ABSTRACT
The successive rules revisions that followed the McGovern-Fraser Commission during the 1970s and 1980s are often regarded as haphazard, bungled efforts by the Democratic party to come to terms both with its increasing heterogeneity and the end of the New Deal ascendancy. The Winograd Commission established a window for the 1980 Democratic primary season during which all delegate selection primaries and caucuses were to be held. This was partly intended to mollify states complaining that later primaries were deprived of real choice by the winnowing of the candidate field in earlier contests. Gross sent a copy of the Memorandum of Understanding to Manatt but received no acknowledgment. In 1992 the state of Arizona had abandoned its caucus system in favor of a presidential primary, but state legislation passed soon after mandated that its contest be held on the second Tuesday in March or on the date of the earliest primary election in any state.
