VPR: "Dean supports rotating regional presidential primaries"

[madfloridian]

From an interview today, audio at the link, about 20 minutes.

Dean supports rotating regional presidential primaries

"(Host) Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean says he'd like to see his party adopt a system of rotating regional presidential primaries beginning in 2012.

Dean says the approach would give most states an opportunity to have a greater influence on the selection of presidential nominees.


(Dean) "I think the thing to do is to move some of the other primaries back and then rotate them through so in the future every state can count on having some significant input into who the presidential nominee is."

Vermont will be holding its presidential primary on Town Meeting Day in the beginning of March. Dean says the primary could attract some attention if no presidential candidate is able to win 3 of the first 4 primary contests:

(Dean) "I think if it's not done in the first four primaries then I think probably the voters will wait until March to decide who it is. So, you may see some folks head up here, as for example Jimmy Carter did 1980 and Dick Gephardt did in 1988."

The DNC has told Democrats in Florida and Michigan that their delegates to the national convention won't be seated if these states go ahead with plans to hold primaries in January."

The interview became slightly combative. The interviewer asked him in rather terse terms why he was sanctioning Florida.

"Dean says he's not issuing threats - he's merely sticking to the rules of the Party:

Dean: "The rules say that (which were agreed to by Florida) that Florida would go on the fifth of February. They chose not to do that so they get sanctioned- that's not a surprise. I'm not carrying out a threat, it's not ‘us against Florida'. The rules are very clear: once you set the primary schedule, once everybody agrees to it, it has to stay intact because every state of course feels that they're the most important state."

I listened to it, and Dean really took issue with the interviewer using the word "chaos" to describe the primaries. Dean said he only getting gripes from Michigan and Florida, and the other states understand he is trying to respect their rights as well.

I got the impression the rules would be enforced across the board.

Actually he has often talked of rotating regional primaries, but no one noticed.

There was more to the interview, but a lot of stuff he couldn't talk about...like the other candidates or issues.