Outside view: Saving the primary

The following editorial appeared Tuesday in the Longview Daily News.

Credit the state Republican Party with salvaging Washington’s 2008 presidential primary election. The party’s 78-member central committee decided over the weekend to use the results of the primary to allocate 51 percent of the GOP’s delegates to the national nominating convention.

Absent the decision to allocate at least a portion of party delegates on the basis of primary voting, Washington lawmakers very likely would have moved next year to cancel the presidential primary election, as they did in 2004.

The state Democratic Party chose in April to continue ignoring the presidential primary, using precinct caucuses to allocate all of its delegates to the party’s national convention. Had the Republicans done the same, a presidential primary election could be viewed as irrelevant. Accordingly, it would have been difficult to make a case for spending almost $10 million on an election that was largely symbolic.

The Republican Central Committee’s vote Saturday in Yakima to give the 2008 presidential primary substance was a welcome surprise for many, including this newspaper’s editorial board.

Previous to the meeting, some members of the GOP’s executive board had argued against allocating any delegates on the basis of the presidential primary vote. They feared the potential of a crossover, spoiler vote by Democrats who felt they had no practical reason to participate in their party’s primary election.

While that potential may exist, there is little reason to suspect significant numbers of Democrats will exploit it. As Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed pointed out in a press release last week, it hasn’t happened in three previous presidential primaries in which Republicans selected all or a portion of their delegates via the primary and Democrats were given no practical reason to vote their party’s primary ballot.

Our preference, of course, would have been for both major political parties to decide to allocate all of their delegates according to the results of the 2008 presidential primary. There’s little to recommend party caucuses over a primary election when just 2 percent to 4 percent of voters typically show up for the caucuses. In 2000, for example, an estimated 60,000 Washington voters participated in Democratic and Republican party caucuses, while more than 1.3 million participated in the presidential primary.

But we’ll gladly take half a loaf – or, more correctly, slightly more than a quarter loaf – in order to save the 2008 presidential primary election. It’s important that Washingtonians have this opportunity to voice their preference, even if most party leaders don’t want to hear it.