ELECTION YEAR 2000 OFFICIALLY KICKS OFF   

The process to select the next president of the United States and determine which political parties will control Congress and the 50 state governments in 2001 officially kicks off with the January 24 Iowa Caucuses and the February 1 New Hampshire Primary Election. It will end with the November 7 general election and the January 20, 2001 inauguration.

Caucuses are local-level meetings where voters, many of whom are political party activists, gather to state their preference for a specific candidate and select a proportional number of delegates to attend a state-level meeting to continue the process.

Primaries are elections held at the state level to indicate the voters' candidate preferences and select delegates to the party nominating conventions. The primaries may be either closed to registered voters of a particular party, or open to voters who may cross over from one party to vote the other's ballot.

Unofficially, Campaign 2000 has been underway since the day after the 1996 election, when potential candidates for office began to formulate their plans, line up support and money sources, and "test the waters."

Vice President Al Gore is the best known of the presidential candidates by virtue of serving in the number two post for the past seven years. But he is being vigorously challenged for the Democratic nomination by former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley.

Six candidates are still vying on the Republican side after several others announced their candidacies last year and then dropped out. Going into the first events will be Texas Governor George W. Bush, the acknowledged front-runner; Arizona Senator John McCain, who has been rapidly rising in early public opinion polls; millionaire publisher Steve Forbes and former Ambassador Alan Keyes, who both ran unsuccessfully in 1996; Utah Senator Orrin Hatch; and conservative activist Gary Bauer.

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, who broke rank with the Republican Party, is among a number of hopefuls seeking the Reform Party nomination.

The primary and caucuses season will run through June 6, although an unofficial determination of the candidates should be made earlier in the year as a result of individual state contests.

The Republicans then will hold their convention July 31-August 3 in Philadelphia, and the Democrats will meet August 14-17 in Los Angeles. The Reform Party scheduled its event for August 10-13 in Long Beach, California.

After the conventions, the heavy campaigning between the parties' nominees begins in earnest. There will be nearly non-stop travel nationwide, several nationally televised debates, and countless news conferences, culminating with the November 3 general election.

Also at stake in the election are 33 of the 100 Senate seats, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 11 gubernatorial seats and thousands of state and local level offices. Nineteen of the 33 Senate races are for seats currently held by Republicans, who currently hold a 55-45 majority in the upper chamber. The party also currently has a 10-seat majority in the House.