ICHITA, Kan. - How's this for humble?
As other states push their presidential primaries ever earlier in a scramble for influence, some Kansas leaders are considering scrapping their contest altogether.
Their state is too small to be a player, they reason, and their election comes too late to matter.
So why bother with the pretense of voting? Especially when the state budget is tight, and holding the election would cost at least $1.6 million.
''It seems to me it's a very extravagant expenditure when we have very little effect [on the presidential nomination],'' said state Senator Janice Hardenburger, a Republican who sponsored a pending bill with bipartisan support to do away with the primary.
''There's a lot of people who will scream at you, who think you're taking away their right to express their choice,'' Hardenburger added. ''But that choice goes nowhere.''
That sounds defeatist to some Kansans.
Governor Bill Graves, a Republican, maintains there's always a chance voters in Kansas will make a difference; as his spokesman, Don Brown, put it: ''You just never know how you're going to impact the process.''
Other influential voices, however, are not so sure the principle is worth all that money. Graves has cut the state budget 1 percent across the board. He also has put on hold some popular proposals, such as a program to help children with mental health problems.
So while some political leaders want an election, ''we're not going to push for it at all costs,'' said R.J. Wilson, director of the Kansas Democratic Party. The $1.6 million, he mused, ''could go a long way toward [improving] education.''
Hardenburger has calculated a primary would cost the state $4 for every vote cast. To her, that's money down the drain.
Even if Kansas axes its primary, residents still will have a chance to weigh in on the candidates. Each party will have to hold - and pay for - a surrogate election to pick its national convention delegates.
The parties might sponsor caucuses - informal meetings where voters get together to talk over their preferences. They might hold conventions, renting auditoriums so party members can be polled. Or they might arrange mini-primaries - typical ballot-box elections but with limited polling places.
Whatever the arrangements, such party-run elections tend to draw fewer voters than state-sponsored primaries.
In 1996, for example, lawmakers canceled the primary on the grounds that everyone knew Kansas would vote for native son Bob Dole on the Republican ticket, while President Clinton faced no real Democratic challenge.
The party caucuses held instead attracted fewer than 40,000 voters; a traditional primary would have drawn 500,000, said Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh - who is lobbying hard for the state to hold its primary, as scheduled, April 4. A decision must be made by mid-February.
Thornburgh's even convinced himself that Kansas can matter, despite its paltry delegate count. The state selects less than 1 percent of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, and just 1.6 percent of Republican delegates. In his fantasy, every candidate ends up winning a few victories during the crush of primaries in early March, so there's no clear winner by the time Kansans march to the polls.
''We'll be very well-positioned to be kingmakers,'' Thornburgh said. But even he has to admit that candidates don't exactly flock to Kansas to court votes.
Patrick J. Buchanan did stop by Wichita recently to woo Reform Party voters at a $75-a-person reception. Democrat Bill Bradley swung by, too, and did his best to boost civic confidence: ''I'm here to show ... that you're important to me and important to the country,'' he told Kansans at an airport rally. Still, Thornburgh said, ''Kansas is one of those states [candidates] like to fly over and say, `Look at the pretty wheat fields.'''
Thornburgh's solution is to push for a rotating primary system that would divide the country into four regions, which would take turns voting first.
Another option would be for Kansas to move its primary up in a bid for more clout. But that gambit has not worked particularly well for rural states in the past.
North Dakota, for instance, bumped its primary to February in 1996, hoping candidates would swarm into Bismarck - spending money on TV ads and bringing national attention to a state starved for tourists. But North Dakota in February proved not a huge draw; there weren't enough voters to make stopovers worthwhile, especially not during blizzard season. This time around, North Dakota has canceled its primary.
