Fast-forwarding US primaries Dasu Krishnamoorty

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California and New York are among the big states that have imparted strength to this movement to advance the date of the primaries to Feb.5. Naturally, that lends credence to the belief that the presidential nominations will be decided on Feb. 5 itself. "Moving up the primary from June to February gives California the influence it deserves in choosing the next presidential candidates," said state Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger after signing the law ordering the move. The Los Angeles Daily News supported this move saying, “California's decision to move up its presidential primary to February not only has the potential to increase the Golden State's political clout, but to substantially fatten corporate coffers. Presidential candidates and their media buyers are expected to pour millions of dollars into advertising.”

The Seattle Times said, “A Feb. 5 coast-to-coast mega primary puts a premium on candidates with well-known names, deep campaign treasuries and extensive organizations. That's an advantage for front-running candidates such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, both Democrats, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, both Republicans.” A February presidential primary election could cost as much as $90 million statewide, a hefty mandate that California's 58 counties expect the state legislature to fund, warned the Palo Alto Daily News.

Commending New York’s decision to jump the line, the New York Observer said, “Frankly, it’s more than a little absurd that citizens in places like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have been allowed to exercise so much power over the presidential nominating process. Sure, the voters in those states, particularly in New Hampshire, take their obligations very seriously. But they are hardly representative of the nation at large.” “It was a move designed to help its favorite political son and daughter - Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton - in the race for the White House,” said the Times-Herald Record. The New York Times, however, rubbished the move. It said, “The jockeying among states to have early presidential primaries next year has the nation's legislatures acting like schoolyard rowdies elbowing one another to get to the front of the line.”

Supporters of the early primaries maintain that voters in the earliest caucuses and primaries do not represent urban areas. As a result, the national campaign’s most decisive and crucial weeks are spent in earnest discussion of dairy policy and farm prices—important issues, no doubt, but hardly the main concerns of most twenty-first century American voters, they believe. Florida wants to move to an even earlier point to Jan.29 a week before Feb. 5 referred to as the super-duper Tuesday instead of the usual second Tuesday of March.

The governor and other law makers of the state, with the fourth largest population and Electoral College votes, think the state deserves greater influence in choosing nominees. This rush will mean that the presidential nominations for both parties can be sewn up three weeks after the process begins in the second week of January, nearly ten months before the presidential election in November 2008. As many as 19 states are now considering moving their primary elections up to Feb. 5.

The earlier belief was holding the primaries in the smaller states would help even a candidate with modest funds to take off. However, critics say it gives undue influence to Iowa and New Hampshire. But votaries of the old order cite the case of Bill Clinton who didn't have much of a following outside Arkansas, his home state, until later in the 1992 primary season. His campaign would have been crippled by a massive early primary process. They also fear that the time between the end of the primaries and the beginning of the presidential campaign is likely to be too long to sustain public interest because too many states are joining the stampede to be among the first to hold the primaries, jettisoning traditional schedules.

It is also going to be expensive. The Christian Science Monitor too is against the scramble. It wrote, “Tired of being overshadowed by early-birds Iowa and New Hampshire, as many as 23 states could advance their primaries to Feb. 5 so that they, too, can influence nominee selection. That broad public input is healthy, but it also has a huge downside. What voter wants to endure the nine long months of general campaigning that would follow?”

Pennsylvania too is planning to move ahead by more than a month because it wants to regain its 1970s’ early voice in primaries before other states moved up and eclipsed it. Illinois, with its favourite son Obama being a front-runner, also thinks an earlier primary will help him. George Will wrote in the Sun Herald, “With scant thought given to the national interest, particular states pursuing what they fancy is in their interest are propelling the nation into a delegate-selection process so compressed that it will resemble a national primary. These states may exacerbate what they consider a problem - the importance of early voting in small states.”

Experts think that no candidate will have enough of money or time to campaign intensely, in person or even on television, in perhaps 24 states across the continent in the 22 days between Iowa (Jan. 14) and Feb. 5.

The New York Times called for some discipline. It wrote, “What is needed here is a little order from the leaders of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Their job should be to maintain the primaries as a way for voters to take the real live measure of their candidates. Ideally, the national parties should press for regional primaries that rotate every presidential election year so the primary season is maintained, but voters in every state have a chance at some point to be first in the nation.”