roundup of big state primary calendar news

[Mr. Morden]

The relevant committee in the Texas House of Reps has passed a bill that moves TX's primary to Feb. 5th:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8O5FGTG2.html

The bill still must be passed by the full House and Senate, then signed by Gov. Perry, but it sounds like it has bipartisan support.

The IL House of Reps passed a bill that would move IL's primary to Feb. 5th by a vote of 110-4:

http://www.lincolncourier.com/story.asp?SID=5398&SEC=8

It now moves to the Senate, where "Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, "supports the concept.""

The Michigan GOP is considering holding their primary as early as Jan. 29th:

link

MI Dems have their primary tentatively scheduled for Feb. 9th, but could join the GOP in going pre-Feb. 5th if other states (more than just IA/NV/NH/SC) go pre-Feb. 5th as well.

So, to sum up the current state of affairs among the 8 largest states:

CA Has already moved their primary to Feb. 5th.

TX Bill that moves primary to Feb. 5th has passed House committee.  Still needs to pass full House, Senate, and Gov's signature.  But it looks like that will probably happen.

NY Bill that moves primary to Feb. 5th has passed both houses of legislature, but I don't think Spitzer has signed it yet.  But he's promised to sign it, so it looks like it'll happen.

FL House has passed bill that sets the primary for seven days after NH primary.  (NH primary is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 22nd, so 7 days later is the 29th.)  Senate is considering a variety of proposals that would set it for some time in Feb., with no specific date decided yet.  It's unclear how the two houses will reconcile.

IL House has passed a bill moving primary to Feb. 5th.  Still needs to pass the Senate and get signed by Gov., but that looks likely.

PA There have been hearings on the subject of moving the primary to Feb. 5th.  Rendell supports the idea, but it sounds like some Republicans are skeptical.  And the GOP controls the Senate, so one would need some GOP support in order to do anything.

OH The one big state that apparently has no interest in moving their primary up to Feb. or earlier.

MI The two parties set their own primary dates, which don't have to be on the same day.  It sounds like the GOP may go pre-Feb. 5th, perhaps as early as Jan. 29th.  The Dems are tentatively scheduled for Feb. 9th, but may move up to Feb. 5th or earlier, especially of other big states (like Florida) move to pre-Feb. 5th as well.

[Mr. Morden]

Kucinich apparently wanted Ohio to move up its primary, but no one in the state legislature was interested.

[Mr. Morden]

What about Georgia and North Carolina? I know New Jersey has a bill that's at similar progression to Texas's (bipartisan, passed in Assembly), but are they moving their primaries forward, too?

I know that in both GA and NC, a bill exists that would move the primary up to Feb. 5th, but I haven't seen any news stories on the status of either of them for a while, so I don't know what's going on.  According to this site:

http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2008/chrnothp08.html

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[Mr. Morden]

NJ has now officially moved their primary up to Feb. 5th.  Corzine just signed the bill:

link

That makes NJ the second most populous state to be holding a Feb. 5th primary as of right now.  But as the first post in this thread makes clear, there are several larger states that will soon be joining it.

[Mr. Morden]

NY Gov. Spitzer has now signed the bill that moves NY's primary to Feb. 5th:

link

New York has now officially joined California, New Jersey, and a slew of other states in holding Feb. 5th primaries.  Still waiting to see what happens with other big states like TX, FL, IL, and PA.

[Mr. Morden]

The Texas House has approved the legislation that would move Texas's primary to Feb. 5th, thus moving the state one step closer to joining CA and NY on that day:

link

Of course, it still needs to be approved by the senate and the governor before it becomes law.

[Mr. Morden]

Not sure if that map is 100% accurate.  For example, both TX and IL are in exactly the same boat right now.  Both could be said to be "thinking about moving to Feb. 5", as legislation to move the primary to that day has been passed in the state house, but not yet acted on in the senate.  So why are they shaded differently?

