Why Does Brian Williams Know the Caucus Date before Me?

NBC Nightly News is reporting right now that the Iowa Caucuses are going to be held January 3. No one I know in Iowa thinks the date is set. Yes, a majority of the members of the Iowa GOP’s State Central Committee currently supports January 3, according to State Chair Ray Hoffman, but the entire State Central Committee has not had a chance to weigh in as a group. They won’t get that chance until a conference call October 16.

The Iowa Democratic Party has said that they are going to work with the Republicans to do whatever they can to hold their Caucuses on the same date, although their State Central Committee isn’t just going to roll over and agree to January 3 because 10 members of the Republican State Central Committee held a conference call and most of them supported that date.

The other Caucus date that’s being thrown around is January 5, and at this point, that date seems no less likely. It is generally believed around here that Gov. Mitt Romney’s supporters are in favor of an earlier date, because they want to maximize the bump their candidate will get from a win here. They are particularly invested in the date because the Republican primary calendar is more crowded than the Democratic one (the DNC and Democratic candidates will do their best to ignore Michigan and Florida). On the Democratic side, there are fewer indications that the fight over the date is being framed in terms of one candidate’s interests or another.

David Yepsen supports the idea of splitting the party’s Caucuses on two different dates, but very few others agree with him. Among other things, even the very slim chance that people will try to participate in both parties’ Caucuses, thereby further delegitimizing Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status, is enough to scare some politicos. Still, there are real issues with finding space for both parties to participate in what may well be the largest Caucuses in history at the same time. No solution is perfect, and we don’t know what will happen.

The only thing we can be certain about is this: the Caucus date for both parties will not be determined by leaked information about a conference call that included a slim majority of the members of the Republican State Central Committee and that came to no official resolution.