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Guest Column

Keeping the voter in charge

As Iowa and New Hampshire lose clout, use rotating regional primaries to screen candidates.

By BOB GRAHAM, Special to the Times
Published August 9, 2007

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Florida's governor, Charlie Crist, signed a law in May that moved the state's 2008 presidential primary to Jan. 29, one week after New Hampshire's. The idea behind this move was to put Florida in the national spotlight and force candidates to pay more attention to the state's issues.

As a Florida native who spent almost 40 years serving the state in Tallahassee and Washington, I have never been concerned that Florida - the largest swing state, with 27 electoral votes - would be ignored in 2008. But in front-loading the primary calendar, Florida and the other states that have moved their contests to Feb. 5 or earlier have unintentionally damaged the presidential election process.

In the 22 days from Jan. 14 to Feb. 5, voters in more than two dozen states - including California, Illinois and New York - will cast primary and caucus ballots. Their zeal to stand at the front of the line will poke irreparable holes in a political screen that has served Americans well: the living rooms of Iowa and New Hampshire.

As a presidential candidate four years ago, I stood in many of those living rooms and met highly knowledgeable voters who wanted to judge candidates up close and personal. They demanded substantive, well-reasoned answers to specific questions about issues from Iraq to health care to agriculture.

Iowa and New Hampshire are not perfect, but they are more likely to eliminate flawed candidates than states where voters see only television commercials. In 1972, Ed Muskie, a former vice presidential candidate and Maine senator, was supposed to trounce his Democratic rivals in New Hampshire. But voters picked up on Muskie's tendency to wear his temper on his sleeve. He barely won a contest that should have been a cakewalk. His candidacy soon ended.

Although Iowa and New Hampshire will not lose all influence in 2008, Sioux City and Nashua may become little more than stopovers on the way to San Francisco and New York. The two candidates who win their parties' nominations will do so with less of the rigorous inspection performed in Iowa and New Hampshire living rooms.

In our new political environment, Iowa and New Hampshire are unlikely to reclaim the role they once played in screening our future presidents. Too many other states are eager to influence the process, too.

So if we can't recreate the past, what would be the next best screen?

A series of five regional primaries, spaced three weeks apart and rotated every four years, would give voters from Miami to Maui to Manchester opportunities to be first in the nation. Because the primaries would be stretched out over three months rather than three weeks, reporters and other political scorekeepers could not rush to declare a national winner.

Regional primaries are not as intimate as living rooms in Cedar Rapids and Portsmouth. But they might accomplish what the 2008 primary season probably will not: a meticulous screening of the men and women who would be president.

Bob Graham was governor of Florida from 1979 to 1987 and a U.S. senator from 1987 to 2005.

[Last modified August 8, 2007, 22:22:31]

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