AMY GOODMAN: Eight primaries, five caucuses. It’s called Junior Tuesday. We’ll take a tour of the states with our national affairs correspondent Larry Bensky. Then we’ll be joined by former Congressman Tom Andrews, now head of People for the American Way, which tracks the right. Among the things we’ll look at is Bob Dole’s 100% rating by the Christian Coalition. Then we’ll go down to Mississippi to talk to the mother of six children, who doesn’t want them to have to pray in school, and she’s in court today to fight for her beliefs. And we’re going to be looking at the power of public relations, from the large firms to presidential politics to TV commentators and who they’ve worked for. But before we delve into the big lie, let’s take a look at the primary and caucus states today.

Today, voting is going to take place in Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island, South Carolina [sic], Utah, Washington and American Samoa. For commentary on some of the states and what to look for in these states, let’s go out to California to Pacifica station KPFA, where our national affairs correspondent Larry Bensky is standing by.

Larry, are you there?

LARRY BENSKY: Yes, I am, Amy. Hello.

AMY GOODMAN: Good to hear you. Well, last week, we spoke to you in Arizona after the primary. And it seemed at that point like a three-way battle all the way to the convention in San Diego. Now the media is saying Bob Dole has it all locked up. What’s changed?

LARRY BENSKY: Well, what’s changed, Amy, is we had a primary between then and now in South Carolina. South Carolina is not today, as I believe you mentioned in that list. It was actually last Saturday. And the South Carolina primary was a very big victory for Bob Dole, in a state where Pat Buchanan might have been expected to do well. And it was an especially big victory for Bob Dole because it’s a state where a lot of Christian Coalition people and other far-right forces are present. It’s the battleground and home ground of the late Lee Atwater, who helped turn the South from relatively solidly Democratic to relatively solidly Republican now, through tactics that were largely racist. And in South Carolina, where there are so many voters associated with the Christian Coalition, Bob Dole managed to take more votes from such people than Pat Buchanan did. And this has caused a lot of people, including today’s Wall Street Journal, for example, to start writing the political obituary of Pat Buchanan. So, this is to Dole’s advantage, of course, and to the people around him to try to portray the race as essentially over now and that they’re on a soft glide path towards getting the nomination.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it matters much, Gingrich saying he’s supporting Dole?

LARRY BENSKY: Well, that’s why today’s Georgia primary is the most important one of all, Amy, of the eight or 10 that you mentioned. Georgia is a state that has gone from, again, in the South, being relatively reliably Democratic on the congressional and senatorial level to being overwhelmingly Republican. And Gingrich’s an endorsement of Dole, I don’t know if you noticed, was very half-hearted. He came out of the voting booth saying, “I’m not going to tell anybody who I’m voting for.” And then, afterward, Bob Dole announced that Gingrich had voted for Dole. Thereupon Gingrich said, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I really did vote for Dole.” I mean, it’s not exactly a ringing statement of endorsement.

Why Georgia is important today is, first of all, it has the most delegates at stake, 32 [sic], but it also — rather, it has 42 delegates at stake, but also because it is Gingrich’s home turf. He fancies himself, in his own mind, to be a political boss. And if he has taken a pro-Dole stance, it’s going to be very interesting to see if the far-right forces in Georgia follow him. I have a hunch — I could be wrong here, and I don’t like to predict, as you know. I have a hunch that Pat Buchanan may do much better in Georgia than Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich want him to.

AMY GOODMAN: What about Colorado?

LARRY BENSKY: Well, Colorado is another state that Bob Dole really needs to do well in. It is literally his neighboring state to Kansas. The Christian Coalition forces are quite well organized there, as well. There’s a very, very thriving far right in the region around Colorado Springs. And the Republican establishment in Colorado has not unanimously endorsed Bob Dole, as they have in virtually every other state. So this is another possibility where Pat Buchanan may be bringing up some strength from the reserves.

