By CHRIS SNYDER
Observer Staff

Washington’s Democratic, Republican and Statehood Green parties are hopeful that this year’s tri-state Presidential Preference Primary will attract candidates to the area despite calendar chaos and a history of meager personal campaigning.

Maryland, Virginia and the District will all hold their primaries on Feb. 12.

“[It] creates kind of a regional election day for the mid-Atlantic,” said Paul Craney, executive director of the District of Columbia Republican Committee (DCRC). “And because it’s not at the end of the primary cycle…it definitely makes our area in play for some of the candidates.”

Traditional first-in-the-nation states have been jockeying for the top spot, moving up their primary dates to stay ahead of the pack.

Donald Dinan, a member of the District of Columbia Democratic State Committee (DCDSC), is equally optimistic but recognizes that recent changes to the primary calendar have put the city at a slight disadvantage.

“When Feb. 12 was picked, you were at the very beginning of the cycle. Now everybody’s trying to move it up…pretty soon you’ll be in December voting,” he said.

Currently four GOP presidential candidates — Arizona Sen. John McCain, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) — have filed their slate of delegates for this year’s “winner-take-all” primary.

“The fact that we do have pretty much a wide-open election this year allows candidates to come in and talk to the primary voters if they’d like to,” Craney said.

Sixteen pledged elected delegates and three super delegates will be chosen to represent one specific candidate at next year’s Republican National Convention.

District Democrats are relying on different tactics to piggyback off the more likely attention of Maryland and Virginia.

“The television stations for the D.C./Maryland suburbs and northern Virginia are in D.C.,” said Dinan, chair of this year’s Delegate Selection Task Force. “They’re clearly going to campaign in Montgomery County and P.G. County and clearly going to campaign in northern Virginia. The only way to do that is you’ve got to physically come to D.C. So we’re hoping while they’re here in D.C. to get on television, that they’ll go down to the Mayflower Hotel or the Hyatt and go to a local function.”

Any registered District Democrat is allowed to attend a special pre-primary nominating caucus on Jan. 19, where they will vote to create a pool of delegates. The Feb. 12 primary vote will determine how many of the 10 elected delegates are pledged to each candidate at the national convention in Denver.

“The way things are shaping up, Clinton and Obama will clearly come out of D.C. with delegates, depending on how things go,” said Dinan, noting that the Obama campaign has been locally active at the grassroots level, while Clinton’s has been more of a structured top-down activism, reflecting their differences on the national level.

In addition to the elected delegates, another 31 are chosen by the state committee or include super delegates such as Mayor Adrian Fenty (D), Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), District members of the DNC and the two shadow senators. These delegates are not obligated to support any particular candidate at the national convention.

“We have more DNC members living here than any other state other than New York and California,” Dinan said. “D.C. is kind of a square peg in a round hole because we’re not a state, but we are treated as a state for the purposes of the Democratic Party.”

As of October, only the District and 21 states have recognized Green candidates on the ballot, according to the Green Party of the United States Web site. Members of the DC Statehood Green Party view their unique position on the ballot as an incentive to draw candidates.

“Since some states don’t even have primaries, there’s reason to visit us during our primary, then touch base with the other states another time,” said Ann Wilcox, a former steering committee member who helped draft this year’s primary preference plan.

Wilcox said the Green Party is focusing on three candidates who participated in the last national meeting in Reading, Pa. They are: local activist Jared Ball, former Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader.

Speaking of Nader’s possible run as a Green Party candidate, Wilcox said: “He’s definitely going to be a player because a lot of Greens remain very supportive of him.”

Their new plan is similar to the Democrats’, incorporating a proportional amount of delegates based on number of votes, the number of delegates apportioned by the national party and total voter turnout.

This is not the first time the District has struggled for attention during the primary. In 2004, local political leaders attempted to force a national spotlight onto the city by pushing for a city council vote to hold a non-binding Democratic primary on Jan. 12, giving the city an unofficial and unprecedented first-in-the-nation status.

The event’s sole purpose, said DC Vote Executive Director Ilir Zherka, was to draw attention to the lack of voting representation in Congress for district residents.

“Over 40,000 Washingtonians went out on that day and voted, so overall, I believe it was a very successful effort,” Zherka said.

Former Vermont Governor Howard Dean went on to win the special election that was dubbed a “beauty pageant” by some media outlets, while later losing the national Democratic nomination to Sen. John Kerry (Mass.).

“It cost the taxpayers about half a million dollars for a primary that didn’t count,” Craney said.

But Craney said the DCRC was also actively raising awareness for the cause, supporting a bipartisan bill introduced by Norton and Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) that would grant the city a full vote in the House of Representatives. He said their involvement was also unprecedented.

“DC Vote was very preoccupied for a little bit with trying to push the Davis-Norton bill in the House and the Senate,” Craney said. “We were very proactive in that legislation.”

He said the DCRC sent letters to conservative radio talk show hosts and met with Republican senators who might support the bill, despite the fact that state parties typically do not go on record supporting legislation.

Zherka said he hasn’t thought much about this year’s primaries, but he is actively getting his message out in other ways.

“We’re actually trying to focus on the presidential debates, and we’re trying to get the questions asked about D.C. voting rights,” he said.

IN 2004, DC Vote reached out to only the Democratic Convention. This year, Zherka said that considering how far the bill has come and the support it has received on both sides, they hope to have an opportunity to do something at the Republican Convention as well.

Each of the three major parties in the District has filed its updated and approved plans for the upcoming 2008 delegate-selection process, which is scheduled for Feb. 12. The deadline for candidates to petition for a spot on the ballot is Dec. 14.

	Democrat	Republican	Statehood Green
Number of registered voters as of Sept. 30, 2007	286,926	29,780	4,759
Type of Primary in 2007	Proportional Primary	Winner-Take-All Primary	Proportional Primary
Open/closed?	Closed	Closed	Closed
Number of elected delegates	10 pledged with three alternates	16 designated by candidate with 16 alternates	Undecided at this time, but there will be at least seven elected, according to David Bosserman, a D.C. delegate to the National Green Party
Number of delegates selected by state committee	30 with one alternate (includes both pledged and unpledged)	three (pledged)
Total sent to nominating convention	40	19
2008 national convention site	Denver	Minneapolis - Saint Paul	Chicago
Observer graphic by Chris Snyder Voter registration information provided by the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. 2008 Presidetial Preference Primary information compiled from the primary plans submitted by the DCDSC, DCRC and the DCSGC.