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 SEGMENT ONE, HISTORY OF NOMINATION PROCESS |
SEGMENT FOUR |
| SEGMENT TWO |
SEGMENT FIVE |
| SEGMENT THREE |
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| SEGMENT ONE, HISTORY OF NOMINATION PROCESS |
SEGMENT FOUR |
| SEGMENT TWO |
SEGMENT FIVE |
| SEGMENT THREE |
| SEGMENT ONE, HISTORY OF NOMINATION PROCESS Return to index of stories... |
SEGMENT ONE, HISTORY OF NOMINATION PROCESS Important to remember, the presidential nomination process is EXTRA constitutional, there are no provisions outlining the process anywhere in the Constitution CR Presidential elections themselves were very much a work in process in the early years of the United States. CR During the framing of the Constitution, George Washington was the consensus choice to be the first President -- who else but the hero of the Revolutionary War, world figure, etc.? CR But after that, very uncertain. CR Some thought it would be fairly routine for no candidate to win a majority of votes in the Electoral College CR As a result, most elections would be decided by members of the House of Representatives CR What the Framers weren't counting on was the emergence of POLITICAL PARTIES to organize the world of American politics CR If anything, the Framers were a bit suspicious of political parties, which bore too close a resemblance to what James Madison labeled FACTIONS, or special interest groups that would put their own interests and concerns ahead of the common good. CR Nonetheless, political parties begin to emerge almost as soon as the new national government begins to govern CR Members of Washington's administration begin choosing sides - Vice President John Adams and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton become leaders of the Federalist Party. CR And Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson heads the Democratic-Republicans CR The two parties disagree, among other things, about the size and scope of the national government CR And it's the political parties who, over the years, have created the process by which they choose their candidates to run for president CR The process, as we shall see, has changed drastically over the last two centuries. But throughout it all, political parties tend to look for the same things in their candidates CR ELECTABILITY, ELECTABILITY, ELECTABILITY. Political parties exist, first and foremost, to get people elected to office, and gain control of the government. If parties fail at this for too long, they tend to decline and disappear fairly quickly CR Freelance on elements of ELECTABILITY here CR IDEOLOGY, candidate should represent the main principles / ideological beliefs of the party's members |
| SEGMENT TWO Return to index of stories... |
SEGMENT TWO , HISTORY OF NOMINATION PROCESS As we mentioned last time, political parties invented the process for selecting presidential nominees several times over the last two centuries CR scholars of the presidential nomination process say there are three types of factors that spark a change in how parties nominate candidates: CR some sort of crisis in the presidential election system, in which the process falters badly and elites scramble to make changes to fix it CR a broad popular movement that demands party elites to make the nomination process more democratic CR the possibility that changing the nomination process may give a political party the upper hand over the opposition CR And as always, when the rules are changed, expect the law of unforeseen consequences to kick in. Political elites, even though they are more knowledgeable about politics than most, are not visionaries who can see into the future and forecast how their changes will work out over time. CR This is especially true because when the rules of the game change, potential presidential candidates react accordingly and change their strategies for winning the game. CR So, more than once, reforms are often demanded to make course adjustments to an earlier set of reforms CR Historians generally discuss in terms of eras dominated by WHO was making the decisions about the party nominee. First up: the congressional caucus. CR Remember, by 1796, the Congress was pretty well divided into the first American political parties -the Federalists, who supported the Washington administration, and the Republicans, who opposed it. CR And it was the members of Jefferson's Republican party in Congress - known as the congressional caucus - who were the first presidential nominating body in American history. At this point, a small group of political elites was calling the shots regarding the nomination, and the caucus did so from 1800 to 1824. CR The Republican caucus, however, was ultimately a victim of the party's own success. After the War of 1812, the Federalists disappear as a viable national party. And without the motivation of a strong opposition to unite, Jefferson's party begins to fragment. And one of the results of this disintegration is the rise of a new type of nomination process: the national party convention. NEXT TIME |
| SEGMENT THREE Return to index of stories... |
