Wednesday, December 6th, 2006...1:17 pm
The Pachyderms Gear Up For 2008 Primary
Here’s my prediction: John McCain will win the Arizona Republican Presidential Primary in 2008. (Or “Preference Election” as the Secretary of State says)
I know, I am going out on a real long limb there.
Things like the recent defeat of Fife Symington in the District 11 race may show that there are grumblings on the part of the grassroots, but I don’t think their grievances translate to the wider swath of voters that will be voting in the primary.
McCain is appearing to take the contest seriously in Arizona, however. According to some of our Republican bloggers, McCain has brought Mike Hellon on board to organize Southern Arizona for him. Admitedly, his low percentage in his primary for congress may not impress, but he didn’t tick any significant part of the Republican electorate off and he does have strong organizational skills and good connections.
Mitt Romney has already made a visit out here and will probably be out here again. Romney has some family connections to the state (I dated a distant relative of his once) and it is possible that he could get some support from the Mormon community here. Here is my question though: does Romney, a governor of “Taxachusetts” after all, make for an alternative to McCain for conservatives?
James Phillips, an ASU Grad student, is one person who thinks so. He has started a blog called AZ for Mitt, which is dedicated to boosting Romney and trashing McCain.
Who else will try to make a stand out here?
NB - A while back, I talked about a possible Mormon-Evangelical split as evidenced by who supported Don Goldwater vs. who supported Len Munsil. Phx Kid pooh-poohed the whole notion, but check out this stat from Rasmussen that says that 53% of Evangelicals wouldn’t vote for a Mormon (compared to 43% of the elctorate). Also, Amy Sullivan has this piece in Washington Monthly with her take on whether the Republican’s Evangelical base will accept a Mormon nominee. On the other side of that, there is an Evangelicals for Mitt site.
One error I noticed in Sullivan’s article. In it, she states that Romney would be “the first Mormon to run for president.” I’m imagining that she means the first nominee, since Romney would be the fourth (at least), following on the heels of Orrin Hatch, Mo Udall and Mitt’s father, George Romney.
2 Comments
December 6th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Ted,
I was not able to find my past comment (I think it was from a while ago) so I am going from memory. I do not think I pooh-poohed it as much as just said that I had not noticed any split in my little corner of the Republican world. Even with the poor election results I have found the evangelical and LDS conservatives as united as ever.
I cannot speak to the national implication for Romney but many of my local LDS acquaintances were strong Munsil supporters.
My guess is that IF Romney wins the Republican nomination and faces a classic Northeaster liberal (Say Al Gore) then evangelicals will vote for Mitt. Everything is in a vacuum until the two parties choose their actual candidates.
December 7th, 2006 at 7:55 pm
Mormon might support an evangelical candidate like Munsil, but most evangelicals WILL NOT support a Mormon. Many evangelicals regard Mormonism as a suspect cult and not a form of Christianity at all. Witness the number of evangelical Republicans who refused to support Matt Salmon for governor a while back.
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