“We’re probably not nominating the best people to be the leader of our respective parties,” Gov. Gary Herbert told POLITICO.
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert. / Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
By Caitlin Oprysko | POLITICO
Utah’s Republican governor on Friday argued for scrapping the current presidential primary schedule, suggesting that it could be prematurely killing the candidacies of the best White House contenders.
“Unfortunately, because we don’t have a good election process, we’re probably not nominating the best people to be the leader of our respective parties to hold the highest office in the land,” Gov. Gary Herbert said at POLITICO’s 10th annual State Solutions conference. “I just think there’s a better way to do things.”
The outgoing governor’s complaint that the current nominating process is “chaos” comes days after the Iowa Democratic Party bungled its caucus on Monday night. The national party chairman is now calling for a recanvass, the state party chairman is calling for an autopsy, and multiple candidates are claiming victory while media outlets have refused to declare a winner.
But criticism of the first two early voting states — Iowa and New Hampshire — had already reached a fever pitch even before the Iowa debacle had pundits predicting the end of the state’s privileged status.
Critics have said Iowa and New Hampshire don’t reflect the diversity of the rest of the country enough to deserve the outsize influence they hold over the nominating process. And in the days since Monday’s caucuses, politicians have scrambled to offer up their home states as the perfect replacement to vote first in the nation.
