After adjourning the regular session last Friday, the Washington state legislature was back at work on Wednesday, April 29, starting a special session mainly focused on lingering budget differences between the divided chambers.
But one other unresolved issue -- among others -- that has some potential impact on the budget for fiscal year 2016 is whether the state will conduct a presidential primary. State Democrats have already committed to a caucuses/convention system for 2016. The question now is whether (and when) Washington will hold a presidential primary in 2016 and whether it is worth the $11.5 million price tag to hold a partially meaningful primary just for Republicans.1 The Republican-controlled state Senate provided the first move on the matter on the opening day of the special session, passing SB 5978 again -- by a vote of 31-13 -- and sending it back to the Democratic-controlled House for the lower chamber's consideration.
As was the case during the original Senate passage of SB 5978, there were a handful of Democrats who voted with Senate Republicans to hold a presidential primary in 2016 and schedule it for the second Tuesday in March (March 8). But the bigger issue now before the legislature is the budget and the $11.5 million for the presidential primary may serve as a bargaining chip, albeit small in the grand scheme of the budget, as that gets sorted out.
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1 Washington Republicans in the past have split their delegate allocation nearly evening between the primary (when there is one) and caucuses.
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