Parties Agree to Unified April Primary
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By Ryan Loyd, Texas Public Radio
A deal was reached between the two major political parties on when to hold Texas’ primary election, while federal courts determine the final boundaries for legislative and congressional districts. But the agreement means Texas will give up its status as a “Super Tuesday” primary state in 2012.
The state’s Democratic and Republican leaders struck a deal to hold one primary election on April 3rd, taking Texas out of the March 6th primaries. That includes the primary for President.
Both parties say they are happy with the agreement for one unified date. The Republican Party of Texas’s Chris Elam doesn’t believe this will hurt Governor Rick Perry’s bid for President. He says presidential races are notorious for change, and this is no exception.
“We feel that the deadline for the March primary was going to be unfeasible,” Elam said. “The nearest date that we felt that we could pull this off and take care of not only our candidates and elected officials who are filing for the ballot, but most importantly we wanted to make sure that Texas voters knew that they could have this opportunity to be available to them as well as making it easier on our election administrators and the taxpayers of Texas.”
Others, like LULAC attorney Luis Vera, Jr. believe Republicans put up a fight to hold Perry’s March primary, because they felt the sooner he could claim his state’s support, the better. He thinks backlash from Republicans themselves ultimately led to the common ground agreement.
“We’re talking about close to a hundred million dollars to do what they wanted to do and then justify all the cuts in every possible service you can think of, everything from education to health, mental health, senior priorities, whatever. And justify spending this money just because Rick Perry wanted his own special presidential election,” Vera said. “That’s what this was about.”
The deal calls for candidates to file and live in the district by February 1st.
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