Proposed Rules Would Strengthen Democratic Primary Process
Special to Roll Call
As the 2008 presidential nomination season approaches, the Democratic Party has undertaken its most significant rules revisions since the Hunt Commission of 1981-82.
Former Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman and I were asked by outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe to co-chair a 40-member Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling. Our commission finished its work on Dec. 10, and on March 11, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee adopted our recommendations as a framework.
Our recommendations will enable a larger and more diverse group of citizens to be involved in choosing our nominee. It also will pace the process more evenly and help us choose the strongest possible candidate.
These recommendations represent a delicate political balancing act, for we worked to accommodate legitimate values and goals that did not all point in the same direction. The commission’s agenda was considerably more narrow than those of the quadrennial commissions from McGovern through Hunt. Nonetheless, questions about scheduling and timing provided ample grist for five sessions and extensive discussions and negotiations throughout 2005.
Our commission made four key recommendations:
• Diversify the early season contests beyond Iowa and New Hampshire. These states will continue to hold the first caucuses and primary in the nation, respectively, but the DNC will authorize one or two caucuses to be held between Iowa and New Hampshire, plus one or two primaries between New Hampshire and the opening of the regular season (or “window”) on Feb. 5, 2008.
The early contests will remain few in number, scattered over a three-week period, probably in small states. In entertaining applications, the DNC’s Rules Committee will be guided by the criteria of racial, ethnic, regional and economic diversity.
There was a surprisingly close vote at the commission’s last meeting on eliminating the early season entirely. But most of our discussions reflected support for holding a few early exercises in retail politics, where candidates would visit in living rooms and church basements and not have to rely entirely on big money and big media. The focus was on augmenting rather than eliminating the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, thereby expanding the early vetting of candidates to include states and constituencies representative of the broader Democratic and national electorates.
• Alleviate “front-loading,” or the clustering of contests, early in the window period. This concentration, produced by the cumulative desires of states to find an early spot and thus heighten their influence, has increased markedly in recent cycles. The result: Almost everyone’s spot is devalued, and the party risks an early and precipitous rush to judgment.
The commission report exhorts the DNC to “make every effort” to schedule no more than five contests in any one week. However, recognizing the party’s lack of effective sanctions over 50 state legislatures and more than 100 state parties, the commission proposes a stair-step scheme of bonus delegates that is considerably more robust than the one Republicans previously employed with little discernable effect.
States agreeing to wait until mid-March will receive a bonus of 15 percent, with the bonuses increasing to a maximum of 40 percent for those waiting until May. The goal: a better-paced process, with greater capacity for second thought and self-correction.
• Recommend that Congress overhaul public financing as it applies to presidential primary contests. If the law’s parameters are not changed before 2008, all major candidates from both parties will likely opt out of the system, as President Bush, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D) and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) did in 2004, meaning that the gap between have and have-not candidates would widen to a chasm. Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled Congress is not disposed to take on this task.
• Begin efforts now to start the nomination process later for 2012. The commission recognized that the entire caucus and primary season begins at least two months too early. Because the Republicans established the Feb. 5, 2008, opening date at their 2004 convention, Democrats must work around that date for now. But our report urges the Democratic and Republican national chairmen to initiate a process well in advance of the 2008 conventions with the purpose of moving both the early season and the regular season considerably later for 2012 and beyond.
The commission’s recommendations strike a balance between mere tinkering and wholesale change. The results are not guaranteed; none of us has discovered how to repeal the “law of unintended consequences.” But the changes are likely to produce a more broadly based, participatory and orderly nomination process, and improve our chances of choosing a candidate who can win in November and gain an effective mandate to govern. They represent an advance, I believe, for both our party and our democracy.
Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) co-chaired the Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling.
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