One man right now has the final "piece of the puzzle" that needs to be put into place for our Secretary of State to be able to announce a date for the New Hampshire First-In-The-Nation Presidential Primary. With putting forward the reality of "The December Option" for New Hampshire, other pieces have already fallen into place: Nevada has agreed not to move up but to stay on Saturday, January 19th; Iowa Republicans have agreed to hold their caucuses on Thursday, January 3rd; and Iowa Democrats are close to confirming that they will hold their caucus on that same day. All that opens the second week of January for New Hampshire, and takes discussion of "The December Option" off the table for sure.

For sure, except for one more puzzle piece...

United States Senator Carl Levin of Michigan does good work. As a fellow Democrat, I find him to be courageous, visionary, and certainly experienced. Quite seriously, he is a good man. If he was running for President I'd be giving him a serious look.

Senator Levin has been a national leader on health care accessibility, the minimum wage, senior citizens, and he's gone after corporations through his investigations on Enron and other company abuses. He's worked on campaign finance reform and government openness, things close to my heart, and he's been against the War in Iraq and joined with Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed in offering an amendment this year to reduce troop levels and get us out of what has become a civil war. As a sponsor of the NH House Resolution on Iraq earlier this year, I commend him for that effort.

Right now, Senator Carl Levin is up for my choice of Person Of The Month, and he will win it if he puts the final puzzle piece into the place it belongs. It is he who has been threatening to move Michigan from a likely Tuesday, January 15th date to the same day as New Hampshire's Primary, thus making it impossible for our Secretary of State to set our date, yet.

However, Senator Levin just these past couple of days has been indicating he might -- might -- be willing to firm up the Tuesday, January 15th timeslot for Michigan. That would then allow us to know our own primary date rather soon.

If Carl Levin affirms January 15th, he will win my heart, and a lot of thank you's from Presidential candidates of both parties, their staff, and voters here and elsewhere.

We know that Senator Levin doesn't like New Hampshire a whole lot. At least not our First-In-The-Nation Presidential Primary. I'm sure he'd like our foliage, our maple syrup, and maybe even our lobsters. But he thinks our clout in the presidential selection process is way too much.

He makes his views powerfully known. And his power in his own state is obvious since he's almost single-handedly held up the process of our Secretary of State being able to announce a date for our primary, and because of that has made "The December Option" for New Hampshire a real possibility.

What he doesn't seem to realize is that the NH Primary isn't about us, it's about a process that allows candidates to run for President who don't have megabucks in their checking account. There's something to be said for preserving that. If the process were to start in Michigan or another large state, can we begin to imagine how difficult it would be for a candidate other than those well-financed or networked with either of the national parties to get any traction at all?

I'd suggest that Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton never would have been elected President if it wasn't for New Hampshire. As each began their candidacies, none had a large party backing. Neither were high in the national polls. But here they got their launch-pads, or in the case of Bill Clinton, a "comeback."

Why New Hampshire, Senator Levin might ask? Why not? But more importantly for the 2008 cycle, why continue challenging New Hampshire's role, because all that challenge right now will do is delay our Secretary of State from setting a date until -- perhaps -- December. And that's not in anyone's interest.

Senator Levin can live up to his reputation as a good United States Senator, and he'll win me over for the Person Of The Month award -- for what that's worth. All he has to do is confirm that he will agree with the previously stated date of Tuesday, January 15th for the Michigan event, whatever form that may take. Then he should work with New Hampshire and the leaders of both political parties, and the National Association of Secretaries of State, toward reform for the 2012 election cycle. That's a "win-win," which we all want.

And finally, our Secretary of State can set our date for early, January, perhaps Tuesday, January 8th, and we're all off-and-running. We can get back to the future very quickly, and I'll prepare my "Senator Carl Levin: Person Of The Month" certificate right away.

Jim Splaine
NH State Representative
Portsmouth & Newington