Iowa governor vows caucuses will be held in '08, not in December, '07

[DeepModem Mom]

CNN: August 10, 2007
Iowa governor vows caucuses will be held in '08

DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) — Iowa Gov. Chet Culver vowed Friday to hold his state's presidential caucuses in January, despite speculation the contests would move to December in order to preserve the Hawkeye State's long-standing tradition of having the first say in helping select the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees.

"We have no interest in going in December, for a lot of reasons," said Culver at a news conference held in the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters. "This is the 2008 delegate selection process, and those delegates should be selected in 2008."

Culver's declaration comes 24 hours after the South Carolina Republican Party announced that it would hold its primary on January 19, an action that creates a domino effect and forces another traditional early voting state, New Hampshire, to move its primary to January 12 or perhaps earlier.

New Hampshire state law requires it to have a seven day buffer between its primary and a similar election. Iowa, too, is bound by its own state law to have an eight day buffer after its caucuses. Under the current circumstances, there is a very small window to hold all of these nominating contests in January. But Culver left open the possibility of changing the Iowa law to make sure his state is not caucusing in 2007....

***

As it now stands, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Florida are all holding either primaries or caucuses in January, with Michigan threatening to join this quintet. On February 5, more than 20 additional states could hold their own primaries. This has caused headaches for the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee, both of which have threatened to sanction several of these states for not abiding by established rules prohibiting the holding of nominating contests until February....

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/08/10/iowa-governor-vows-caucuses-will-be-held-in-08/

[rurallib]

1. 12:01 AM on New Year's Day. We have a room already reserved

for our caucus.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Not a bad idea -- a statewide New Year's Eve party, and then the caucuses! nt