California Primary Moves to February

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California signed a bill yesterday that moves the state’s primary election to February. So, along with 7 other states (and as many as 15 more to come), California will elect delegates to the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions on February 5, 2008. More states moving to the same Tuesday would blunt the effectiveness of California’s change, but by moving its primary, California may have changed the way America nominates its candidates.

By custom, the first electoral contest is the Iowa Caucuses, an absolutely ridiculous way to begin. First of all, Iowa is rural, farm country and largely white. The locals are rightly concerned about farm subsidies but have little interest in issues of urban development or inner city youth. Moreover, the caucus system is a cumbersome beast that is unlovable at best, and unfathomable at worst, (but this piece kind of explains). Think of a single transferable vote that one must act out in a neighbor’s living room and one has a fair idea of the process.

After Iowa comes New Hampshire, a state that is less arable but hardly more urban. As for the racial mix, it has a slightly darker complexion (off white, rather than white). Mercifully, the folks in the Granite State have a primary election rather than the caucus system. Nonetheless, it is insane to pretend that the electoral result in such a place correlates at all with the interests of an ethnically and religiously divided continental nation.

What particularly annoys is the “retail politics” that the residents of these two states believe is their birthright. They actually expect to talk face to face with the candidates at various fora before making up their minds. While this might be an effective way to select an MP in the Midlands in the 19th century, it doesn’t select for the traits needed to rally the nation to action. Loads of people who are great in person fail on TV and in the press, but unless and until the president can explain his or her policies to everybody at the local coffee shop, it makes no sense to set that as a test.

California isn’t representative of the rest of the country either – it lacks a white majority, it has a much bigger transportation problem, and it sets rather than follows cultural trends. Until now, candidates went to California for fundraisers and spent that money in Des Moines and Concord. Along with New York and Texas, it was a big ATM for politicians. Now, the process is heavily weighted toward the early states including California. This creates its own set of problems, but at least the previous, untenable arrangement is gone.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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