Thinking about the next vote -- in 2012.

From the AJC's Political Insider:

Senate president pro tem Eric Johnson says he’s disappointed by the lack of attention the state has received by moving up its presidential primary to Feb. 5.

Perhaps, he said, Georgia ought to look at delaying its 2012 vote by a week.

“We might be better off as a single stand instead of a group of states,” he said.
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In a 3-21-07 post I wrote:

Although the Georgia House has voted to change the date of Georgia's presidential primary next year to February 5 from March 5, joining with many other states in a mega-primary (the vote also changes the threshold necessary to avoid a runoff in primary and general elections from the current 50% to 45%), I agree with Bill Shipp that it will be better for Georgia if the date is left on March 5.

In that post I quoted Bill Shipp who wrote:

If the cards fall right, Georgia could be the center of attention by providing somebody's campaign with momentum and a nice bundle of convention delegates. We could also receive priceless national exposure on who we are, why our votes count and how beautiful and hospitable our state is. Plus, there's a whole lot of spending going on in the important primary states. Notice I said "important." Georgia could also get lost in the shuffle and wind up ignored.

If Georgia decides to join the Super Tuesday throng, the Peach State can forget about making a splash. Candidates will concentrate on the big states (Florida and California) to capture sizable delegate blocs. They also will focus on smaller states (Delaware and Utah), which can be won with the least amount of money. The middle-sized states such as Georgia will be left out.

Of course as we know, the legislature made the change to February 5.
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And in a 1-6-08 post entitled "Georgia primary voice may get lost in the din of Feb. 5," I noted:

In 1992, Bill Clinton, who lost the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, knew he'd need a win in the South to keep his campaign alive.

So he called his friend, then-Gov. Zell Miller, and asked him to move up the Georgia primary one week, to third in the nation. Miller did, and Clinton won - the last time Georgia voters have influenced a nomination.

"We became, as people said back then, the New Hampshire of the South," University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock said.

Georgians will vote earlier this year, on Feb. 5, than they have in the past, but their voices could be drowned out by all the other states striving for a bigger role in picking the nominees.

"I don't think we'll get a whole lot of attention," Bullock said. "We may have been better off hanging back a week or leaving it where it was, when it was a month later."