level contests -- whether primaries or caucuses -- binding on the delegates who would attend the national convention. Rather than determinative decisions being made at the convention, the action shifted to the newly empowered delegate selection process. That initiated a period of learning for the candidates, states (state parties and/or state governments) and the national parties themselves.

² Even 1988 was the product of several cycles of movement. Alabama, Florida and Georgia had concurrent primaries in early March 1980, and four years later in 1984, a handful of late primary states adopted a caucus/convention format and moved into various points in March (see Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Oklahoma).

³ This is mostly due to the fact that the Democrats did not have a stake in the nomination season. The party was nominating a sitting president with no serious opposition.

⁴ FHQ will have more in clarification on this March point in a future post.

⁵ Now granted, the Republican nominee and his or her campaign has some say in this as well. That campaign will control the convention and the delegates ultimately seated, but the RNC has enforced those penalties at the convention the last two cycles. They got creative with it in 2008, allowing all the delegates to be seated but with half the voting privileges. In 2012, the affected delegations were reduced by half as called for by the rules.

⁶ Yes, this may be a complete dead end point if Hillary Clinton both decides to run for and coasts to the Democratic nomination. But bear with me on the point about the difference in philosophy.

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Snapshots of Reactions to RNC Rules Changes from Around the Country

FHQ's inbox has filled up with news on the RNC rules changes over the last few days. Here are a few of the state-level reactions to the alterations:

California needs and will have an automatic waiver from the RNC if the Golden state primary stays in June.

Michigan looks to be staring down some stiff penalties without moving its February primary.

The gamble in Alabama is whether the state will matter on the second Tuesday in March. The Alabama Republican Party thinks it will.

As soon as North Carolina anchored its primary to South Carolina's in August, the talk shifted to moving it back. North Carolina Republican National Committeeman, Dave Lewis, says that is likely to happen in May.

South Carolina's safe.

FHQ will add more reactions as they are available.

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