Get Ready for a Wild Race to the Top of the Ticket

March 15, 2007 — -- California's decision to join many other states by moving its 2008 presidential primary to Feb. 5 is only the latest sign that the two major American political parties will have nomination processes that are sure to be wild, crazy, and unpredictable.

Although many states have not yet decided when their voters will cast ballots in primaries and caucuses next year, it now appears inevitable that the first week of February will see a huge number of delegates selected. Many of these states, including several large ones such as California, have felt frustrated in past presidential years, since their election days later in the year have taken place long after both parties' de facto nominees have been selected.

More than 20 ostates have moved or are discussing moving their presidential primaries to Feb. 5 next year California, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey.

But even mega-states like California, with huge numbers of delegates to be awarded in both parties, might still be bystanders in the process next year. That is because almost all of the leading Republican and Democratic candidates are following tradition by putting the bulk of their attention in the states that plan to vote before Feb. 5, including Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and (for the Democrats) Nevada.

Frontrunninig candidates, such as John McCain, R-Ariz., Mitt Romney, R-Mass., Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Barack Obama, D-Ill., and John Edwards, D-N.C., are aware that they cannot afford to hit a speed bump in these early states and they plan to give them a disproportionate amount of attention all year. Only the campaign of former New York City Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani among the leading candidates has made noises about de-emphasizing the states that plan to vote before Feb. 5.

And the underdog candidates are also focusing on the earliest states, since their retail politics and greater local press attention make them more hospitable territory for the underfunded aspirants than the coast-to-coast effort that will be required on Feb. 5. Most everyone agrees that an early win or wins will provide the victors with slingshot momentum on Feb. 5 and likely beyond.

Candidates in both categories believe that the national media, whose influence is never greater than when it is declaring the "meaning" of win, place, and show in the series of caucuses and primaries that leads to the parties' nominating conventions, is going to give the usual extra weight to the first four states, and the candidates are acting accordingly.

Still, there has been much speculation from the aforementioned media about what impact the mass clustering of states on Feb. 5 will have. Among the theories: the move will produce de facto nominees earlier than in the past; the move will be advantageous to the rich candidates; the move will disenfranchise voters; and the move will make the campaign process more superficial.

The fact that all these statements are either definitely wrong or probably wrong has done nothing to lessen the frenzied sense of chaos that all the calendar changes are causing among those insiders who are paying attention to the presidential process now. In fact, such speculation has served to whip many into even more of a panic.

To complicate matters further, the political establishment in New Hampshire is so threatened by the encroachment of other states that the state's secretary of state might choose to exercise the state's unique law and set their primary date with just weeks' or days' notice, in early January or even late 2007. That means that California is not the last piece on the chess board to move in the complicated match to set the rules of this very serious game.