State may cancel its presidential primary

OLYMPIA — Washington state may cancel next year’s Super Tuesday presidential primary, considering it a $6 million waste of scarce tax dollars.

Critics noted Monday that Democrats don’t use the results to allocate national convention delegates, and Republicans already know who their nominee will be.

The old caucus system, such as Iowa uses, should suffice, and won’t cost the state a dime, they said.

Sen. Jim Kastama, D-Puyallup, is preparing legislation to suspend the election for 2004 only. He said it may require a one-day special session of the Legislature to call off the election in time to save the full $6 million.

Gov. Gary Locke will study the proposal, said his legislative director, Bill Alkire. "Anything that can save dollars will be on our radar screen," he said. "The governor would like to chew on it."

Secretary of State Sam Reed, the state’s chief elections officer, said he will resist the change, fearing it could lead to abolition of the presidential primary. The primary remains the best way to involve ordinary citizens, he said.

The primary, created in 1989, drew more than 1.3 million voters in 2000, easily 10 times the number of those who attended party caucuses in pre-primary days, Reed said Monday.

Reed, in consultation with the parties, previously set next March 2 as the date for Washington’s primary, the same date picked by California, Ohio, New York and other states.

But the Democratic National Committee later told state Democrats they can’t use the primary for anything more than a nonbinding beauty contest. The state party’s original plan, to use the primary to pick 20 percent of the delegates and Feb. 7 caucuses to pick the rest, would be too confusing to voters and unfair to candidates, the DNC said.

State Republicans decided at their central committee meeting in Walla Walla over the weekend to allocate a third of the delegates through the primary and the rest through the old caucus process.

Bottom line, say legislative critics, is that Democrats aren’t using the primary and Republicans don’t have a contest this year, so why have a meaningless election?

"It’s simple — a rather obvious idea, why not just cancel it for this year?" Kastama said in an interview. "Maybe in another budget year, when the economy wasn’t so bad. But now, I would like to take that money and put it into the Basic Health Program, where we had to cut, and to pay for performance audits."

Reed, a Republican, said he would be sorry to see any setbacks for the primary.

"Having a presidential primary has attracted a lot of major candidates to this state," he said. "Even a beauty contest creates momentum for a presidential campaign. Washington is the second-largest state in the western United States and it is taken seriously.

"The bottom line question is how should we be nominating the president of the United States? Should it be through a caucus system that is sparsely attending by a few insiders, oftentimes partisans with an ax to grind, or by popular election?"