Michigan to move up its primary
Posted: Friday, August 17, 2007 1:15 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
States
From NBC News' Chuck Todd
According to sources inside both parties, the two state parties in Michigan have agreed to move the state's primary -- legislatively -- to Jan. 15. This is a compromise date out of respect for Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, who really wanted to move the primary to Jan. 8. Others wanted the primary on Jan. 22 as a way to, essentially, play ball with the other early states. There was a nice window being created for a Jan. 22, 2008 event. But by moving to Jan. 15, this will put pressure on the other early states to either entertain a December event or lobby the two national parties to not sanction Michigan at all.
The state senate is going to move a bill next week and it will be legislatively driven; the state will pay for the primary, not the two parties.
Bottom line: Michigan holding its primary on Jan. 15 means New Hampshire's window to hold a primary has been moved up further to Jan. 8. And then there's Iowa, who now could face a decision to let New Hampshire leap frog it or somehow go 2-3 days before New Hampshire (say, on Sat. Jan. 5) or in December -- something the governor of Iowa said he didn't want to do.
It's a mess, and Levin apparently was determined to break the calendar, rather than try and play within the loose set of rules that seemed to be developing between the early states. This guarantees that both the DNC and RNC will have to take up reforming the calendar for 2012 at their respective 2008 conventions.
