Viva l’ Presidential Preference Event
Here’s a new one by me, spotted in an AP story running in (among other places) the Portland (Maine) Press Herald:
“Maine’s is the only presidential preference event this weekend.”
Seems to be a clarifying shortcut for “primary or caucus” — give one name to that umbrella of events and sidestep some complicated phrasing?
It’s not common, at least not at the moment: a google search for “presidential preference event” yields ten whole hits; five of those are from stories similarly referencing the Maine event this weekend; the other five break down like so, the first two both links from the DNC’s demconvention.com site:
- Delegate Selection Rules, section 13H: State parties must take steps to educate the public that a non-binding presidential preference event is meaningless, and state parties and presidential candidates should take all steps possible not to participate.
- Regulations of the Rules and Bylaws Committee, regulation 4.26. rule 13.H: “Non-binding presidential preference event” includes beauty contest primaries and straw polls.
- AOL News, Nevada Caucas Poll: Nevada has never done a presidential preference event of this scale so early in the campaign season, making it hard to predict which candidate will come out on top in such a diverse state.
(Interesting note, there: this is the shorter blurb text displayed on a page where the poll is one of several Edwards-related stories; the text of the longer permalink version mentions caucuses explicitly and doesn’t include the word “preference” at all.)
- PDF (Akamai mirror) of 2008 DNC Delegate Selection Rules document, containing the same 13H text as the first item in this list.
- St. Joseph News-Press article on Iowa caucus: Iowa owns seven electoral votes when it counts, in November’s election, but unusual influence because of its first-in-the-nation status in a presidential-preference event.
So we’ve got three hits for really only two different DNC documents using the phrase as early as last year; and two other recent articles talking about Nevada and Iowa respectively.
Is the DNC actively (if not very effectively) encouraging the use of “presidential preference event” for referring to the mishmash of caucuses and primaries? Is there a stylesheet? Was this phrasing on the books before last year — in previous primary seasons in 2004, 2000, earlier?
And how have folks not adopting this nomenclature coping with the problem? References to “caucuses and/or primaries”? Simply calling them all “primaries” when it might include both? Aiming for something more general, like “contests” or “elections”?
Josh Millard Said,
February 1, 2008 @ 11:48 am
And another thought: the DNC’s use of “presidential preference event” occurs only in the context of negative language: non-binding events, things that don’t count.
So it’s possible that what is essentially presented (and possibly intended) as an official pejorative description of questionable events is being applied, in the cited news articles discussion Maine and Nevada and Iowa, to (DNC-wise) legitimate contests.
An inadvertant slur via misappropriation of the Convention’s own language?
Josh Millard Said,
February 2, 2008 @ 8:28 am
Some more aggressive googling turned up three references to the term back in the 2004 season:
- South Carolina crowds New Hampshire: One fly in the ointment: South Carolina, which has subsequently moved its presidential-preference event to February 3rd, just after New Hampshire, giving it a chance to become the barometric Southern state instead of Tennessee.
- Iowa caucus vs. New Hampshire primary: “My guess is that some political leaders in New Hampshire do not want the state to move to third on the presidential preference event list, so now some moves to make New Hampshire first…”
- Kerry campaign manager citing DNC regs re: DC primary. Same DNC language; letter only cites it, but this is from the 2004 handbook.
So it’s not an invention new to this cycle; how old is the phrase on the DNC books? Google of course being a mixed bag for digging into publishing history. And again, the DNC use specifically negative — Kerry’s folks invoking the rule to excuse themselves from the DC contest, here — while general press use is regarding legit, even A-list events.