Why do North Carolina Republicans want their state to be a key player in the early contests? The answer is simple: it’s because they see an early primary as a real opportunity for the eventual Republican candidate to get a head start in what will probably be a key swing state.
Consider what happened back in 2008. North Carolina was the pivotal state in the Democratic primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Both candidates invested significant resources in North Carolina and it paid off handsomely for Barack Obama when he carried the state by the barest of margins in the fall. If Obama had already wrapped up the nomination before North Carolina, those resources would never have been deployed and it’s hard to imagine that he would have won the state’s 15 electoral votes in the general.
NC Republicans are hoping that history will repeat itself and the eventual GOP presidential nominee will get a head start. They’re hoping their presidential candidates will have to compete for North Carolina’s delegates by establishing a presence here and building successful grassroots campaign. If all goes well, then we’ll be treated to a bevy of Republican candidates coming to the Tar Heel State and vying for supremacy by bashing Obama as much as possible. The best-case scenario is that North Carolina gets taken off the table for Hillary Clinton, which is probably a requisite anyway if the GOP wants to win the White House. Instead, the battle will have to be fought in the states Obama won in 2012 – places like Virginia, Florida, and Colorado.
With no competitive Democratic primary on the horizon, Republicans see no downside in moving up the state’s primary. The trick is to have the primary early enough so that the folks running for President will have to pay attention to it, and yet not so early that the national party punishes us by taking away our delegates.
If the legislature succeeds, then North Carolinians of all political stripes can look forward to, for once, joining its neighbor to the south in playing an important part in the primary process. It’s something we can pretty much all agree on. We’re jealous of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina, and while we’re willing to defer to them for the sake of tradition, why wait until May to get our say? This is a sentiment shared by nearly everyone, Republican or Democrat. Just keep in mind that while the state as a whole might benefit, moving up the date is really for the benefit of the NC GOP.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
To Ty’s point if the Republican Party is eager to move up this contest for purely partisan political reasons then they should spare the taxpayers and simply hold a caucus at their own expense. That said there is scant evidence that early states see any lingering benefit in the general election campaign. Even accepting the premise that the 2008 Democratic contest was important for the Democrats laying the foundation for a Fall campaign, moving it earlier in an all ready historically front-loaded calendar would have likely harmed that effort by making it less distinct. The Clinton/Obama contest was a full 14 days after the Pennsylvania primary. The candidates competed in NC and to a lesser extent IN exclusively for two weeks. Moving the 2016 contest into the Jan/Feb window won’t allow for anything close to that.
The RNC and DNC set the window for how soon after an early state (IA,NH,NV,SC) that another state can hold their contest without penalty. Trying to get the earliest non sanctioned date possible puts your state in competition with several others and you are likely to share a date or be sandwiched between several events occurring in rapid succession. You don’t get retail politicking and party building for your trouble, more likely you get lost in the shuffle as the remaining well-funded candidates swoop in for a few days in between stops.
I would surmise that the legislators who royally screwed their own Party by changing the Primary to a date where they’d be punished by the RNC by stripping most of NC’s 72 delegates, actually did it in cahoots with the RNC, who’ve been working for years to make sure southern state Republican Parties don’t force the Party away from the RNC’s preferred moderate Presidential nominees. Notice how the NC Senate doesn’t appear eager to fix this problem. They also screwed NC taxpayers out of millions of extra dollars to hold a second Primary in May for non-Presidential candidates.