Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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4 UCW AUGUST 16 - 22, 2023 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM STAFF PUBLISHER Bill Bowman Bill@upandcomingweekly.com OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Paulette Naylor accounting@upandcomingweekly.com MANAGING EDITOR April Olsen editor@upandcomingweekly.com ASSISTANT EDITOR Hannah Lee assistanteditor@upandcomingweekly. com ART DIRECTOR Courtney Sapp-Scott art@upandcomingweekly.com GRAPHIC DESIGNER Isaiah Jones graphics@upandcomingweekly.com STAFF WRITERS Alyson Hansen Kathleen Ramsey Chayenne Burns Katrina Wilson Aubrette Reid Laura Browne CONTRIBUTING WRITERS John Hood, Pitt Dickey, Char Morrison, Jason Canady, Evey Weisblat, C. Todd Lopez, Cynthia Ross MARKETING ASSOCIATE Linda McAlister linda@upandcomingweekly.com SALES ASSISTANT Sheila Barker salesassistant@upandcomingweekly. com COVER Cover design by Courtney Sapp-Scott Up & Coming Weekly www.upandcomingweekly.com 208 Rowan St. P.O. Box 53461 Fayetteville, NC 28305 PHONE: 910-484-6200- FAX: 910-484-9218 Up & Coming Weekly is a "Quality of Life" publication with local features, news and information on what's happening in and around the Fayetteville/Cumberland County community. Published weekly on Wednesdays, Up & Coming Weekly welcomes manuscripts, photographs and artwork for publication consideration, but assumes no responsibility for them. We cannot accept responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or material. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. The publisher reserves the right to edit or reject copy submitted for publication. Up & Coming Weekly is free of charge and distributed at indoor and outdoor locations throughout Fayetteville, Fort Bragg, Pope Army Airfield, Hope Mills and Spring Lake. Readers are limited to one copy per person. © 2020 by F&B Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or advertisements without permission is strictly prohibited. Various ads with art graphics designed with elements from: vecteezy.com and freepik.com. Association of Community Publishers JOHN HOOD, Board Member, John Locke Foundation. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. 910- 484-6200 PUBLISHER'S PEN Presidential primaries need a shake-up by JOHN HOOD I know you may find this news de- pressing, but we're only five months away from the first votes in the 2024 presidential election. Our current primary system is ab- surd. e contests start way too early. And their location is unfair to large swaths of American voters. But that doesn't mean the system ought to be radically changed. Don't get me wrong. I favor re- forming the system, along lines to be discussed below. It's just that tradi- tions, even fairly new ones, deserve some thoughtful deference. In particular, I think there is still a good case for beginning the presi- dential-nomination process in less- populated states like Iowa and New Hampshire. "Like" is not the same as "such as," of course. While I think Iowa and New Hampshire aren't necessarily bad places to hold early contests, they shouldn't enjoy a permanent status as electoral gatekeepers. Nor is it sufficient, as has now been accomplished, to bring in Ne- vada from the southwest and South Carolina from the south to balance things out. ey still come later, giving Iowa and New Hampshire excessive deference. I also think that moving populous Michigan up to the fourth position (on Feb. 27) was unwise, as was mak- ing California, Texas, and our own North Carolina part of a Gargantuan Tuesday set of primaries on March 5. Less-populous states allow a larger number of candidates to be viable. ey don't require as much cam- paign cash to reach voters via expen- sive broadcast markets. Mail, earned media, online tools, endorsements, and personal out- reach remain viable tactics in them. Also, voters in smaller states are more likely to appreciate the national spotlight and take their political power seriously, while those in larger states are apt to see national media coverage and campaign swings as more routine and less exciting. To get back to the problem, how- ever, the Iowa and New Hampshire stranglehold on the process needs to be broken. Don't count on prominent national politicians to make reform a high pri- ority, as too many of them consider themselves to be future presidential aspirants and thus don't want to alienate local politicians and voters in the two states, just in case a reform effort falls short. Perhaps retired politicians could make primary-process reform an early cause, to be formulated and promoted by a diverse panel of cur- rent officeholders, civic and business leaders and political scientists. My preference would be a pro- cess that looks something like this. Take the 20 states with populations between 4.5 million and 1 million (there is such a thing as too sparsely populated a state to play effectively in this game — I'm looking at you, Wyoming and Vermont). Two years before each election cy- cle, randomly place them on one of five election days to stretch between early February and early April. Each date, in other words, will feature four primaries or caucuses. Such an arrangement would mean you keep the same states voting early every four years, which is good for building strong party networks and experienced primary/caucus voters, without giving any state a permanent primacy in the schedule. Some have argued either that such a series of early votes ought to be concentrated in a particular region, to make it easier for candidates to campaign and create a sort of region- al "voice," or be carefully balanced so that there are always states voting in multiple regions. I used to like the regional-primary idea, but now I think it would be best to distribute the states randomly each time. at reduces potential conflict, it seems to me, and intro- duces a healthy dose of unpredict- ability. Would we get better presidential nominees if we gave the likes of Ar- kansas, Connecticut, Utah, Oregon, Oklahoma and New Mexico the op- portunity to go first in the balloting? I don't know. I do know that the current process is rightfully resented, but that mov- ing to early primaries by large states or regional blocs isn't the right an- swer. Let's stay small, but mix things up a bit. Editor's note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and For- est Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (Folklore- Cycle.com). It may be time to shake-up the Presidential primary season and break the Iowa and New Hampshire stranglehold on the process.