That would sure shake things up, wouldn't it? WaPo story here and NH Rep. Jim Splaine's Blue Hampshire Diary here. WaPo first:
"I have a lot of discretion," said Bill Gardner, the 16-term secretary of state of New Hampshire, who is invested with what amounts to dictatorial power to set the date under state law. "We are prepared, if it needs to be early December, it can be early December."
Or it may stick to a date in early January. Gardner is still playing coy, though increasingly less so, with his open hints about December.
Gardner said he will announce his decision soon after the Nov. 2 close of the filing period for presidential candidates. He said the state will need only about two weeks to print and distribute ballots. They don't have to have dates on them, he said.
...
During the drive back from Keene, through a rainstorm that darkened the rolling hills of southwestern New Hampshire, Gardner and Splaine chewed over all the possible options.
The law tells Gardner to put New Hampshire at least a week before any "similar election." This week, four Democrats pulled their names from the Michigan ballot, saying they would honor a pledge to campaign only in New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina before the rush of primaries on Feb. 5. Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd kept their names on the ballot in Michigan but vowed not to campaign there. But the Republicans are competing and that's all that matters, Gardner said. New Hampshire would be no later than Jan. 8.
Iowa is another issue. Gardner said he'd like to choose "a date that would allow Iowa to have its eight days." Here's where it gets really complicated.
If New Hampshire goes Jan. 8, Iowa couldn't plausibly hold caucuses on New Year's Eve. There is talk that Iowa might hold caucuses on Jan. 3 or Jan. 5, but that would encroach dramatically on the time for candidates to decamp to New Hampshire and make the Granite State the center of the political cosmos.
South Carolina Republicans, meanwhile, moved their primary to Jan. 19, which might uproot Nevada, Gardner said. Meanwhile, he said, there's Wyoming.
Wyoming?
Yes: Wyoming has some kind of delegate-selection caucus-primary thing scheduled for Jan. 5, Gardner said. He's not sure what to think of that.
He talked about the news coverage out of Iowa, and Howard Dean's "scream," and how quickly Dean's campaign tanked. He indicated that if the votes are scheduled too closely, there's not enough time for people to digest what's happening.
"Is it right for me to put that into the equation?" he asked aloud.
The "not enough time to digest" aspect is one thing that's been bugging me throughout the process - this long, interminable pre-primary campaign, followed by Iowa through Feb. 5 in a four-week eyeblink. Hell, back in the spring, I was advocating Iowa in June and NH in September. So I'd be all for this.
Splaine, from Blue Hampshire:
Just during the past couple of days, there have been strong indications that both Democrats and Republicans in Iowa have determined that they are going to have their Caucuses on Thursday, January 3rd. There is also a possibility the Republicans will hold their Caucus on that date, with the Democrats going Saturday, January 5th.
In light of that, let's do some serious thinking about the options for the date of the New Hampshire First-In-The-Nation Primary, and also take a look at our opportunities.
If Iowa does go January 3rd or 5th, the problem with setting our date for Tuesday, January 8th would be that for the entire Holiday Season, the Presidential candidates of both parties may well camp out in Iowa. It's not that we should be jealous about that. That's not the point. But the Iowa Caucus is not a real election -- it is an organizational event where it takes intense staff and special interest groups to get their most dedicated supporters to the meeting rooms throughout Iowa on a cold Winter night to stand up, publicly, and "be counted" for their choice. In other words, it's not much of a secret vote, like a "real" election is. The New Hampshire Primary IS a real election, where people go to the polls and vote in privacy to choose their nominee. A Caucus isn't much more than a straw poll, which Iowa's Republicans already had -- a straw poll without the right to vote in secret.
I have no problem with the Iowa Caucus going first before New Hampshire, as has been traditional back to 1972, but I've been concerned that the Iowa Caucus this election cycle is potentially having way too much influence on whether candidates of either party will even remain as candidates after that event is held. It is very likely we'll see some candidates drop out after Iowa, even though a real election won't even have occurred yet.
So, with the very serious possibility that the Iowa Caucuses will be on January 3rd, New Hampshire now has to make a choice. Should we have our primary right after Iowa, with a reduced "window" between it and us, or use this opportunity to have our Presidential Primary during the first two weeks of December? The second Tuesday in December is the 11th, and that date would do some interesting things for us...
Read the rest at Blue Hampshire.