clair017

This is part one in a series of posts about 2017 legislation seeking to alter state laws concerning the timing of presidential primary elections or caucuses.  A careful reading of the set up post to this piece is revealing of an omission to the group of states that made caucus-to-primary shifts in 2016. While Maine and Minnesota took more conventional routes -- passing legislation establishing presidential primary elections to replace caucuses -- Colorado voters took an atypical path in the state's switch to a presidential primary for the 2020 cycle. And it is not that Colorado legislators had not tried to make the change. Efforts in both 2015 and 2016 languished in the committees to which they were referred and died when their respective sessions adjourned. In addition, the 2016 bill was introduced with the 2016 caucuses process in the Centennial state as the backdrop. That " debacle " featured a state Democratic party overwhelmed by a large turnout (and other subs...

With state legislatures across the country at various stages of winding down their work for 2017, FHQ should do what it should have done at the outset of those bodies convening earlier this year. Mainly, that means putting together an outlook of what one might anticipate with respect to their efforts at scheduling or repositioning presidential primary elections for the 2020 cycle. Consider this -- even retrospectively -- as a set of guidelines. First, one does tend to see more action in odd numbered years. However, the year after a presidential election is usually a period when the urgency to shift the dates of presidential nomination contests is, if not at its nadir, then quite low compared to other windows of time. There may be some lingering sentiment to reorder the primary calendar in the time immediately after a presidential election cycle among constituents and legislators alike -- when the most recently completed presidential nomination process is still fresh on the minds of bo...

Recently, in a couple of posts about the possibility of California shifting up the date of its next presidential primary, FHQ mentioned that any move in the Golden state alters the delegate allocation calculus. And that is true. Any time a state worth approximately ten percent of the total number of delegates uproots its primary and moves it to another spot on the calendar, that has implications for how candidates and campaigns approach the primary phase of the presidential nomination process. Moreover, I went on to note that these decisions -- and especially one out of such a delegate-rich state as California -- do not happen in a vacuum. Other states, or rather political actors in them, take notice. Again, if past is a guide, then California changes cause other states to reconsider their positions on the calendar. But past is not always prologue. And that prompted James Pindell of the Boston Globe to ask a variation of the title question in an email exchange we had last week. Is fr...

The Democratic National Committee continued its path toward developing the rules that will govern 2020 presidential nomination process. And if you came looking for fireworks on day one of the Unity Reform Commission (URC), you left disappointed. The group convened for the first time on Friday, picking up where the Rules Committee at the Democratic National Convention that chartered the committee left off. This meeting, and likely part two tomorrow, will not be about setting any rules. Instead, the atmosphere among the 21 members -- minus two today -- was cordial. It was, after all, more of a preliminary meeting than anything else. The usual suspects came up in presentations and subsequent discussions about the legal parameters of the nomination process and the history and evolution of the rules. There was a smattering of complaints about the privileged positions of Iowa and New Hampshire and the timing of delegate selection events generally, chatter about devising best practices for c...

It looks that way. The question that remains after competing bills passed each house in the state legislature on May 4 is exactly where in March the primary ends up in 2020. The Assembly bill -- AB 84 -- is the more straightforward of the two. It shifts a consolidated California primary back into the first Tuesday (after the first Monday) in March position the Golden state primary occupied during the 2000 and 2004 cycles. Alternatively, the Senate version -- SB 568 -- is a bit more complex. On the surface, it stakes out a less ambitious, third Tuesday in March spot on the calendar. However, it also gives the California governor the option of bumping the primary up to an even earlier position. Now, given current national party timing penalties on presidential primaries, anything earlier than the first Tuesday in March is a non-starter . That gubernatorial power is rendered mostly powerless; except granting the executive branch the ability to move the primary up as early as the date...