Anyway, the latest development is that the Michigan GOP has voted to hold their primary on Feb. 5th:

http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070415/NEWS81/104150118

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As mentioned earlier in this thread...in MI, each party sets their own primary date.  They have now set up tentative dates of Feb. 5th for the GOP and Feb. 9th for the Dems.  But either party could still change their mind.  In particular, if FL moves to pre-Feb. 5th, then there's a good chance that both parties in MI will figure "Well, if other big states are ignoring the national party rules, we might as well do so too, and they'll go pre-Feb. 5th as well.

So the state to watch right now is Florida, Florida, Florida.  If they end up scheduling their primary on or after Feb. 5th, then I don't see any further big shakeups in the schedule.  NH may even stick with Jan. 22nd, even though it's after NV, as NV isn't getting a huge amount of attention right now anyway.

But if Florida moves to Jan. 29th, then both parties in Michigan will likely move up their primaries to pre-Feb. 5th as well.  And the SC GOP will probably move up their primary to earlier than Florida's, so as to preserve their first in the South status, which will probably prompt NH to move up their primary even further, so that it's not so close to SC's primary, which will prompt FL to move up their primary further, etc., etc.  There'll be this bidding war that will probably end up with the NH primary taking place in December, and several other states voting in January ahead of Feb. 5th.

[Mr. Morden]

Latest development: The relevant Florida Senate committee has voted to approve the provision already passed by the House that would move FL's primary to one week after the NH primary, in violation of DNC and RNC rules:

http://www.miamiherald.com/569/story/77884.html

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This obviously makes it more likely that the Jan. 29th primary will be approved by both houses and signed by Crist.  As I speculated upthread, if such a large, influential state ends up ignoring the national party rules wrt the primary scheduling, that will make it very likely that there will be a bidding war between several states (most likely IA, NH, SC, FL, and MI) to keep moving their primary or caucus earlier and earlier.  We will probably end up with IA and NH voting in December, and several other states voting in January.

As a sidenote, I've seen a couple news stories about local officials in PA being unhappy with the effort to move up the primary there to Feb. 5th, because of the timing of the other races that are typically scheduled to coincide with the primary.  It definitely looks like an early primary in PA is less likely than an early primary in FL, TX, or IL.

[Mr. Morden]

By the way, some backfill on the effort to move Florida's primary to pre-Feb. 5th:

Back in late 2006, when Giuliani was not quite as strong in the polls as he is now, and there were still doubts in some quarters about whether he'd actually run, there were rumors that McCain's people were hoping that SC would be the only state to vote in between NH and Feb. 5th, while Romney's people were pulling for earlier primaries in both FL and MI.  The thinking being that, at least at that time, McCain was stronger in SC than basically anywhere else, whereas in FL, Romney had signed up many of Jeb Bush's people, and in MI, Romney had the whole "I'm the son of the former governor" thing going.

Now that Giuliani is running strong, and there's the prospect of Fred Thompson entering the race, the thinking of the campaigns might be different, but that's apparently what the campaigns were thinking a few months ago.

[Mr. Morden]

This obviously makes it more likely that the Jan. 29th primary will be approved by both houses and signed by Crist.  As I speculated upthread, if such a large, influential state ends up ignoring the national party rules wrt the primary scheduling ...

How exactly does a Jan. 29 primary in Florida and Michigan violate DNC and RNC rules ? The 2 states appear to hold their primaries together with SC and all other traditionial primaries/caucuses set by the DNC/RNC are before FL and MI. Can anyone help me out ?

The DNC rules allow IA, NV, NH, and SC to hold their primaries in January.  But they explicitly prohibit any other states from holding their primaries before Feb. 5th.  The DNC could theoretically block all of the delegates from any offending state from participating in the convention, which would mean that any primaries held outside of the window allowed by the DNC would have only symbolic significance.  They wouldn't really count towards winning the nomination.