Now, we haven’t talked yet about Steve Forbes. And, of course, the big test for Forbes is going to be Thursday, and we’ll be talking about that later this week, in New York. Forbes’s big tactic is usually spending tons and tons of money on radio and television ads. And he hasn’t done that so much in Georgia and in Colorado and in the other states today, as he did in Arizona, the one state he’s won so far. It’ll be interesting to see if Forbes can get a decent showing in a place like Colorado, which somewhat resembles Arizona, which he won, in the demographics of who votes in the Republican Party. There are a lot of retirees who have gone there. There are a lot of younger, high-tech people who are interested in his tax message. Forbes could do relatively well in Colorado. If he doesn’t, well, what difference does it make? He’s got enough money to keep running everywhere. And he may well do so.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, he does say that he is going to go right through to the convention.

LARRY BENSKY: Well, they all say that, except for Lamar Alexander, who’s finally come out and said if he loses Florida next week, he’s out of there. And I think we can safely say he’s not going to win Florida, so he’s probably out of there.

AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think Florida is so important to him? Why is he using that as the the proving ground?

LARRY BENSKY: He’s raised a great deal of money in the state of Florida, and he has portrayed himself as a Southern moderate former governor, the demographics of whose support seem to mirror, to some extent, the demographics in Florida. However, the joker in the pack in Florida, of course, is that many of the Republican voters are Cuban Americans, who are extremely conservative on all issues. I think we’re going to have one of those escalations of anti-Castro rhetoric that we get around election time next week in Florida, some of it coming from the unlikely mouth of Lamar Alexander.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, one of the states that is going to the polls today is Maine, and we’re going to talk in a few minutes with the former Maine Congressman Tom Andrews, who’s now head of People for the American Way. But before we do that, Larry, Massachusetts, that’s a key state.

LARRY BENSKY: Massachusetts is a key state, not because it’s a Republican state, although in recent years the personal popularity of Governor William Weld has changed the demographics, the electorate there, somewhat more into the Republican column when they vote, but not in how they register. And, Amy, Massachusetts and Georgia and Colorado and a number of these other states would be much more interesting today were this the real primary. I know that a lot of people who follow elections even a little bit realize that there’s a very hotly contested Senate seat coming up in Massachusetts, where Senator John Kerry is going to be challenged by that Governor William Weld, that there’s an open Republican seat in Colorado, which we just talked about as having a primary, and an open Democratic seat in Georgia. However, today, the primaries for those seats are not being held. The taxpayers in these states are going to have to go into their pockets for two primaries, in fact. The Georgia statewide primary to decide who’s going to run for Sam Nunn’s seat is in July. The Colorado primary is in August. And the Massachusetts primary is not until September. So, in fact, this is a sheer presidential primary.

And one other note on that, that I think people should notice, a lot of people are militating, especially on the progressive side of the political spectrum, about changing the electoral politics system itself into something more along the lines of proportional representation. And I know we’re going to be talking about that here on Democracy Now! as the weeks and months go on. It’s interesting to note that the establishment usually says, “Oh, that would never work. We really have a two-party system here.” But proportional representation is being used, for example, in three states today to select Republican delegates — in Colorado, in Maine and in Washington state. And a modified form of proportional representation, where some delegates are elected at large and some elected by district, is in effect in today’s primaries alone in Georgia and in Maryland. So, if it works in primaries for the political parties, why not try it and give more representation to minority parties, so-called, in general elections? That’s an argument that I think we’re going to hear more and more from people as this primary season goes on and as more and more people evidence their disgust with the way the electoral system in general is run, that shuts out anything but the two big parties.

AMY GOODMAN: Larry, thank you very much for joining us. And, of course, we’re going to continue to talk about this issue of proportional representation, not to mention how these primaries and caucuses turn out. Sometimes it can be confusing, because you have a Republican caucus or primary that gets a lot of attention because they are hotly contested right now, and then you have a Democratic primary in a state a couple days later, and we don’t even realize it’s quite happening. And that’s what’s going on in the states.

LARRY BENSKY: Not only that, Amy, but in a state like Georgia today, for example, there’s no party registration at all, so anybody can vote. And that’s another reason why Pat Buchanan may do well there with independent Perot-type voters and even Democrats who want to cross over and either cause the Republicans some mischief by trying to nominate Buchanan, or because, as members of unions frequently are in this election season, they do support Buchanan. So, again, Georgia is the one to watch. And we’ll be back tomorrow, telling our listeners how it all turns out.

AMY GOODMAN: Larry, thank you very much for joining us, Larry Bensky, our national affairs correspondent, speaking to us from Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley.