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Show Hinckley Journal of Politics Autumn 1998 cant numher of delegate votes, such as California. As a result, many legislative attempts to compel states to form regional primaries have been made. In Congress, over 100 unsuccessful attempts were made from 1911 to 1987 (Werner 1996). Among the many reasons the bills were killed was the fear of the loss of state control over party politics (1996). Notwithstanding legislative failures, some regional primaries have been established successfully. The names and dates of some of these primaries include the following (1996): March 5 Yankee Tuesday (New England states: CN, ME, MA, RI, VT) March 12 Super Tuesday (Southern states: FL, LA, MS, OK, TN, TX) March 19 Great Lakes Tuesday (IL, MI, OH, WI) The declarations of the success of these regional primaries have been subject to much debate; every election year has seen states shift dates or join or drop out of regional primaries. The West As mentioned above, the intermountain west states have very little clout in the presidential primary system. Both front-loading and super regional primaries have rendered the primaries and caucuses of the western states, which have mostly post-March primaries and have few delegates, to serving as nearly useless. Robert D. Loevy of Colorado College (1997, 148-149) divided the 1996 primaries and caucuses into three different categories: relevant, somewhat relevant, and irrelevant. States were classified relevant if they conducted "a primary or caucus that receives considerable attention from candidates and the news media and has a major effect on who receives the party nomination for president." According to Loevy's study, only one intermountain west state was deemed relevant, Colorado. The rest of the western states were deemed merely somewhat relevant or irrelevant to the 1996 nomination-they received little or no attention from media or candidates and had little or no effect on the selection of the party nominee. In 1996, a media survey (Werner) showed the disparity between campaign attention paid to the early primaries and the later western primaries: In 1996 candidates made campaign appearances in western states 25 times prior to March 31, equaling less than 12 days total for all candidates combined. Comparatively, New Hampshire and Iowa received 128 campaign appearances totaling 41 days of campaign time devoted to Iowa's caucus and New Hampshire's primary for all candidates combined. Utah Presidential Candidate Nomination The state of Utah does not have an established tradition of a presidential primary-state leaders have used the caucus/convention system (Salt Lake Tribune 1997). Local caucuses are held to select delegates to attend the state conventions, and in an exercise of mere formality, delegates are sent from the state to the national party convention. As has been shown, by the time the national conventions occur in the summer of the election year, the presidential candidate nominations have already been secured, and the event serves as only a confirmation of the nomination which has been acquired early in the year because of the increasingly early primaries of many states. Who are the players in Utah's presidential politics? In the case of the proposed regional primary, Governor Leavitt is spearheading the push for change. Governor Leavitt's Deputy for Policy, Utah Governor's Office, Tim Sheehan, is overseeing the details of the movement toward the primary. Most states have a Secretary of State (Utah now does not) who oversees state elections; in Utah, Lt. Governor Olene Walker oversees the Elections Office. Although the Lt. Governor has some influence upon the mechanics of elections, according to Kelleen Potter, Elections Director, "The Governor and the Legislature make the laws-they hold the keys" to making statutory changes in Utah's electoral system (1998). The Democratic Party of Utah worked with surrounding states to schedule a mini-regional primary in 1992 (it did not in 1996 because of Clinton's incumbency). It was not considered a failure-a few prominent political figures stopped in and the voter turnout was better than expected (Taylor 1998). Utah Democrats are supportive of a bipartisan move to a regional presidential primary (1998). The Republican Party of Utah acknowledges the goals of Republican Governor Leavitt, but also realizes that the Republican National Committee (RNC) would rather they settled for a later primary date; the RNC is willing to award more delegates as an incentive. Still, the Utah Republican Party supports the move toward a regional primary (Stokes 1998). The time has come for change; nearly everyone in the western states agrees that something most be done. Is the formation of a regional primary going to increase the attention western states receive from presidential candidates and their accompanying media? Analysis Si'per Tuesday One way to evaluate the potential effectiveness of a western regional presidential primary could be to examine the goals and results of the southern states' 1988 "Super Tuesday.'" In 1988, the thirteen southern states (and seven others) decided to hold their primaries on March 8. Organizers touted the Super Tuesday primaries as capable of bringing 66 percent of the total number of delegates for a presidential nomination in a single day (Smith 1992). Two of the main goals of Super Tuesday were to increase media attention to the region and to bring more presidential candidates to campaign there, decreasing the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire (Hadley and Stanley 1989). Analyzing the degree of success of these goals is significant because these two goals are principal points that western leaders such as Governor Leavitt are using to champion the Western Primary. Note: In the authot's research, almost all studies of tegional ptimaties found were analyses of 1988 primaries; fewer studies of 1992 and 1996 have been published by comparison. 4.3 |