Iowa loses its straw poll. Why not replace it here in New Jersey?

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Well, Iowa’s Ames-based straw poll is now a thing of the past, Save Jerseyans, due to lack of interest from the current crop of 2016 candidates. America’s first-in-the-nation caucus state will now have to hang its hat on only its caucuses. Still not too shabby in my humble opinion.

My two cents: maybe it’s time for New Jersey to get in the action?

I’m serious! Veterans political watchers are well aware of the seemingly-endless debate over the presidential primary calendar. Every state wants to be first, and to protect the states like New Hampshire with a firm death-grip on the honor, national GOP leaders have responded by assigning stiff delegate penalties for states that try to jump the line.

The problem, as I see it, is one of representation. Or accuracy in representation. Our Republican leaders love to talk about growing the party, and for the most part I do not doubt their sincerity, but a quick gander at the set primary schedule (some states are still figuring it out) belies their expressed concerns:

Monday, February 1: Iowa caucuses
Tuesday, February 9: New Hampshire
Saturday, February 20: South Carolina
Tuesday February 23: Nevada caucuses
Tuesday, March 1: Colorado caucuses; Massachusetts; Oklahoma; Tennessee; Texas; Vermont; Virginia; North Carolina
Saturday, March 5: Louisiana
Tuesday, March 8: Alabama; Hawaii caucuses; Mississippi; Michigan
Sunday, March 13: Puerto Rico
Tuesday, March 15: Illinois; Missouri; Florida; Ohio
Tuesday, March 22: Arizona; Utah caucuses
Tuesday, April 5: Maryland; Washington, DC; Wisconsin
Tuesday, April 26: Connecticut; Delaware; Pennsylvania; Rhode Island
Tuesday, May 3: Indiana
Tuesday, May 10: Nebraska; West Virginia
Tuesday, May 17: Kentucky; Oregon
Tuesday, May 24: Arkansas
Tuesday, June 7: California; Montana; New Jersey; New Mexico; South Dakota
July 18-21: 2016 Republican National Convention

I’ve bolded MA, VT, HI and MI because they’re the earliest “blue” states on the calendar. And only Michigan has ever truly been “competitive” in modern presidential political history. We have to wait until April (WI 4/5; PA 4/26) before any of the relatively large, genuinely competitive blue state primaries go down. In 2012, Mitt Romney was already the presumptive nominee by April 25th.

This cycle’s accelerated calendar doesn’t fix the core problem: an early GOP primary electorate that isn’t focused on winning back blue/purple territory.

And given what we saw in 2008 and 2012, with Democrats turning states like VA, NC and FL into swing states when they were relatively reliably red for decades, shouldn’t that consideration be priority #1 when selecting a candidate? Demographic trends strongly indicate that America is starting to look more like New Jersey than Iowa. We need to take it seriously.

I’m not suggesting that NJ can or should do anything different where 2016 is concerned, at least in terms of its primary. That would look like a nakedly pro-Christie move.

I am suggesting that a New Jersey straw poll might be a good place to start? It’d be a HUGE fundraiser for the cash-strapped NJGOP (assuming we can get participation), and with the NYC/Philly media markets close by and our state’s compact geography, it’d be an ideal early showcase for wealthy candidates AND long-short hopefuls/rising stars alike. By the same token, New Jersey’s expensive campaign environment would provide a natural advantage to candidates who can demonstrate, early on, an ability to raise money and execute a winning strategy while at the same time helping weed out less-serious contenders who are only in the game to sell books or land a lucrative Fox News contract.

Most importantly, New Jersey is a “blue” state with a purplish streak (as evidenced by Chris Christie’s political existence). The electoral map MUST grow, and if a GOP candidate can win here, and successfully market conservatism in locales like NJ-12 and Bergen County, then where can’t he/she succeed across the fruited plains? At the very least it’d serve as a laboratory of sorts for Republican messaging in tactics; at the moment, that critical process is dominated by states like Iowa and South Carolina that, respectfully, might as well be alien planets relative to, for example, Middlesex County, NJ or Bucks County, PA.

Better yet… imagine the fair food! No offense to our friends elsewhere, but I’ll take cured Italian meats, hot sausage ‘n’ peppers and zeppole over the alternatives ANY DAY OF THE WEEK and twice on Sunday. Do it at the beach, too. Dunes > corn.

But go ahead; substitute Michigan or Pennsylvania for New Jersey. This isn’t a Garden State-only pitch. The key point: my proposal would get plenty of backlash from the GOP establishment nation-wide, Save Jerseyans, which is the surest indicator, in my mind, that it’s an idea that Republicans NEED to consider in the years ahead. It’s long-past time to shake up the primary process. We could start that project right here, appropriately, in the crossroads of the American Revolution.

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