[R]emember that old line about being careful of getting what you wished for?
Hold that thought. Now add in the foolishness of wishing for what you cannot possibly get.
Combine the two and you have foolishness squared, or perhaps raised to the tenth power, a perfect description of this suggestion that Vermont try to horn in on the New Hampshire primary.
From the usually sensible Sen. Anthony Pollina, a Washington County Progressive/Democrat, appeared last week the unusually absurd S.76, which would change the date of Vermont’s presidential primary “for each major political party” from the traditional first Tuesday in March (Town Meeting Day) to “the same day as the New Hampshire presidential primary.”
If all those candidates, pollsters, consultants, advisers, flunkies (or press secretaries as they are sometimes known), reporters, camera crews, bloggers, professors and camp followers spent even some of the week or two before the primary in Burlington hotels and restaurants instead of in Manchester, N.H., Vermont would enjoy an “economic shot in the arm,” Pollina said.
And Vermonters would get a bigger say in choosing presidential candidates.
What’s not to like?
Oh, dear. Where to begin? Shall we start with the fact that it will not happen?
No reflection on Sen. Pollina, who is wise in the ways of Vermont politics. But this assessment comes from someone who covered at least some (and mostly all) of 10 (count’em: 10) New Hampshire primaries, and who knows that any presidential primary which is not at least seven days later than New Hampshire’s is both against the law and against the rules.
Granted, it is only New Hampshire’s law, and only the rules of the Democratic and Republican parties, both of whom have come to accept (somewhat grudgingly) New Hampshire’s insistence that its first-in-the-nation primary position is ordained by history if not by nature and/or some yet-to-be-identified divinity.
New Hampshire’s law gives its secretary of state the power to set the primary date as long as it is at least seven days earlier than any other state’s primary. (Iowa’s precinct caucuses are earlier, but that doesn’t count. It’s not a primary).
New Hampshire law does not trump Vermont law. But in this case, neither state’s law trumps the party rules, and both parties would be certain to punish the interloping state (that would be Vermont) by some combination of not seating its delegates at the convention or not allowing a candidate who dared cross the Connecticut River to participate in party-sponsored debates.
But forget the rules and the laws. No candidate will cross the Connecticut. Because he or she who makes that crossing is doomed in New Hampshire, where the voters take that first-in-the-nation business seriously. They – or at least some of them, enough of them – seem devoutly to believe that their right to vote first is ordained.
So the candidates and their entourages will not come to Vermont, and therefore neither will the reporters and their camera crews. They will not stay in Vermont hotels, eat in Vermont restaurants, gas up at Vermont service stations. There will be no economic shot in the arm.
The reporters wouldn’t come anyway. It’s too much trouble for too insignificant a story. Vermont has half of New Hampshire’s population. It isn’t a swing state which will be competitive in the fall. And if a few reporters were to drive from Manchester or Concord, where would they go? Probably to nearby Brattleboro, Bellows Falls or White River Junction, where there are … well, where there are not many people.
Here’s the thing about politics in a democracy. Those who compete in it and those who cover them have to go where the people are. In Vermont, that means Chittenden County. That’s five hours of driving, risking not getting back to Manchester in time for cocktails.
A very important consideration. Here’s a little secret about the New Hampshire primary, one that helps explain why it has kept that first-in-the-nation spot despite criticism.
Reporters love it. They love it because it’s a good story, but also because it’s a party. They and the rest of what the late, great, political journalist Jack Germond dubbed “the political community” effectively take over Manchester for a week (with satellites in Nashua and Concord) – the hotels, the restaurants, the bars. It’s a chance to see old friends, talk endless shop, make each other laugh (at the expense of the politicians, of course) eat good food, maybe drink a little too much (though the hard-drinking reporter is largely a relic of the past), all on the company expense account.
Who wants to give up a day of that to schlep to Burlington, or even to Brattleboro, for not much of a story?
But let us suspend disbelief for a moment, and assume that what will not happen happens anyway, that a few candidates campaign in Vermont, followed by hangers-on and reporters who spend a night or two in hotels and restaurants here.
What will Vermonters get from all that? Ridicule, that’s what.
After all, the complaints about starting the nominating process in Iowa and New Hampshire start with the fact that they are hardly typical or representative, that they are dominated by non-Hispanic white folks, that they are too rural (though New Hampshire really isn’t), that they lack teeming cities and sprawling metropolitan areas.
Vermont is whiter than either and more rural than New Hampshire. Its biggest city has about a third as many people as Manchester and a sixth as many as Des Moines. From the perspective of Washingtonians (and for all its flaws, that’s the perspective we’re dealing with here), adding Vermont into the early-voting mix only makes things worse.
Not to mention that a reporter dropping in for a day, or more likely a few hours, is likely to take the easy short-cut and portray the state at its cutesy-pooest. You know: the aging hippies, the “People’s Republic of Burlington,” the ideologically organic farmer, the grumpy general store clerk. Vermont needs this kind of exposure like it needs more below-zero weather right now.
The Senate Government Operations Committee is scheduled to consider S.76 Thursday at 4 p.m. If those committee members love their state, that bill will not survive the evening.