I wasn't being very precise when I said that this would violate the RNC rules as well.  The RNC has the same primary window which begins on Feb. 5th (but they actually have *no* exception for IA/NV/NH/SC).  However, states can still hold their primaries before the window starts.  They just lose half of their delegates if they do so.  IA, NH, and SC are going to do this, and suffer the hit in the number of delegates they have.  (And it looks like NV Republicans may join NV Democrats in doing that as well.)  So it's not really against the RNC rules.  You just lose a lot of delegates by doing so.

[Mr. Morden]

The full Florida Senate has approved the "one week after New Hampshire" plan for the primary:

http://www.local6.com/news/13211539/detail.html

but it now has to be repassed by the House, because of the Senate's amendments.  Still, it looks pretty likely that we will have a Florida primary in January.

[Mr. Morden]

Update from Florida: Howard Dean says he's serious about enforcing the party rules, prompting Florida Dems to consider holding a caucus that's separate from the Jan. 29th primary:

http://www.miamiherald.com/458/story/93299.html

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[Mr. Morden]

The Florida House has now passed the Senate version of the bill, sending it to Gov. Christ, who is expected to sign it:

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=6465245&nav=4QcS

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So it now looks like a certainty that FL will hold its primary before Feb. 5th, which means that any Democratic candidate who campaigns there will not be awarded any of their FL delegates, which means that the FL Dems may schedule a separate caucus for Feb. 5th or later.

It's also pretty likely that the SC GOP will now move up their primary to earlier than Jan. 29th, which means that there's a good chance that the NH primary will move up as well, and we'll have a giant bidding war that will end up with some primaries being held in December of this year.

[Mr. Morden]

Fresh news out of Texas.  According to this:

link

The Texas Senate is unlikely to pass anything resembling the House bill that moves the primary up from March to February 5th.  That's because of rules imposed by the Texas constitution that would effectively prevent any officeholder in Texas from filing papers to run for another office more than a year before their current term expires.  If the primary is moved up to February, they would have to file more than a year before their term is up.  Not sure if the House was unaware of this rule, or if they just don't care.

The only way out is for them to split up the presidential primary from the primary for other offices, which would cost more $, and would also require them to start from scratch legislatively.  Not sure what the odds of that happening are.

Back to Florida--according to this:

On the subject of the Florida Dems using the Jan. 29th primary as a "beauty contest", with the actual delegates selected in caucuses, this article:

link

says that one date for Dem. FL caucuses that's been floated is Feb. 12th.

And according to this:

link

the SC GOP is likely to move up their primary to before Florida's, while the SC Dems will likely stay where they are on Jan. 29th.  I've read elsewhere that something similar will probably happen in MI.  The GOP will probably move up their primary to some time before Feb. 5th, while the Dems will stick with Feb. 9th.

Thus, we could be looking at two very different primary schedules for the two parties:

The Dems with just four small states holding primaries / caucuses before Feb. 5th, with all the big states waiting until Feb. 5th or later (and a non-binding election in FL on Jan. 29th that doesn't count for anything).

The GOP with those same small states voting before Feb. 5th, but FL and MI also voting before Feb. 5th.

[Mr. Morden]

Sorry, but what's a "reading"?  I'm not up on legislative lingo.

If IL does move up to Feb. 5th and TX doesn't, then Feb. 5th will be dominated by three largely Democratic states: CA, NY, and IL.  In fact for the Dems, it looks like we may have CA, NY, IL, and NJ voting on Feb. 5th, with other big states like TX, FL (at least, the vote that counts towards delegates), PA, OH, and MI all voting later.  One would think that Clinton would be the heavy favorite in NY and NJ, while Obama would be the heavy favorite in IL, setting up CA as the biggest battleground by far.  (Though of course, with the Dems' proportional system for allocating delegates, the margin of victory in places like NY and IL can matter a great deal!)

