The South Shall Rise Again: Mega Tuesday

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Bunching primaries early in the season could shorten the grueling and overlong race. But this so-called front loading may backfire too. Candidates will no longer be able to concentrate on just a few states early on and hope to build momentum. They will have to be active in many states all at once. The effect could be to lengthen, not shorten, the campaign season. As it is, Michigan's complex process of picking Republican delegates gets under way this summer, and 1987 is shaping up as a flat-out campaign year. All of which will favor well-financed, well-organized front runners like Vice President George Bush and make it harder for a promising but underfunded dark horse to break into the front ranks.

Is there a better way? A bill introduced in Congress by Democratic Congressman Sander Levin of Michigan would take over the timing of primaries from the states and set up a series of "interregional" primaries spaced at regular intervals from March to June. The state groupings--one from the East, say, one from the Midwest, a couple from the South, and so on--would be selected randomly at first and then rotate dates in succeeding elections. That might seem entirely too rational and equitable. For better or worse, the slapdash and shifting process that ends up choosing presidential nominees is far more likely to be determined by states jealously vying for an inside position.