Ready for Reform

Trying to make primaries shorter and more select

Ever since Senator George McGovern and his supporters began to downgrade the role of party bosses and officials in the nomination of presidential candidates, Democrats have voiced increasing concern about the primary process. There was the perennial fear that it was too drawn out, with state caucuses and primaries spread over as many as five months. Increasingly too, it seemed chaotic, with many candidates splintering state delegate votes. Now, after two years of study, a 58-member Democratic Party commission, headed by Michigan's state chairman, Morley Winograd, has proposed a set of reforms that would make campaigns somewhat less taxing for primary candidates. In addition, the reforms would make it tougher for primary also-rans to pick up convention votes, would allocate 25% of every state's delegation to members of minority groups and, most significantly, would make it somewhat more difficult for relative unknowns--like the Jimmy Carter of early 1976--to win the nomination.

Most sweeping of the proposed changes, which the party's National Committee is expected to approve at an April meeting, was the recommendation that all delegate selection take place within a period of 14 weeks or less--from the second Tuesday in March to the second Tuesday in June. That would delay, and downgrade in symbolic importance, Iowa's January delegate caucus, where Jimmy Carter first won national attention in 1976. To help build a party consensus, the commission further recommended that no candidate be awarded convention delegates unless he had received at least 15% of the vote cast in caucuses or state elections during the first third of the primary period; in the second third, the ante would be raised to 20%, and in the season's final third, 25%. All states would be given 10% more delegates, with the new posts automatically allotted to party and state officials.

No sooner were the recommendations announced than some Democrats charged they were rigged to make it easier for Incumbent Carter to resist challengers in 1980. With a shortened season, the argument went, it would be harder for new faces to become prominent; also there would be a shorter period during which an incumbent would have to keep challengers at bay. But most of the proposed reforms were under study before Carter's term began. He could be their beneficiary, but, then again, the new barriers placed before less popular candidates could lead to early coalitions behind a strong challenger. -

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