NY Makes It Official: Feb. 5, 2008, Will Be Super Duper
by Ryan Sager
Mon, 9 Apr 2007 at 5:53 PM
updated Mon, 9 Apr 2007 at 5:59 PM
With Governor Spitzer's signature, New York has made it official: The Empire State will join California, New Jersey, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Utah in moving its primary to February 5, 2008.
That puts this Super Duper Tuesday quite early, just 22 days after the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, scheduled for January 14. New Hampshire's primary is set for January 22 and South Carolina's for January 29.
The conventional wisdom is that this change in the primary schedule works to the advantage of frontrunners (and New Yorkers) Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton...
In this case, I think the CW is largely right. And, hey, as I've mentioned, we have an institutional bias here at the Sun to see a three-way race: Hillary, Rudy, Bloomy. Keep it local, we say.
But what does this mean for the early states? Are they still relevant?
Some are arguing that the early states are more important than ever. And, certainly, if a John Edwards wants to make it, the early states are do-or-die for him. But that's always been the case.
This time around, however, it looks like the big states could blunt the impact of the early states, at least so far as the importance of whether, say, Mr. Giuliani or John McCain comes out on top in New Hampshire, or whether Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama wins South Carolina. Super Duper Tuesday will essentially be a national primary, and it seems unlikely that the early states can turn around the national picture 180-degrees with such a small time lag between the contests.
The candidates able to run national operations are going to be at a huge advantage, no matter what happens in the hinterlands.
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