MARTIN F. NOLAN

California's primary race

By Martin F. Nolan, Globe Staff, May 12, 1999

SACRAMENTO - The New Hampshire primary celebrates its 50th anniversary this year in the ominous shadow of a de facto national primary. In 1949, a young Granite State legislator, Dick Upton, sought to add a "presidential preference" line to the primary ballot. In 1952, the primary was held in the second Tuesday in March, a date established in 1803 for town meetings after winter's thaw and before spring planting, a time known as "mud season."

The primary is now known as "mud season" for other reasons, but soon it may vanish in the mother of all mudslides. Last week, California's governor, Gray Davis, signed a bill here that tries to solve legal problems in counting votes after the newest, biggest primary on March 7.

"This will ensure that California will have a voice in the upcoming presidential primary," said Davis, a Democrat. Secretary of State Bill Jones, a Republican, said: "This legislation solves a short-term problem with political party rules in 2000. For the first time in a quarter-century, California will decide who is nominated to be our next president."

When its primary was held in June, California was the showdown state, featuring battles between Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller in 1964 and Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern in 1972.

Since then, Iowa's caucuses have become a de facto primary. Other states have tried to snare New Hampshire's sunshine, but the Granite State has moved its date deeper into February's sleet season. Political scientists, along with secretaries of state, have urged a rational, rotating system, giving each region of the country a decisive early primary.

Political parties have been too busy raising money to deal with rational ideas. Clout, therefore, fills the vacuum. New Hampshire sent fewer than 500,000 voters to the polls in 1996. California sent more than 9.6 million voters. Size matters. California wishes to be heard.

The myths and traditions of New Hampshire still dominate presidential politics. Last week in Austin, Governor George W. Bush of Texas mused to Walter R. Mears of the Associated Press: "I think that one of the things I'm good at is campaigning. I like people a lot -- I like to shake hands and I like to look people in the eye and say I'd like for you to hear me and help me out." Yet grange halls in Fresno and coffee shops in Coronado will go largely unvisited by live presidential candidates in the week before March 7.

Lamar Alexander, who has run for president before, had a more realistic assessment. "Fourteen percent of all the people in this country live in California," he said. "So it makes California more important and it makes Iowa and New Hampshire, which come earlier, even more important than that."

Since Democratic bosses stole the presidential nomination in 1968 in Chicago, parties have often revised the method of choosing presidents, efforts that foundered on the iron rule of unintended consequences. (In 1988, "Super Tuesday" was supposed to nominate a Southern Democrat. Michael Dukakis, not Dixie's darlin', won.)

California's move is still iffy. The state's voters approved an "open primary" law in 1996, mostly because party leaders opposed the idea. In 1998, by a 54-46 percent, Californians refused to change the law for presidential primaries, even though the big shots in Washington wanted them to.

The law Davis signed involves a complicated vote-counting system that no one has challenged in court so far. California is a litigious place, so March 8 may not reveal a pair of crowned presidential nominees but a mob of bickering lawyers.

Democracy on a large scale is difficult. In March, both parties may be echoing noted Californians. They can croon, along with the Grateful Dead, "What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been." They can also echo the classic lament of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy: "Another fine mess."