New York One Step Closer to Feb. 5 Primary
by Ryan Sager
Wed, 21 Mar 2007 at 6:07 PM
updated Wed, 21 Mar 2007 at 6:18 PM
New York's legislature has moved the state one step closer to joining California in participating in a February 5, 2008, big-state primary.
Traditionally, small states Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have an out-sized impact in the primary process, because they vote early and shape perceptions of which candidates are in the lead (and which candidates are best at on-the-ground, turnout-intensive politics). This year, however, California has moved its primary to February 5 — expected to be just days after New Hampshire votes — and Florida, New Jersey, and other states are considering joining in.
New York, in fact, is late to the party, given how much it has at stake...
Both parties in New York, of course, have hometown favorites who would benefit from the change: Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton.
The advantage that the big-state primary will confer upon these candidates, in fact, makes it a legitimate question at this point just how much the traditional trinity (IA, NH, SC) will really matter next year. While their status is enshrined in the political reporter's psyche, any smart candidate counting delegates in December of 2007 and January of 2008 is going to be thinking about their national standing a whole hell of a lot more carefully than they're thinking about Podunk locales such as Des Moines and Manchester.
In fact, it would be fair to say that those small, early states will only matter insomuch as they manage to sway what happens February 5. Now, to some extent this has always been the case — the small states have only mattered because they've swayed the bigger states. But with only days between New Hampshire and a giant swath of the rest of the country voting, it seems unlikely those small states will have an impact at all.
Don't look for the national press corps to make a quick turnaround, though. They've got far too much invested in the lazy routine of the Big Three.
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