Terry Sanford Quotes

Conventions don't nominate people anymore. Primaries do.

Unpledged delegates exist really to make sure that party leaders and elected officials don't have to be in a position where they are running against grassroots activists.

I have never understood the Iowa caucus.

I think the trend to move towards caucuses and conventions, whether to nominate senators, governors or presidential nominees, I think the move towards caucuses and conventions is a very bad one, and that our party should reward those states that spend the time and money to have primaries.

After the election of George McGovern in 1972 as a peace candidate - I should say his election to the nomination of the Democratic Party - the party changed the rules to steeply tilt that playing field, creating superdelegates and Super Tuesdays that make it very hard for a grassroots campaign to prevail.

I chaired the 1982 Democratic Party Commission on Presidential Nominations that created certain automatic delegates to the Democratic convention - the 'superdelegates.' It was a good idea then, and it is still a good idea.

If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president.

Political elections are not life and death.

A caucus is basically an undemocratic method of selecting a candidate.

The political parties have no role except to stage the conventions, where you celebrate a decision that's already been made elsewhere.

Not the number of noses, but the magnitude of interests, should furnish the elements by which the proportion of representation should be computed...The classes that represent civilization, the holders of accumulated capital and accumulated thought have a right to require securities to protect them from being overwhelmed by hordes who have neither knowledge to guide them nor stake in the Commonwealth to control them.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

Whoever wants Yesh Atid in the government has to vote for us - there's no other choice.

We got to make sure that the Democratic Party is not just Democratic, but seen to be Democratic. That means we got to have systems in place that makes sure that everybody who participates in a primary is perceived to have an equal shot with everybody else.

I will continue to work with the Republican Party to try to encourage primaries.

As far as party primaries are concerned, both Republican and Democratic Party primaries are dominated by the most zealous voters, whose views may not reflect the views of most members of their own respective parties, much less the views of those who are going to vote in the November general election. In recent times, each election year has seen each party's nominee selected - or at least subject to veto - by its most extreme wing and then forced to try to move back to the center before the general election. This can only undermine the public's confidence in the integrity of the candidates of both parties.

In our system today, many people don’t have to win general elections; they just have to win primaries.

If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.

The speakership isn't a dictatorship.

The ballot box is a license to govern, not a mandate to rule.

May the hickory ramrods ram down the powder of equality into our national guns, and wadded well with the voices of the people to blow Clay in the mud.

I was in Australia for many years. And the system there is a two-party system and the government changes from time to time.

Party machinery is not a fortuitous development, but is the direct result of the requirements of practical politics. The necessity of nominating candidates for offices leads inevitably to the development of caucuses and conventions.

I've said that we need to elect Democrats from the school board to the Senate.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.