The DNC Commission on the nominating calendar made its recommendation

[Debi]

on Saturday 12/10. With only New Hampshire's Commission members voting against the new calendar will start like this:

January 14th: Iowa Caucuses

January 22nd: Caucus in a western or southern swing state

January 29th: New Hampshire Primary

February 2nd: Caucus or primary in a western or southern swing state of the

region which wasn't represented on January 22nd."

February 5th: Regular primary season begins for all other states."


Iowa's Jerry Crawford and Roxanne Conlin call this a 'great victory for Iowa' Dave Nagle says it was a compromise that will come back to haunt Iowa and Governor Vilsack's presidential hopes (Vilsack couldn't make it to the meeting as he was speaking at the annual gathering of the Florida Democratic Party).

Needless to say New Hampshire Dems are pissed (and Nagle says that having five states go in rapid succession worsens the front-loading problem of 2004 and diminishes Iowa's stature in the calendar). His belief is that New Hampshire will move it's primary date up and Iowa will have to decide whether or not we will move with New Hampshire or start the process of falling behind other states.

What do you think?


On edit:

Although Crawford/Conlin voted against keeping the 20-some-odd Iowa/New Hampshire partnership alive (some would view it as stabbing New Hampshire in the back) that's not what Tom Vilsack is telling the New Hampshire press:

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?articleId=fdb308a2-4381-4858-b675-0d1b73966ae9

And although the panel has recommended that Iowa remain the nation’s first caucus state, Iowa Democrats are very sympathetic to New Hampshire’s cause, according to Jennifer Mullen of Gov. Thomas Vilsack’s office.

“We definitely see it as kind of a partnership,” she said. “The governor has rallied just as hard for New Hampshire to remain the first primary as he did to keep Iowa as the first caucus.”

[pstans]

1. It is good to see some Western and Southern states involved moer

Other than South Carolina, it seemed mostly like a midwest and east coast process.

Part of me thinks that if there were Public Financiing for campaigns this would not be an issue at all. If a candidate has enough money to particiapte in all of the primaries then they could. If they don't then they would drop out. Public financing is the only way to insure that each state has a say in the nominee.

Right now, it is not just the ballot box that decides, it is the pocket books of the candidate's donors.

[Debi]

2. The proposed calendar insures that non-millionaire candidates

will not be able to compete (and those that do compete will have to pick and choose between the five first-to-go states).

If a candidate had to choose between five states w/in a few weeks of each other and the first state to go had it's Governor running for president, do you think anyone would go to that first state?