Last time, we talked about the first attempt by political parties to select their nominees - the congressional caucus. This system, in which the Democratic-Republican party's members in Congress came together to reach consensus, worked fine for about 20 years. CR However, once the main opposition disappeared as a political force after the War of 1812, the Republican congressional caucus, designed to unite the party, became the scene of conflict between two rival party factions: the rising force of New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians and the declining force of Virginians. CR Things fell apart entirely in 1824, when Senator Martin Van Buren of New York failed to unite his party behind his chosen candidate, the Secretary of the Treasury, William Crawford of Georgia. Instead, because the party couldn't agree on a nominee, the 1824 election wound up a free-for-all. CR EVERYBODY ran that year, it seemed: Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Speaker of the House Henry Clay, and Tennessee Senator Andrew Jackson joined Crawford as candidates. Things had reached such a state of disarray, state legislatures were nominating candidates! CR Things went from bad to worse when the general election arrived, and no candidate won a majority of the votes in the Electoral College. Jackson had received more popular votes than any other candidate and won the most electoral votes. But it was the runner-up, John Quincy Adams, who became the next president by carrying thirteen states in the House of Representatives, which ultimately decided the election. CR Jackson and his followers called "foul." They alleged that Adams had made a "corrupt bargain" with rival candidate Henry Clay--after his victory in the House, Adams chose Clay to be Secretary of State. Jackson wasted little time mounting his ultimately successful 1828 campaign, which began in the spring of 1825, when he was nominated again by the Tennessee legislature. CR SO HERE'S THE BIG PICTURE FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION PROCESS: Political parties clearly needed better tools for organizing themselves than the caucus provided. Essentially, political parties had become nothing more than vehicles for candidates, with little identity of their own. American politics had been so personal during most of these years that the parties in 1828 did not have consistent labels other than their association with the candidates. CR The solution for American political parties was the NATIONAL CONVENTION. Parties borrowed the idea of a grand national meeting from evangelicals, who were engaged at the time in the religious revivial movement known as the Second Great Awakening. And it wasn't one of the major parties, but a third party, the Anti-Masons who introduced the idea of a national nominating convention in 1831. CR In 1832, Andrew Jackson's Democratic Party and their opponents, the Whigs, both held conventions which nominated candidates. By the election of 1840 the national party convention had become an institution of presidential nomination politics, and took on a form that resembles the ones Democrats and Republicans hold every four years today. The importance of local politicians, the electability of candidates, the sectional balance of tickets, and the formal adoption of platforms would dominate the national conventions throughout the century of their dominance. CR The key thing to understand about national party conventions is that they both centralized and localized presidential politics. CR On the one hand, the fact that the convention chose the nominee meant that the standard-bearer took his mandate from the NATIONAL party base , not just from the party's congressional delegation, as it was with the caucus. CR On the other hand, the real centers of power at the convention, as in the political party itself, were STATE AND LOCAL party organizations. American parties, like the country itself, were very much FEDERAL. CR LET'S QUICKLY REVIEW THE RULES OF THE CONVENTION. Nominees had to win a majority of convention delegates. Parties distributed delegates to states, based on the number of votes the states held in the Electoral College. In other words, the larger the state's population, the more delegates that state controlled at the convention. CR Power flowed upward, not downward, from local caucuses and local conventions, to state conventions, and ultimately the national convention. Delegates were chosen either by local or state party meetings or by appointment by the governor or a state party leader. CR The procedure for selecting delegates varied significantly; some state parties opted for a relatively open process, while in other state organizations, party bosses ensured that they would dole out delegate privileges. CR Convention delegates enjoyed some independence of judgment when it came to selecting a nominee, at least in theory. In practice, state party leaders kept a tight leash on the "discretion" of their delegates, ensuring that they would not wander too far while they used them as bargaining chips in sessions with other party chieftains. The Democratic Party, in fact, acknowledged that the state parties had a formal right to bind their members to a particular choice of nominee. CR The politics of conventions involved negotiations between the supporters of "frontrunners" and those putting forth so-called "favorite sons" over the choice of the vice presidential candidate and crucial elements of the party platform. CR Negotiations over the nomination were often long and convoluted. CR Delegates voted, and voted again and again on the convention floor, while party bosses wheeled and dealed behind the scenes. Vote-trading and other complex machinations were customary features of conventions. The Democratic convention became the butt of jokes in 1924 when delegates took 103 ballots to choose a nominee. CR "A second-hand convention is one of the hardest things to get rid of in the world," the humorist Will Rogers quipped. |
