Howard Dean, former Democratic
presidential candidate and now the chairman of the Democratic
National Committee, traveled to Montana a few days ago to speak to
the Western Democratic Caucus. He found Western Democrats heartened
by their recent electoral gains, especially in Colorado and
Montana, and he asked them to bring that Western energy to bear in
helping the national party shape its message.
We’re
way ahead of him: Western Democrats have already been calling for a
coordinated Western primary or caucus.
The Democratic
National Committee has created a commission to see if changes in
the primary calendar can help Democrats choose presidential
candidates with greater nationwide appeal. At a meeting in Chicago
in May, the commission heard three proposals to accomplish that,
all involving the regional clustering of primaries.
The
most compelling of these proposals came from a group called
Democrats for the West. They backed a plan that had been endorsed
last year by the bipartisan Western Governors’ Association,
calling for a simultaneous primary or caucus in the eight Mountain
West states of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New
Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Utah’s Republican Gov.
Michael Leavitt had pushed this idea hard in 2000. The concept was
given new life in 2004, when New Mexico’s Democratic Gov.
Bill Richardson persuaded the Western governors’ group to
endorse it.
Richardson himself could certainly benefit
from a Western primary if he makes a bid — as expected
— for the presidency in 2008. But as Richardson has clearly
understood from the outset, a regional primary is too big and
important an idea to be narrowly focused around the interest of any
one individual or party. Because moving primaries around on the
calendar usually requires legislative action, a Western primary can
only be created by a bipartisan effort across the region.
The Western Governors Association has provided that kind of
bipartisan backing in offering staff support to the regional
primary effort. The same kind of bipartisanship was evident in the
Montana Legislature this last winter, when a Democrat-sponsored
bill that would enable Montana to participate in a Western primary
passed the House with the enthusiastic endorsement of the
Republican Secretary of State. The bill was killed in the state
Senate, but it is almost certain to be back in some form before the
2008 primary season. Watch for other Western states to begin
exploring similar moves.
Partisan motivations will
naturally be at work in all of this. Western Democrats clearly
believe that a Western primary could help generate some electoral
votes in the region. As Colorado Rep. Mark Udall, D, wrote to the
Democratic National Committee’s commission, “In presidential
elections, we are often viewed by party leaders, national political
pundits and other national “experts” as a “Republican Red Sea”
impossible to cross, like a great desert more to be endured than
embraced.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., set
the record straight, reminding the commission that “Democrats can
win in Western states as evidenced by the recent ballot victories
in Montana, Colorado and Nevada.” Jerry Brady, an announced
Democratic candidate for governor of Idaho told the commission,
“Our request for an early, region-wide primary and caucus season is
… based on the conviction that the time is right to
capitalize on rapid gains already made.”
But if Western
Democrats are eager for a regional primary, many Western
Republicans are also tired of having their states ignored by
presidential candidates. Many Republicans also think their party
would benefit from the grassroots invigoration a regional primary
could generate. While either party may reasonably hope for partisan
gain from a regional primary, the real winner will be the Mountain
West itself.
A regional primary would motivate all of us
who live here to identify the most important regional issues facing
us, along with the most promising responses to those issues. Do we
want to focus the candidates’ attention on water or energy
issues, on public lands or transportation or tribal issues?
Answers to these questions would force candidates for
president to stake out clear and convincing positions on the issues
we in the region care about. A candidate who wins a substantial
number of Western primaries because of his or her stand, say, on
energy issues, will have little choice but to follow through on
that position with Western-friendly policies once elected.
That’s the kind of clout a maturing West needs. The
first step toward gaining that clout is for the Mountain West to
work together across state and party lines to initiate a regional
caucus or primary.
Daniel Kemmis is the former
Democratic speaker of the Montana House of Representatives. He
lives in Missoula and is the author of This Sovereign
Land: A New Vision for Governing the
West.
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