Today’s guest post is from Christopher J. Galdieri, Associate Professor of Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Professor Galdieri is not only an expert on the television show VEEP, but on the New Hampshire primary and presidential nominating systems. His books include Stranger in a Strange State: The Politics of Carpetbagging from Robert Kennedy to Scott Brown: https://www.sunypress.
One of the late entrants to the Democratic nomination contest is Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City. Bloomberg is not the first New York mayor to run for president, or even the first New York mayor to run for president in 2020. But he is the first to make skipping the earliest contests in the primary process a central part of his campaign strategy. He has conspicuously declined to file paperwork to appear on the ballot in New Hampshire, and plans to skip the other early contests in Iowa, Nevada, and South Carolina as well. Instead, Bloomberg’s campaign says, he will launch his campaign on Super Tuesday, when 14 states (along with American Samoa and Democrats Abroad) will hold their contests.
That Bloomberg wants to skip the earliest contests is understandable. Rival candidates have been visiting these four states for months – years, in some cases – and have built organizations and contacts and reputations there. In the later states, few of the candidates have done the same, for the simple reason that they won’t need a presence there unless they do very well in the first four contests. Bloomberg’s thinking seems to be that by starting on Super Tuesday, he can set himself up as an alternative to whichever set of candidates emerges from the first four states. And Bloomberg is spending lots of money, right now, on television ads there while the rest of the field is focusing on the early states.
This is a terrible plan.
This is a terrible, no-good, very bad plan.
I say this not because I live in New Hampshire, but because this plan misunderstands the dynamics of the modern presidential primary system on a profound and fundamental level.
Many have criticized this system, including Julian Castro, another Democratic candidate, who has argued that an increasingly diverse Democratic Party should not have its nominations so strongly influenced by two overwhelmingly white states. Others have argued that it is unfair for a cluster of early states to always play such a big role in presidential nominations. But in terms of campaign strategies, presidential candidates have to run in the system that exists, not the system they wished existed. Iowa, New Hampshire, and the other early states cannot be skipped for the simple reason that they cast the very first ballots in presidential nomination contests.
This is such an elementary fact of presidential nomination politics that it almost doesn’t bear repeating; it’s a bit like asking someone if they realize that they’re breathing oxygen, or that the sky is blue. And yet, on rare occasions presidential candidates need to be reminded of this fact. And this is one of those occasions.
Here is what will happen in the early states.
Someone will win in Iowa, and someone will win in New Hampshire. Other candidates will place second and third. Depending on who these candidates are, and how expected or unexpected their performance is, some of those best-performing candidates will move on to Nevada and South Carolina. Throughout this stage of the nomination contest, the sprawling primary contest, which has seen dozens of candidates and would-be candidates shuttling around the country from early states to debates to candidate forums to TV studios, will come to focus on two or possibly as many as three or even four candidates, and the press coverage will reflect that fact. For millions of Americans who do not follow politics at all closely, the first things they learn about the Democratic nomination contest is who is winning and who is beating expectations in the early states.
And that will be the case no matter how the contest shapes up. Perhaps 2020 will be like 2004, when John Kerry won Iowa and New Hampshire and the race wrapped up quickly. Perhaps it will be like 2008, when the race narrowed down to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who then battled it out to the last primary. Perhaps it will be like 1992, where Bill Clinton’s second-place finish in New Hampshire revived his candidacy but Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown still continued their campaigns well into the primary season. Perhaps it will be like 2000, when John McCain gave George W. Bush an early scare but Bush quickly recovered. Or perhaps 2020 will see a split decision among the early states, with three or even four candidates all doing well enough to be plausible nominees.
In any case, the results of these early contests will dominate election coverage through the South Carolina primary. Super Tuesday will take place just three days after that. When is Mike Bloomberg supposed to gain traction? If someone sweeps the first four states, what is the argument to vote for Bloomberg instead of the dominant candidate? If there’s a heated contest between two or three or four candidates, how will Bloomberg inject himself into the mix without looking like a Johnny-come-lately? Yes, Bloomberg’s current ad spending has allowed him to register in the high single-digits in national primary polls. But there is no national primary, and advertising effects are fleeting; he will have to spend at the same rate just to avoid losing ground between now and Super Tuesday. It’s tough to see how this ends with Bloomberg, rather than one of the other candidates, winning the Democratic nomination.
Whatever one thinks about the process by which American parties choose their nominees for president, it tends to result in the leaders of the early contests dominating media coverage. They’re helped in this by media outlets’ desire to have an unwieldly field of candidates winnowed down to a manageable number competing against each other in a race with a clear narrative. Perhaps 2020 will be different, but I wouldn’t bet the rent on it.