March 3, 2020
By Steve Brawner
© 2020 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.
For the second straight presidential election, Arkansas scheduled its primary early and then watched mostly from afar as a large field dwindled. The upside: At least voters here had their say while the nomination was still in doubt. The downside: It’s one more way that the system gives an advantage to incumbents.
When Arkansans went to the polls that day, 18 names were on the Democratic presidential ballot, but most of the candidates had dropped out and only four were still competitive: Sen. Bernie Sanders, the outsider disruptor the party establishment wishes would go away; former Vice President Joe Biden; former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg; and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
When the day started, Sanders was the frontrunner. When it ended, Biden, whose campaign looked to be dead in the water only a week earlier, had become the clear frontrunner. The next day, Bloomberg had decided to stop spending his money, and Warren was having to decide whether or not to stop spending her energies.
In politics, a lot can happen quickly.
A similar dynamic occurred four years ago, when Arkansas Republican primary voters saw a list of 13 names, but only five were still in the race, including now President Donald Trump, the outsider disruptor his party’s establishment wished would go away.
In both primary elections, Arkansas state legislators had moved the state’s presidential primary to early in the cycle. Before this election, they made it permanent. We’ll vote in early March every presidential election from this point forward, and in non-presidential elections we’ll vote in May.
The upside of the early primaries is that, despite the dwindling lists of candidates, Arkansans still cast meaningful votes in both elections. Tuesday’s Democratic primary let voters choose between very different candidates with differing visions and styles, and 40% of them chose Biden. The same was true four years ago, when Republican voters chose between Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio, Gov. John Kasich and Dr. Ben Carson. Trump won Arkansas with 32.8% of the vote, followed by Cruz with 30.5%.
However, the early date also forces candidates for every other contested office to spend a year campaigning, and it places yet another roadblock in front of anyone challenging an incumbent. If you wanted to run for any partisan office on the November 2020 ballot, you had to decide by November 2019.
At the presidential level, you could argue that the process has done what it was supposed to do this cycle. A couple of dozen Democrats vied for the nomination. They had their chance to make their case in crowded debates that were split in two to accommodate everyone. Those who couldn’t gain a national following and raise money were winnowed long before the Iowa caucus.
Still, this business where Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina always go first is getting annoying. The Iowa Democratic Party’s inability to count its own votes has only intensified the debate over whether this is the best way to select a nominee.
The current primary system is all many of us have ever known, so it’s easy to forget that it’s relatively new. For much of American history, presidential nominees were chosen at the party conventions, which recently have been just big, boring speech-a-thons. The Iowa caucus didn’t even exist until 1972. Other ideas have been floated such as a one-day national primary or rotating regional primaries.
This system is destined for at least a tweak because too many states want what Iowa and New Hampshire have.
It remains to be seen what that tweak will look like. In a better world, the process would start later, not earlier, but at least we had the chance to vote.
Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.