Dems Senators Take Aim at Primary Calendar

ABC News’ Z. Byron Wolf Reports: The game of backwards hopscotch that has beset the presidential primary system this year and threatens to upend the proverbial political apple cart has got to stop. On that, there seems to be agreement.

The national Democratic party got tough last month when it decided to give the worst offenders — Florida and Michigan, which have set their primary dates at January 29th and January 15th, respectively — 30 days to move their primary dates to later in 2008.  The problem from the national party’s perspective is that if Iowa and New Hampshire, the traditionally early primary and caucus states, were to respond to Florida and Michigan, the first votes in the 2008 election could come in 2007. Florida and Michigan, after all, already have great importance in the general election as battleground states.

The calendar war is creating strife in the Democratic party as Democratic candidates may have to skip primaries in important battlegrounds like Florida and Michigan to fall in line with the Democratic National Committee sanctions. Republican candidates won’t have those restrictions. More on that HERE.

Democratic senators from Florida and Michigan have shot right back to their national party and proposed legislation to fundamentally change the presidential primary system. Time out, they say; it is time to change the whole system.

Instead of the piecemeal, state’s rights version of a primary system, where each state decides for themselves when their primary will be, Democrats Bill Nelson of Florida and Carl Levin of Michigan (reminder, their states are the two big offenders in the primary calendar showdown) have introduced legislation that would create a rolling, structured primary system with staggered primary dates. The early primaries would be held in different states each cycle, one state from each region would have the early primary and those states would change each time. Companion legislation is being introduced in the House of Representatives by Levin’s brother, Democratic Rep. Sander Levin also of Michigan.

Nelson said that the decision by the national party to boycott the Florida party essentially disenfranchises Floridians. And voter disenfranchisement is still a touchy subject in Florida after the 2000 presidential election. "To have that ballot count and to have that ballot count as intended is paramount and is highly sensitive in the state of Florida," Nelson said Thursday on the Senate floor, adding if the national party doesn’t rethink its decision, "legal action may be necessary."

"It’s a case of fundamental rights versus the rules of a political party," Nelson said.

He said that  fundamental change of the system could be in place by the 2012 election and argued it would be "rational rather than chaotic."

All 50 states (except for South Dakota) seem to want their primaries to come first. Big states like Florida and Michigan keep moving their primary dates up in an effort to raise their political stock and give their voters more say in who the major parties select as their candidates. The small, some would say quirky, places like New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina that traditionally hold their votes months before other states, were supposed to force candidates to sell themselves in a more personal setting to a smaller number of discerning voters. But, voters in the big states complain that they are then stuck with whoever the quirky voters in the small states fancy.

It remains to be seen if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will give his fellow Democrats Levin and Nelson a vote on their proposal. Reid’s home state of Nevada helped start the rush to the front of the primary calendar when the Democratic party signed off over a year ago on a plan to move the Nevada’s caucus closer to Iowa’s and bring a Western state into the early mix.