ALAN CHOATE - Daily Herald | Posted: Thursday, September 28, 2006 11:00 pm
Holding presidential primaries on the same day in Intermountain West states might draw more interest from candidates and for the region's issues, but it probably wouldn't increase voter participation in the contests very much.
Those issues will be among the topics discussed today at a Western States Presidential Primary Symposium in Salt Lake City. Speakers include Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, both proponents of a regional western primary.
The idea calls for eight western states -- Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho -- to hold simultaneous votes on presidential candidates early in the selection process.
Utah, New Mexico and Arizona have already signed on for contests in early February 2008. Nevada's Democratic nominating caucus, meanwhile, has been moved up to January, between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.
Support exists for the idea in other states, but there are concerns about the additional cost of holding a separate presidential primary. The cost in Utah was estimated at $850,000.
"Presidential candidates have for the last few years tended to overlook the West" because of the region's GOP tilt and sparse population, said Daniel Kemmis, a senior fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West in Missoula, Mont.
But western communities are among the nation's fastest-growing and Democrats have made gains, he said -- and "we've now had two successive presidential elections that were close enough in the electoral college that taking any region for granted is a risky business."
There's something in it for Western voters, too, said Kelly Patterson, a political science professor at Brigham Young University.
"At the heart of this is the idea that candidates will be receptive to the constituencies that elect them," he said. But the field of candidates is often winnowed by early votes on the East Coast and Midwest, and "the party nominates a candidate who may or may not be inclined to consider Western issues."
Being inclined to campaign in the West is another matter as well. Cities are spread out, there's no region-wide media and there's a lot of ground to cover.
"Initially you might consider it a barrier," agreed Patterson. "The cost of organization would be so high in these states. What mitigates that is that the population is growing and it will become, over time, more and more efficient to campaign here."
What a unified western primary probably won't do is attract a more representative swath of voters, said Sven Wilson, who directs the Master of Public Policy Program at BYU.
Exit poll data suggests that primary voters tend to be different from those who vote in a general election.
"They are more educated. They tend to be more on the extreme on the right or the left," Wilson said.
A primary that matters more in the selection process could encourage more people to participate, since people would feel their votes counted more. That would probably happen -- but the higher turnout would mostly bring out more of the hard-core partisans, Wilson said.
"In terms of increasing representativeness, we're skeptical," he said. "You'd really have to push it high above what anybody thinks is likely.
"But it could have other impacts. For instance, it might get candidates more interested."
Wilson, fellow BYU professor Quin Monson and graduate student Steve Collins are among the speakers at today's symposium.
The fact that Nevada's vote has been moved to an earlier date probably won't hurt the western primary effort, Kemmis said.
"It could be a good thing to have an interior western state with that very early caucus," he said.
"If it's known that there is then going to be another date, early in February, when several Rocky Mountain states would be holding their primaries or caucuses, that would heighten the likelihood that candidates in Nevada would be aware of being in the West."
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.