Plenty of reasons to get excited about primaries
1-30-08

Less than a week remains before Utahns will cast votes to help choose the presidential candidates that will face off on November’s ballot.
It’s too late to register to vote in Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican primary elections, but for those who are already registered: Get out and vote!
If there was ever a time for citizens to get involved in the political process, it is now. There are several reasons for people to pay closer attention than they might have in the past, and to take an active role early on. There are several reasons to get enthused about this year’s electoral season.
It’s the first time, really, that Utah has been even a small player in the presidential race. And that’s not just because Mitt Romney is running in it.
Utah has historically held its primary elections later in the year, well after Super Tuesday had pretty much already sealed up the nomination for one candidate or another.
But Utah, with a few other western states, moved its primary to Feb. 5, the aforementioned Super Tuesday. So many states will go to the polls on that day this year that it’s being called Super-duper Tuesday, or Tsunami Tuesday. Utah is a wave in that tsunami.
Moving Utah’s primary had the desired effect—presidential candidates are paying attention to little-ol’ five-electoral-vote Utah.
Utahns are seeing something for the very first time: active campaigning by presidential candidates long before the parties’ national conventions in the summer.
The state saw visits by candidates as early as late last summer and fall. Right now, we’re seeing television commercials. Our office even got a phone call from one of the campaigns last week trying to see how we would vote in the primary. In times past, that sort of thing hardly ever happened, if it did at all, even in the general election.
This is all part and parcel of something else Utahns are seeing for the first time in a very long time: people worth voting for.
For how many elections back has the conventional wisdom been that most people were not voting for a candidate, but against the other one? That seems to be changing.
We are seeing energetic campaigns and attractive candidates for both parties.
For the Republicans, there’s Mitt Romney. With his “Mormon connection,” need we say more, except that we have him partly to thank for saving the 2002 Winter Olympics, which had been mired in scandal.
Or there’s John McCain, senator from our neighbor to the south (Arizona), who might be more familiar and sympathetic to the ideals and concerns of those of us in the West, and who still has a hint of his former maverick appeal.
For the Democrats, there’s something symbolically satisfying about the possibility of Hillary going from former First Lady to first lady President. Just look at the big crack in that glass ceiling.
Or the possibility of the first black President in Barack Obama, who has offered hope and optimism perhaps not felt since JFK, and who has truly invoked the spirit of that President more than Dan Quayle could have ever dreamed.
We are in an advantageous position. We are far enough along in the process that we have seen what these candidates have to offer by way of policy, character and ability to move people. Yet we’re not so far along that the choice for either party has already been made for us.
Let’s take this opportunity and run with it.
See you at the polls.