Well, the North Carolina primary has been moved to March 15 for all elections. It’s probably not a huge deal but it does mean that election season is going to start the second the legislative session ends. Filing is December 1 to December 21.
In politics, the period between Thanksgiving and New Years is pretty dead because, really, who can compete with family, Santa Claus, holiday parties, and Amateur Night? The period from January 1 to March 15 will be a sprint. On the upside, the Republican clown car that’s known as the GOP presidential field should start rolling into town soon and will provide plenty of fodder for this blog. We’ll also get a break from political ads during April and May, two of nicest months of the year in North Carolina.
The real kicker in the bill that moved the primary, though, was a power-grab aimed at the North Carolina Republican Party. Establishment-types have been nervous ever since activist Hasan Harnet took over the party. They’ve lost most the professional staff and are now fighting over who will take over as executive director.
To remedy the situation, the House and Senate essentially gave party organizations like the caucuses equal standing to the party and allows them to be freestanding organizations instead of part of the broader party structure. Now, they don’t need to go through the party to get their money and they don’t have to worry about the activist types spending money the caucus members have raised.
My guess is they’ve solved one problem and caused another. The activists will likely declare war on the establishment, because everything we’ve seen done to the state was done by a bunch of RINOs. We still don’t have a state currency or a state religion and you KNOW whose fault that is.
The Democrats, of course, aren’t complaining. While they now have grown ups in charge of the party now, last year they had to circumnavigate the state party and run their money through the Wake County Democratic Party. They won’t have to do that again.
The real story is the decline of state parties in the age of Citizens United. Back when parties were the primary vehicle to get money to campaigns, more people paid attention to the leadership and were involved in the party system. Now, much of the money has gone outside of the system and younger people have little use for political parties at all. What money is left in the system will now be controlled by the real powers, the elected officials who raise it, not the true believers.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Perhaps I am missing something but it seems to me the real reason to move the primary was to preempt any move to undo the gerrymandering of legislative districts. the March Primary will lock in the current districts for another 2 years since it is unlikely a court will order a new primary under redrawn districts. If the courts do throw out any of the current districts we will have wait until 2018 for justice to be served.
Not sure about that reason, but so far as I know, they wanted to 1) be relevant in a Presidential Primary for a change, and 2) do it to assist the RNC in (theoretically) shortening the Primary by allowing a frontrunner (they’d like Bush) to wrap things up by their super-early July convention, thereby reducing the risk of a brokered convention.