| SEGMENT FOUR Return to index of stories... |
Page 1, Segment 4, Origin of Primaries What is a primary? An election in which a group of voters chose who their party's nominee for an elected office will be. Presidential primaries born out of the Progressive movement in late 1800s, early 1900s. CR The Late 1800s known as the Golden Age of political parties. And not in a good way! Parties were seen as corrupt and increasingly out of touch with citizens of a rapidly expanding and changing US. CR The progressive era was a wide reform movement, largely within the Republican Party, that was aimed at reducing the power of party bosses and the corruption of primarily big city political machines, such as Tammany Hall in New York. Progressive reforms included the secret ballot; referenda, recall and initiative statutes; and the creation a professional civil service to reduce patronage in government jobs CR "Direct Primary" elections, letting the people choose the party candidates, were first used at the state and local level as a way of circumventing the power of party bosses to control elections. However, primary elections are still under the control of the party in that they set the rules about who can and who cannot vote in a primary CR Wisconsin has the first presidential primary in 1908. Robert La Follette, Governor of Wisconsin, was central to the progressive era and instituted the direct primary in Wisconsin while he was governor. Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Oregon were early adopters of presidential primaries. CR Many varieties of primaries exist. Open primaries are open to voters of any political party and even to people who have no political party. Closed primaries are limited to voters who register themselves as members of a party. CR New Hampshire's presidential primary is a semi-closed primary - registered Democrats and Republicans can vote only in their party's primary. Undeclared, or Independent voters can chose to vote in either the Democratic or the Republican primary. |
| SEGMENT FIVE Return to index of stories... |
Page 1, Segment 5, Origin of the NH Primary NH adopted direct primaries for state elections starting in 1910. CR Legislation for a Presidential Primary passed in 1913. 1913 HB 430: "An Act to provide for the Election of Delegates to the National Conventions by Direct Vote of the People" NH held its first Presidential primary in 1916. CR New Hampshire's presidential primary was not the first in 1916. Indiana held its contest a week earlier, and Minnesota held its election on the same day as New Hampshire. CR How did NH become the first primary? We're cheap! Initially the new law called for the presidential primary to be held in May of each presidential election year, but in 1915, the year before the new law was to take effect, the State Legislature decided it could save money if the primary were held on the same day as the traditional town meeting day - the second Tuesday in March. CR For over two centuries, New Hampshire's town meetings had been scheduled in mid-March, after the most brutal part of the winter, but before the muddy season would make it difficult to travel from the farms surrounding the town center. And, of course, farmers couldn't take time in the spring or summer or fall for the meetings, so mid-March was the best time of the year for such activities. Thus it was that the northern clime and Yankee frugality both contributed to New Hampshire's eventual premier position in the presidential nomination process. CR Four years later, widespread disillusionment with the progressive electoral reforms led many states to abandon the primary process, Minnesota among them. Indiana moved its primary to May, leaving New Hampshire holding the first primary - a position it has maintained now for close to a century. CR From 1920 until 1948, the New Hampshire Primary consisted of ballots only for delegates to the party conventions. Typically, the delegates would consist of some combination of present or former elected officials, plus other prominent individuals in the state, especially those who held leadership positions in the state's party organization. Most delegates would be "uncommitted," which means that when they attended their party's convention, they would decide then which presidential candidate to support. More often than not, they would be told by the leader of the state delegation which candidate to support. CR Thus, even though rank-and-file voters were participating in a presidential primary, they never got an opportunity to express their views about the presidential candidates themselves. Instead, they voted just for delegates to the party convention. During the primary campaign, some would-be delegates might advertise their support for a particular presidential candidate to boost their chances of being selected to attend the party's convention. But others were so well-known, they were able to win on the basis of their own popularity. |