On September 8, 1985, a group of present and past Democratic state representatives from the South—the Southern Legislative Conference—met in Miami to formulate strategies to strengthen the Southern voice in the 1988 primaries. The result was “Super Tuesday,” i.e., a day (March 8, 1988) on which primaries will be held simultaneously in 14 Southern states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia—allotting almost one-third of the national delegates in one fell swoop. The idea, of course, was that these primaries would give an important edge to the South’s candidate —ideally, a native Southerner.
Super Tuesday is the biggest change in the U.S. nomination process in more than twenty years. Although Republicans are directly affected too (since the single primary voting day is fixed for both parties by state legislatures), it was a sense of impotence among Southern Democratic state-level politicians that spawned Super Tuesday. Northern liberals were dominating the selection process, the Southerners believed, and, in doing so, were jeopardizing the nomination of a Democratic presidential candidate who could actually be elected.
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