Good Grief! Can’t We Devise a Better Primary System?

In presidential politics, California gets treated like Charlie Brown. Whenever Charlie runs up to kick the football, Lucy yanks it out from under his foot. Here, boot the ball. Splat.

The last two presidential elections, this behemoth state has run up to kick the ball, moving its primary from June to March. Surely this time, California assumes, it will exert “clout” in the nominating process. But, again, Iowa and New Hampshire yank away the football.

When he signed the bill establishing the March 7 primary, then-Gov. Pete Wilson used a different sports analogy. “If voters were home runs,” the governor said, “California would be Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa put together. . . . Beginning in 2000, the nominating process won’t be pitching around California anymore.”

A bad call.

Actually, a lot of us got fooled. We assumed that when California moved its primary to March 26 for 1996, other states would watch as spectators. However, many of them moved up too, even ahead of California. So by the time we voted, the contest was over; Sen. Bob Dole already had clinched the Republican nomination.

Next time we’ll show ya, California thought. It moved the primary up again, by three additional weeks. Then a crowd gathered. And on March 7, there will be 15 states holding primaries or caucuses, including New York. This is called “front-loading” the system. And nearly everybody is complaining.

“This is just insanity,” asserts L.A.-based Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, who is not involved in a presidential campaign.

“About the time the American people wake up and say, ‘There’s a presidential election; who’s running?’ the whole thing’s already over.”

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It’s almost over, realistically, but not quite. If either of the two front-runners can be tripped up in New Hampshire next Tuesday, California may still get to kick the football.

Former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey needs to upset Vice President Al Gore in the Democratic primary and/or Sen. John McCain of Arizona must beat Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the GOP contest. (Businessman Steve Forbes and the other Republicans aren’t real players, face it.)

Conversely, Gore and Bush can, for all practical purposes, put their challengers away in New Hampshire. This currently seems more likely for Gore, who’s leading in the polls, than for Bush, who’s trailing McCain.

We’ve only had one contest--in pipsqueak, unrepresentative Iowa--with another coming up in anachronistic New Hampshire. But because of news media hype and coverage overkill, the impact on the political system--donors, pols, voters--is a sense of inevitability that the front-runners are unstoppable. And, in an era of national tranquillity, with little rebellion in the air, this means that the front-runners, indeed, are the inevitable winners.

Delegate totals quickly pile up. When the polls close March 7, 45% of the Republican and 39% of the Democratic delegates will have been chosen. Within another week, 13 more states will hold contests. Half will be in the South, where the front-runners are heavily favored.

“Something’s wrong with the system,” Carrick notes. “It’s suffocating. And people are just bored.”

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So what’s a better system, especially for California? To make its primary meaningful--

and force candidates to work for the state’s big batch of delegates, roughly 20% of those needed to nominate? Now, California is not even in these candidates’ playbooks--except as an ATM.

“All we’re asking for is fairness,” says Secretary of State Bill Jones.

Jones, a Republican, has been pushing for four regional primaries, one held each month. Their order would be rotated every election, starting with the East going first and the West last. Pampered Iowa and New Hampshire still could jump ahead. The national parties are considering it.

Dumb, says Bob Mulholland, spokesman for the California Democratic Party. “It doesn’t make sense to be grouped with Idaho and Utah,” he insists. “I mean, what’s that all about? All it does is help those small states.”

He doesn’t like the rotating, either, vowing: “California will never be a caboose again.”

One thing California should do is return to a June primary for state and local balloting. March is way too early.

If we’re still tempted to kick that football again in 2004, hold a separate presidential primary. One week after New Hampshire. Cost: $20 million. A bargain.