UPDATE: Under pressure from rank-and-file democrats and the presidential campaigns themselves, the State Committee reversed course and is now seeking an open primary in New Jersey. In other words - We won!
They say all politics is local, and that includes Presidential Politics. Despite the DNC's effort to level the playing field nationwide for all candidates, at least in New Jersey, the state party apparatus still wants to control who gets access to the ballot, and where they appear.
Following an unprecedented arm-twisting campaign, the party establishment here is nearly united in support of Hillary Clinton for President. That, no one denies. So, when the NJ Democratic State Committee sent a letter to the Division of Elections about ballot preferences, do you think it was designed to level the playing field?
The answer is no, and the full story, as I wrote on Blue Jersey earlier, is below.
Last year, the Democratic National Committee put together a little something called "Delegate Selection Rules" for the 2008 Democratic National Convention, to ensure a fair and equitable process nationwide. Among the more obvious requirements is Rule 17-B:
Any individual or group of Democrats may sponsor or endorse a slate of candidates for convention delegates. But no slate may, by virtue of such endorsement, receive a preferential place on a delegate selection ballot or be publicly identified on the ballot as the official Democratic Party organization slate....
Obvious? Not in New Jersey.
Here in the Garden State, our Democratic State Committee's attorney has submitted a letter (right) to the AG's office requesting that ballots statewide not only place the county Chairs' choice first, but in those counties where no endorsement has been made, to hold a two-step process to determine ballot position:
1- a drawing between only Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to see which of their delegates will receive the first position, and which will be second, and
2- a second drawing among all the rest to see whose delegates will be placed in the remaining positions, third and below.
Some county Chairs are even interpreting the DSC proposal to mean that the Clinton and Obama delegates will automatically be entitled to the first two ballot positions in every county.
Absurd? Yes. Legal? Almost certainly not. Fair? Absolutely not.
Putting aside the question of whether county Chairs should ever have the power to unilaterally decide ballot position (they shouldn't) or to have their official endorsement appear on the ballot (most states have outlawed this practice), the really undemocratic part of the DSC's proposed plan is the elevation of Clinton and Obama to preferred ballot status statewide.
That plan clearly violates both the letter and spirit of the DNC's delegate selection plan, and puts our state's delegation at risk of disqualification.
And that wouldn't be democratic at all.
Cross-posted from Blue Jersey