Politics & Other Mistakes: Primary colors

6 mins read
Al Diamon
Al Diamon

Once again, Maine has demonstrated that when it comes to presidential politics, this state is only slightly more critical to the outcome than such American territories as Palmyra Atoll (year-round population of zero) or Bajo Nuevo Bank (which is run by Columbia, but claimed by the United States, because it’s a major source of guano).

On an otherwise lovely March weekend, Ted (Booger-Eater) Cruz won a plurality of votes in Maine’s Republican caucuses, which were attended by a record crowd of 19,000 or slightly less than the census tally for Sanford. Bernie (Free Bird – And Free Everything Else) Sanders took the Democratic contest, which also produced an unprecedented turnout of 48,000 or 20,000 fewer folks than live in Portland.

What this reveals is that the evangelical underground, run through an assortment of fundamentalist churches and the Christian Civic League of Maine, can rally a crowd of supporters for their guy that’s somewhat smaller than the number of residents of Old Orchard Beach. On the Dem side, Bernie’s coalition of proto-socialists and people who just hate Hillary wasn’t quite able to muster as many supporters as Bangor’s official population.

In other words, about 68,000 pawns of the two parties’ extremes took part in the caucuses, while more than 900,000 other registered voters (minus the 14 or so hapless souls who’ve showed up at Green Independent Party caucuses so far) found more productive and/or enjoyable ways to spend their weekends.

As an indicator of public opinion, that amounts to little more than a pile of Bajo Nuevo Bank’s finest guano.

The limited turnout at caucuses – and as a result, the outsize influence of fanatics and kooks – has led some reformers to call for reinstating presidential primaries, something the state tried for two campaign cycles at the close of the 20th century. But the Dem turnout in the 1996 primary was barely 27,000, so there’s no guarantee of greater participation.

In 2000, over 160,000 voters cast ballots, helping George W. Bush edge John McCain on the Republican side, while Al Gore topped Bill Bradley for the Democrats. We know how well that worked out.

If you need further evidence that a primary wouldn’t significantly improve the process, consider the price tag. Political parties pay for caucuses. Taxpayers pay for primaries. The Secretary of State’s Office estimates that would require an extra $75,000, but that figure doesn’t include municipal costs. When they’re added in, the total comes to more than $1 million.

And that’s not all. Special interests would pick up the tab for all those TV commercials, which make financial sense in a primary, but don’t for a low-turnout caucus. As a labor leader put it during debate at the 1990 Democratic state convention over instituting a primary, “Maine Democratic politics should not be controlled by the boob tube.”

Of course, if you drop the word “tube,” you’d have the current situation.

If Maine had held primaries instead of caucuses this year, the results might have been a little different. Not better, mind you, just different. Donald Trump – who finished second, about 13 percentage points behind Cruz in the GOP caucusing – would likely have rallied his legions of know-nothings to surpass Cruz’s small cadre of pious whackjobs. As for the Democrats, Clinton’s endorsements from the party’s hierarchy, plus a solid get-out-the-vote effort might have reduced her margin of loss by 10 points or so.

A reasonable argument could be made that neither of these slight alterations is worth a million bucks.

Speaking of reasonable arguments, they prevailed in 2003, when the Legislature repealed the primary law, and again in 2012, when legislators refused to reinstitute it, citing the fact that nobody else paid attention to how Maine voted, anyway. “We could require that everybody show up at the polls stark naked,” one lawmaker lamented in a quote I’m totally making up, but absolutely think would be a great idea, “and we’d still only get 10 seconds on the national news.”

But if we also made the candidates strip down, we’d find out if The Donald is lying about his endowments.

That should earn us some viral video.

Nevertheless, anyone who tells you there’s a correlation between primaries and improved election results is feeding you a load of guano.

If your primary concern isn’t primaries, email aldiamon@herniahill.net.

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