[Mr. Morden]

Actually, the SC GOP primary is currently scheduled for Saturday, February 2 which I believe keeps in within the acceptable GOP window.  The parties run their own primaries in this state, so they don't have to both be on the same date and don't require any change in the law to be moved up.  I fully expect that the SC GOP primary will move up a week to Saturday January 26 now, but they'll wait a bit to see if any other state might muscle in on their date.

I think I heard that the FL bill actually says that the FL primary will be "seven days after the NH primary, but no earlier than the first Tuesday following Jan. 1st".  (The original House bill said something like that, but the amended version might be different.)  If that's the case, then the likely scenario is that the SC GOP moves up to Jan. 26th, then NH feels threatened by the encroachment of both NV and SC, so they move up to Jan. 15th, which moves FL to Jan. 22nd.  Then the SC GOP has to move up to the 19th in order to still be ahead of FL, which prompts NH to move up to Jan. 8th, which moves FL to Jan. 15th....etc.  Final scenario: NH primary in December.  SC GOP primary on Jan. 5th.  FL primary on Jan. 8th.  It could happen.

[Mr. Morden]

It's also starting to look like "Super Duper Tuesday" might not be quite as "Super Duper" as we thought.  I mean, yes, it'll be bigger than any previous Super Tuesday, but probably not with over half the country voting on that one day, as it looks like TX, FL, PA, OH, and MI could all end up voting on some day other than Feb. 5th.

In 2000,  we already had a Super Tuesday (at that point in the first week of March) in which CA, NY, OH, and more than 10 other states voted on the same day.  Feb. 5th, 2008 will be bigger than that, but maybe not *that* much bigger, given the way things are trending.

[Mr. Morden]

OK, despite the filing deadline problems that I mentioned yesterday, the relevant committee in the TX Senate has passed the bill that moves the state primary to Feb. 5th anyway:

http://www.kten.com/Global/story.asp?S=6487979

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So it looks like TX may be on track to move their primary to Feb. 5th after all.  "Super Duper Tuesday" now starting to look a bit more "Super Duper".

[Mr. Morden]

Regarding Texas, it sounds like the full Senate will take up the Feb. 5th primary bill within a week or two.  And back to Florida: I still haven't heard anything about Crist signing the bill, though he's promised to do so.  Also, I may have been wrong in assuming that the FL bill moves the primary to one week after NH but no earlier than the first week of January.  That's what the original House version of the bill said.  But it sounds like the version that passed may have just pegged the primary to the last Tuesday in January.  Thus, NH might not move their primary all the way back to December.  They might just move it up a week or two earlier in January.

[Mr. Morden]

Crist has signed the bill that moves Florida's primary to January 29th:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/21/ap3742486.html

So it's official.  Florida will hold its primary on Jan. 29th, though there are still some questions about whether the Democratic primary in the state will count for anything.

Summary of where things stand in the eight largest states:

CA & NY Have both officially moved their primaries to Feb. 5th.

TX A bill that would move the primary to Feb. 5th has passed the House, and passed the relevant committee in the Senate, but still awaits a vote in the full Senate and the governor's signature.

FL Has officially moved its primary to Jan. 29th, and the GOP primary on that day will definitely count towards awarding FL's delegates (though the number of delegates the state gets will be reduced due to its early primary).  The DNC's sanctions against early primaries are so severe, however, that there is talk of having the Dem. Jan. 29th primary being nonbinding, with the binding vote being held at caucuses to be held on Feb. 5th or later....possibly Feb. 12th.

IL A bill that would move the primary to Feb. 5th has passed both houses of the legislature, and is expected to be signed by the governor....though he hasn't done so yet.

PA There have been hearings on the subject of moving the primary to Feb. 5th.  However, the effort doesn't appear to be going anywhere, as far as I can tell.

OH Ohioans still don't appear to have any interest in moving up their primary to February or earlier.

