Presidential primary bill finds rough legislative path

Legislation aimed at fixing the leap-frogging presidential primary process has numerous hurdles to clear.

{mosads}A hearing Wednesday demonstrated that several constitutional and fairness questions remain about the Senate measure, which would set up a regional approach to the major parties’ presidential nominating contests.

Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) expressed support for the bill, but others had reservations with either the bill itself or the concept of Congress legislating presidential primaries.

Wednesday’s questions centered on whether the Constitution allowed for such a bill, whether it would benefit candidates from certain regions or voters in certain areas, and how to approach the typically dicey issue of special privileges for traditionally first Iowa and New Hampshire.

The bill, co-authored by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), would set four dates for four regional presidential nominating contests. The order of the regions would rotate every four years, with the two earliest states maintaining their separate status as the first on the calendar. The bill’s four other formal backers are Sens. Feinstein, Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas).

A House companion bill, sponsored by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), has three co-sponsors.

The legislation and others like it have been introduced in response to an increasingly front-loaded primary process, which features nearly 20 states holding contests on Feb. 5 and others pushing the bounds of the parties’ rules by moving into January. Some have speculated that the earliest states could move their contests to late this year.

While almost all present recognized the need for a solution, not all were convinced it lies within Congress.

Committee ranking member Bob Bennett (R-Utah) was the source of much of the skepticism.

“The presidential nominating process is extra-constitutional, which is why it’s so chaotic,” Bennett said. “How do we justify congressional interference in a process not covered by the Constitution?”

The Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee both informed the panel of their opposition to the bill.

Klobuchar and Richard Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, both cited Supreme Court precedent that says Congress has broad authority over presidential elections.

Hasen deemed it “very unlikely” that the Supreme Court would overturn such a law.

“A ruling striking down a congressionally passed regional primary … would call into question a great number of congressional powers over presidential elections — from campaign finance to election registration to the presidential voting age,” Hasen said.

Another expert presenting to the panel, Northeastern University political science Professor William Mayer, suggested that rotating regional primaries could favor particular candidates depending upon which region held the first primary.

The primaries would be held once a month between March and June.

Mayer pointed out that then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton received 65 percent of the vote in Southern contests and 27 percent in the Northeast in the 1992 primary.

“Region is a very important variable in the presidential primaries,” Mayer said. “If the Northeast had gone first, [former Sen.] Paul Tsongas [D-Mass.] probably would have been the nominee … and if the Midwest had gone first, it might well have been [former Sen.] Bob Kerrey [D-Neb.].”

But in the past, the contests have taken on lesser importance for home-state candidates such as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), argued Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a co-chairman of the National Association of Secretaries of State’s presidential primaries subcommittee.

Others said that a regional process might encourage the contests to actually last until the middle of the year, versus weeding out all but one candidate after only a handful of primaries and caucuses.

Despite sponsoring the bill, Lieberman expressed reservations about the privileged status the bill affords Iowa and New Hampshire. The bill would exclude the two states from the regional primaries and allow them to stay where they are.

Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro emphasized that those contests are watched around the country, providing an outside-in view of candidates’ grassroots campaigns.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said the plan would pit regions against regions and major population centers against one another. He suggested splitting the country into 10 categories based on population and including one state from each category on a given date.

Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), whose states have both flouted party rules by moving into January, have proposed a different bill that would break the country into six regions, with at least one state from each region on each of six primary dates.