Anuzis-Dingell: The Future Of The Primaries?

Two political stalwarts, one Republican and one Democrat, both frustrated with the primary system as it stands, are tag-teaming the national parties this week with a plan to create a series of regional primaries ahead of the 2012.

Saul Anuzis is the chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Debbie Dingell is a Democratic National Committee member from Michigan and the spouse of Rep. John Dingell.

Their plan:

"....would divide up states into six regions. There would be six sub-regions set up in each region, designating a representative cross section of America. The national parties would then set six distinct dates for when contests would be held. A lottery would determine the dates each designated sub-region could hold a presidential primary or caucus and no one region could be selected to go first for two consecutive presidential cycles, eliminating incentives for states to break the rules."

Both Anuzis and Dingell will present the plan to their respective parties this week. Dingell's plan faces opposition off the bat and will rub some in the party the wrong way. But there is bound to be some sort of rules committee fracas over the calendar at the Democratic national convention, and the Anuzis-Dingell proposal might be seen as a launching pad for more discussion.

Anuzis's success or failure may well be determined by whether the next GOP nominee and his designated RNC chair are keen on the plan.

Comments

The National Association of Secretaries of State has had a similar proposal since 2000. It's major difference is that it preserves the role of New Hampshire and Iowa.

http://nass.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=74&Itemid=210

Since they're the ones running the elections, it's always surprised me that plan doesn't have more traction.

Whatever you think of IA and NH staying up front - the more spread out the primaries are overall, the less influence the first states will have. For instance, in 2004, John Edwards got some momentum coming out of SC, but didn't have enough time to capitalize on it, and the nomination went to John Kerry.

It's pretty simple: the more time someone has to recover from a loss in an early state, the less influence that state will have over the whole process.

Posted by Tom | December 10, 2007 5:29 PM

I like it!

The six-region Dingell-Anuzis proposal is probably better than the five-region NASS proposal. But there's still nothing wrong with having IA and NH go early so long as there's enough time afterwards for candidates to regroup.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | December 10, 2007 5:57 PM

This is fine, except:

1) You have to have some effective way to penalize states that break the rules and schedule their primaries outside the date that was chosen for them. Otherwise, there's nothing to stop them from just going ahead and scheduling their primaries for whenever they feel like it.

2) The trend in recent nomination fights has been that, as soon as you have the first big multi-state primary day, one of the candidates sweeps most of the primaries on that day, and their momentum becomes unstoppable. I don't see why that still wouldn't hold in the 6-region plan. Meaning that, whoever wins the first region to vote would likely build up a huge amount of momentum that would be hard for the other candidates to stop. Do we really want a situation in which the South picks our nominees one year, the Midwest does it 4 years later, the Northeast 4 years later, etc.? Would it bet better for the groupings to be random rather than regional?

Posted by Chris S. | December 10, 2007 7:34 PM

Since 1888 Democrats have been playing politics with the election process. If the goal is to allow big states to have an influence over the process commensurate with their influence in the party have a national primary. But that's not the goal, is it? The goal is to have a process for choosing a candidate that allows for some amount of retail politics in different parts of the country. The only thing topsy turvy about the process this year was that each state decided that it ought to be that state--without really making the argument for why it was better them than iowa. Is anyone complaining about Wyoming, or Maine? No because no one thinks those states can influence the outcome. Under the false flag of a "fairer process" michigan and florida (this time, I am sure someone else will jump the gun next time) are calling for a regional primary, when all they really want is their candidate in the whitehouse. If you wanted a truly fair process you would either a.) have all the states go on the same day or b.) have a progressive graduated process where the state with the fewest party members from the last presidential election and the fewest delegates would go first followed by the next largest states and culminating with the biggest states california for the dems texas for the republicans. But I don't think a system that is fair to the voters is the goal of this or any other party sponsored reform, after all mr. 50 states Dean himself pulled the plug on N.C.'s plan for electoral reform because he wasn't sure how well it would work out for his party.

Posted by JC | December 11, 2007 12:41 AM

"The six-region Dingell-Anuzis proposal is probably better than the five-region NASS proposal. But there's still nothing wrong with having IA and NH go early so long as there's enough time afterwards for candidates to regroup."

Not just IA and NH.

I really like the Dean reforms of including NV and SC among the early states to include racial and geographical diversity.

Keep those 4 early states, and then I'm fine with a series of regional primaries.

But no matter how things get set-up, there absolutely needs to be a set of small states going first to provide an off-broadway tryout before the crush of mass delegation occurs. Otherwise, celebrity and big money candidacies are assured success.

Posted by Petey | December 11, 2007 7:11 AM

As I've said many, many times, we should reward and incentivize good electoral behavior. The state with the highest per capita voting in the general election should get to go first.

It was Minnesota in 2004, but Iowa is top 5 and New Hampshire is top 10, so they are close enough that they could retain their traditional positions with a big push to GOTV in the general election.

This would also bring state government together in a bipartisan way to achieve higher rates of voter participation, which would be beneficial to the state b/c they would get to put their pet issues in front of the candidates, as well as benefit personally as they are sought out for their endorsements.

One problem is that the states with the higher per capita voting tend to be northern, more rural, and whiter than average, but all of the other systems have serious problems as well. Some overlay of this system could also be used after IA and NH or after IA, NH, SC, and NV.

The parties should make strict delegate rules for 2008 in order to both push back the calendar and spread out the schedule. I'd say end the primaries in the first week of May, six months before the election. Start the primaries 3 months before that in the first week of February and spread things out more evenly. 3 months for the primaries and 6 months for the general election is plenty of time for the campaign.

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