New Hampshire Retains First-in-the-Nation Status Jan. 8 Primary Will Kick Off Presidential Race ELECTIONS 2008

By Julie Bosman

New Hampshire has officially scheduled its first-in-the-nation presidential primary for Jan. 8, ending months of hedging and solidifying what has been a chaotic primary calendar that moves the nominating process closer to the start of the year.

The announcement Wednesday, from William Gardner, New Hampshire’s secretary of state, came hours after the Michigan Supreme Court decided that that state’s primary could go forward on Jan. 15.

Iowa has already scheduled its caucuses for Jan. 3. All told, the contests, along with a megaprimary day involving more than 20 states on Feb. 5, will mean an unusually early nominating season as states have battled for influence by moving up their primaries.

“New Hampshire has held the first presidential primary in the nation since 1920,” Gardner said Wednesday in Concord. “This tradition has served our nation well, as decades of candidates and presidents have said.”

Gardner was widely expected to choose Jan. 8, but until Wednesday left open the possibility that the primary could fall in December. He has repeatedly said that he would set the date for New Hampshire’s primary only after Michigan made a firm decision on its primary.

New Hampshire state law dictates that it holds the first primary in the nation, and the Jan. 8 date makes the 2008 primary the state’s earliest ever.

This year, the primary calendar has been nothing short of a mess, with states leapfrogging each others’ contests, and the national parties imposing penalties on states that scheduled their primaries before party rules allowed. Michigan, for instance, could lose half of its Republican delegates and all of its Democratic delegates.

Officials in Michigan and elsewhere have argued that Iowa and New Hampshire, both with relatively small, white populations, have carried disproportionate influence in the primary process. But Iowa and New Hampshire fought back, scheduling their contests earlier and arguing that residents there are uniquely qualified to vote on presidential candidates first.

Michigan has been virtually ignored by the Democratic candidates, most of whom have signed a pledge not to campaign there. All of the major candidates, with the exception of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, have officially withdrawn their names from the Michigan ballot.

A Jan. 8 primary gives New Hampshire only five days to grab the national spotlight after the Iowa caucuses. It had eight days in previous years.

The campaigns reacted to the news tentatively, a few releasing watery statements lauding New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status.

Some Clinton supporters have said they wanted a short window between Iowa and New Hampshire, in the belief that should someone else win the Iowa caucus, he would not have enough time to use momentum from that victory to try to capture New Hampshire.

In an interview on Nov. 5, Gardner talked for hours about New Hampshire’s unique political culture, the small scale of its government and the civic-mindedness of its residents.

And he took offense, he said, over suggestions that the first-in- the-nation primary status should be conferred to another state with a more diverse population.

“I think of it this way,” Gardner said, standing in the aisle of the assembly hall where the state Legislature meets. “A nut falls in the forest. The seeds take hold. The big tree happened a long, long time ago. You can’t just plant the tree somewhere else. You can’t just re-create this.”

Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.

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