MI Tentative primary dates are Feb. 5th for the GOP and Feb. 9th for the Dems, though the two parties have had discussions about holding a joint primary on the 5th.  However, with FL's move to Jan. 29th, there's a good chance that the MI GOP will also move their primary to some time pre-Feb. 5th as well.  And it's also looking like the Dems probably won't follow them, owing to those strict DNC sanctions for early primaries.

[Mr. Morden]

Thanks jimrtex.  It sounds like the early primary bill in TX is in pretty serious trouble.  You say that the last day of the legislative session is May 28th.  Is there another session later this year?  If this doesn't pass before then, is that the end of it, or could it be passed later in the year?

Anyway, here's a new news story on the troubled effort to move up the primary in TX:

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/05/22/22primary.html

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[Mr. Morden]

The Texas primary bill is being declared dead:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/4835047.html

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It would have driven down voter participation to hold the primary when the presidential nomination race was still contested, rather than in March, when it would likely already be over???

Anyway, this means that Super Duper Tuesday will not be as Super Duper as some previously expected.  CA, NY, and (almost certainly, though the bill hasn't been signed yet) IL will all vote on Feb. 5th, but FL, TX, and OH won't, and PA and MI probably won't either.  So it might not actually be that much bigger than the Super Tuesday of 2000 (which, back then, was held in the first week of March).

Also, as I previously speculated, it looks like the FL primary bill that ended up being passed did *not* peg the FL primary date to NH, it just set it for the last Tuesday of January, regardless of when NH votes:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0507/4169.html

Thus it looks unlikely that NH will move its primary to December.  If they move it up, it'll probably be to either January 8th or January 15th.  Not sure about Iowa though.  If NH moves to Jan. 8th, then I suppose Iowa might move to December.

[Mr. Morden]

Implications of this: I have to assume that the Giuliani people are pleased that Super Tuesday will be dominated by states like CA, NY, and IL rather than the Deep South.  On the Dem side, if by Super Tuesday it's come down to Clinton vs. Obama, then one would assume that Clinton would have a big advantage in NY (and maybe NJ as well?), while Obama would have a major advantage in IL.  Each of the two candidates would probably barely contest the race in the other's home state.  So CA will be the biggest battleground by a mile. 

[Mr. Morden]

According to this:

http://www.thepilot.com/stories/20070526/news/local/20070526Elections.html

it sounds like the chances are slim that the bill that will move up North Carolina's primary to Feb. 5th will pass.  It doesn't appear to be going anywhere.

On the flip side, Alaska (a big state in a different way), and Georgia have both moved up to Feb. 5th:

link

Gov. Perdue has signed the bill in GA that sets the primary for Feb. 5th, so it's a done deal.  Barring any surprise entrants to the Feb. 5th sweepstakes, GA will actually be the third biggest delegate prize on the GOP side for Feb. 5th (after CA and NY).  Both parties award delegates based largely on population, but there are bonuses for "party strength" in the state (having a governor of that party, having a large fraction of the state's congressional delegation being from that party, etc.), so GA actually has more GOP delegates than, say, IL, MI, or NJ.  If NY is a gimme for Giuliani, then GA would be the second biggest delegate prize among states that are actually contested by the GOP candidates on Feb. 5th.

For the Democrats, GA has fewer delegates than both NJ and (not yet officially a Feb. 5th state, but probably soon to be one) IL.  However, IL will probably be a gimme for Obama and NY for Clinton, so again, GA will be one of the biggest delegate prizes on the Dem. side that will actually be contested.

[Mr. Morden]

The Democratic Party of Florida has dropped the idea of holding a separate caucus to award the state's delegates.  They are adamant that the Jan. 29th primary should be what determines the allocation of delegates, but of course the national party rules disallow that:

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/11/State/State_Dems_lead_revol.shtml

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That quote about not disenfranchising the voters is ironic, considering that, with the primary on Jan. 29th, any candidate campaigning in FL will not be able to win any of the delegates, so if all the major candidates campaign there anyway, the vote will be meaningless.  If that's not disenfranchisement, I don't know what is.