Recent developments have given
new impetus to the idea of a coordinated Rocky Mountain West
presidential primary in 2008.
Utah Republican Gov. Jon
Huntsman has asked that state’s Legislature to set aside $850,000
to enable Utah to hold an early presidential preference primary.
Meanwhile, a special commission of the Democratic National
Committee has recommended changes in that party’s rules that could
let one state from our region hold a caucus before the New
Hampshire primary, and possibly allow several other states to
cluster primaries or caucuses soon after New Hampshire.
When it was last floated in the 2000 election cycle, the idea of a
regional primary attracted only three states. But a lot has
happened since then, and the feel of this effort is entirely
different from the previous one.
One difference is simply
that many more Westerners are now aware of the possibility of a
regional primary. That awareness is enhanced by a steady growth in
the number and variety of regional institutions and communication
channels. Regional war horses like High Country
News have been supplemented by on-line regional news
services like the New West Network and Headwaters News. Colorado
College’s “State of the Rockies Report Card” will contain a section
on the regional primary idea in its next issue, while the
University of Utah’s Center for Public Policy and Administration is
planning a fall 2006 conference on the regional primary.
As a regional primary becomes more of a possibility, personal,
partisan and parochial motivations show up on both sides of the
debate. Two Western governors who are providing leadership to
create a regional primary — Jon Huntsman, R-Utah, and Bill
Richardson, D-N.M. — each have fairly transparent
motivations. If Richardson runs for president, an early Western
primary would very likely give him a boost, while Huntsman’s
enthusiasm is widely seen against the background of Massachusetts
Gov. Mitt Romney’s expected strength in Mormon country. Huntsman
reveals an even more parochial interest when he speaks of the boost
a regional primary might give to Utah’s economy.
Those
who oppose or question a regional primary often express equally
narrow interests. The chair of the Arizona Republican Party, for
example, says that Arizona has attracted national attention by
scheduling its primary early, and he’s afraid that advantage will
be lost if other Western states move to the same date. Across the
aisle, some Western Democrats are lukewarm about a regional primary
because they would prefer to keep national Democrats as far away
from the region as possible, on the not-unreasonable grounds that
they tend to hurt more than help local Democrats.
Such
special-interest concerns are unavoidable in something as intensely
political as a regional primary. But unless real regional concerns
are also at work, a regional primary would hardly be worth the
effort. Now, broader interests do seem very much in play.
There is a growing awareness across the West that it’s really as a
region that we’re growing, as a region that our economy is being
transformed, and it’s increasingly as a region, not simply state by
state, that we have the opportunity to secure our competitive
advantage in the global economy.
To do that, the West
needs a stronger and clearer voice in national councils. Education,
for example, is too important to our regional economy for us to
allow the enactment of any more half-baked No Child Left Behind
Acts. Public lands, energy development, immigration, housing and
transportation — all of these issues deeply affect the
fortunes of the emerging West and cry out for us to develop an
effective regional voice.
A regional primary is only one
mechanism for achieving that regional leverage. At some point, the
region needs to recall that the Senate is where we have always had
real power. A bipartisan Rocky Mountain Senate caucus would be a
natural and welcome outgrowth of the deepening of regional
consciousness.
Meanwhile, the spotlight is on the
presidential nomination process, and the West has an opportunity
here that should not be missed. At a minimum, we should be
discussing whether a coordinated regional primary or caucus is a
good idea; if so, what form it should take; and finally, which
issues the West wants presidential candidates to address.
The more discussion we can generate online, at meetings, and on the
region’s opinion pages, the more likely we are to choose our course
wisely and to make a difference in the long run.
Daniel Kemmis, a senior fellow at the Center for the
Rocky Mountain West, is the author of This Sovereign Land:
A New Vision for Governing the West. He lives in
Missoula, Montana.
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