GOP primary rigging megathread

[Mr. Morden]

http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180817/kasich-campaign-gop-rigging-2020-in-favor-of-trump

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[Mr. Morden]

Approval for Donald Trump within the GOP is at least in the 70s. so there is no need for Trump to rig any primaries.

Both the Iowa and South Carolina Republican parties are already talking about simply not holding a vote:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=296697.0

which I guess would mean that the party leadership of these states just picks their own delegates.  This is exactly what Trump said amounted to a "rigged" system back in 2016:

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-colorado-delegates-2016-4

but now he'll presumably be OK with it because it'll benefit him.

While not really specific to Trump, it's certainly the case that with the modern party systems, whenever you have an incumbent president running for reelection, there's a massive conflict of interest with the president's re-nomination, since the party chairman is de facto appointed by the president, and the national party committee usually starts operating as an arm of the president's reelection campaign before the primaries have even started.  This has been a non-issue for the past few decades, because only nobodies incapable of getting on the ballot in more than a handful of states challenged Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama for re-nomination, but it seems like it could be an issue this time.

Trump will presumably try to use the RNC as an arm of his campaign starting now, long before the primaries are held.  This seems like a problem to me, if there's to be any pretense of a primary challenger getting a fair shake, even if said challenger is almost certain to lose bigly anyway.  I actually think this could (eventually) become a big story even though, again, it's unlikely that anyone could come anywhere close to knocking off Trump for the nomination even under a "fair" system.

[Mr. Morden]

*bump*

I'll just keep this thread going re: GOP primary rigging, since it looks like this'll be an ongoing thing.  Latest:

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/11/kasichs-camp-slams-gop-effort-to-head-off-primary-vs-trump-1054858

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[Mr. Morden]

Sununu not on board with the push to have the NH GOP endorse Trump before the primary takes place:

https://www.concordmonitor.com/On-the-trail-Steinhauser-2020-Kasich-22157725

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[Mr. Morden]

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/south-carolina-gop-could-scrap-2020-primary-to-protect-trump

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[Mr. Morden]

At least one member of the RNC wants the organization to change the rules that allow a plurality of delegates in five states to put someone’s name into nomination:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/romneys-attack-prompts-call-to-protect-trump-from-2020-primary-challenger

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One wrinkle in any “RNC rigging” scenario is that the current chair of the RNC is Mitt Romney’s niece, and Mitt doesn’t sound keen on Trump’s renomination at the moment:

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[Mr. Morden]

Arizona GOP looking at skipping the primary and having the state party award the delegates themselves:

https://tucson.com/news/local/lawmaker-aims-to-give-trump-free-pass-in-arizona-primary/article_581336b3-bdc1-5dae-838f-c237ef1ba565.html

House Speaker Rusty Bowers tucked a provision into the state budget that allows any political party to opt out of the state’s presidential preference primary simply by sending a notice to the Secretary of State’s Office by Sept. 16. And county election officials would be required to honor that request.

The Mesa Republican conceded to Capitol Media Services that the legislation came at the request of the Arizona Republican Party.

But he said there’s nothing undemocratic about the move. And he denied that Arizonans who are members of the GOP would be denied a choice.

“We don’t feel we’re denying anybody a primary choice,” he said.

“We have a choice,” Bowers continued. “It’s our sitting president of the United States.”

[Mr. Morden]

Nevada GOP might skip the caucuses and just have the state party leadership vote to award the delegates to Trump:

https://www.apnews.com/2662be247bdb406e80b4158675aa31d9

The Nevada Republican Party next month will consider bypassing its presidential nominating caucuses next year by having governing members endorse President Donald Trump and avoid any primary challenge.

The Nevada GOP’s governing central committee will vote at its September meeting whether to approve the change, allowing the central committee members to then commit the state’s Republican delegates all for the president.

“The Nevada Republican Party is firmly behind President Donald J. Trump’s re-election campaign,” Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald said in a statement. “We are all in and are excited to get to work on sending President Trump back to the White House for four more years!”
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“We don’t elect Presidents by acclamation in America,” Weld said in a Friday statement on the Nevada GOP proposal. “Donald Trump is doing his best to make the Republican Party his own personal club, and this is just one more example. Republicans deserve better.”

[Mr. Morden]

The South Carolina GOP Executive Committee will decide on Sept. 7th whether the state will have a primary next year:

https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/note-to-mark-sanford-sc-republicans-overwhelmingly-say-don-t/article_3fe1594e-bece-11e9-9aa4-87269cddae38.html

Interestingly, that's a few days after the Labor Day self-imposed deadlines that Mark Sanford and Joe Walsh have given themselves for deciding whether to run for the nomination.

[Mr. Morden]

The South Carolina GOP Executive Committee will decide on Sept. 7th whether the state will have a primary next year:

https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/note-to-mark-sanford-sc-republicans-overwhelmingly-say-don-t/article_3fe1594e-bece-11e9-9aa4-87269cddae38.html

Interestingly, that's a few days after the Labor Day self-imposed deadlines that Mark Sanford and Joe Walsh have given themselves for deciding whether to run for the nomination.

Interestingly, it looks like not only will the South Carolina GOP decide on Sept. 7th whether to go ahead with a primary or not, but the Nevada GOP will make the same determination about their caucus on the very same day:

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/nevada-gop-may-use-poll-to-endorse-trump-not-caucus-1816702/

If neither Nevada nor South Carolina hold a vote on delegation on the GOP side, then the GOP primary race will go Iowa-New Hampshire-then a few weeks break before Super Tuesday.

[Mr. Morden]

This story suggests that the SC GOP is very unlikely to vote to hold a primary:

https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/sc-republicans-holding-a-presidential-primary-on-trump-don-t/article_14d68438-c5c0-11e9-ae2f-934d6155d08f.html

Again, we'll find out for sure for both NV and SC on Sept. 7th.

[Mr. Morden]

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/06/republicans-cancel-primaries-trump-challengers-1483126

Four states are poised to cancel their 2020 GOP presidential primaries and caucuses, a move that would cut off oxygen to Donald Trump’s long-shot primary challengers.

Republican parties in South Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Kansas are expected to finalize the cancellations in meetings this weekend, according to three GOP officials who are familiar with the plans.

[Mr. Morden]

Reminder that both Nevada and South Carolina state parties are meeting tomorrow (Saturday), and will apparently make a decision about whether or not to hold a primary/caucus in their respective states.  Looks like Nevada GOP's meeting runs until 5pm Pacific Time:

https://nevadagop.org/events/2019-09-07/

So I guess we'll have an answer by then.

[Mr. Morden]

The South Carolina GOP has now made it official: No Republican primary for president in the state next year:

https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/sc-republicans-vote-to-forgo-gop-presidential-primary-setting-up/article_96d05722-d0d6-11e9-9771-6ba2d039a3e4.html

The South Carolina Republican Party executive committee voted almost unanimously Saturday to forgo their GOP presidential primary next year, clearing the way for President Donald Trump to receive all of the state’s nominating delegates without contest.
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During a meeting Saturday in Columbia, the S.C. GOP executive committee decided by voice vote not to hold a primary. Only one voice could be heard voting against the idea.

S.C. GOP chairman Drew McKissick cited the public cost of the primary as the top reason for scrapping it. Holding a Republican presidential preference primary would cost South Carolina taxpayers an estimated $1.2 million, according to S.C. Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire.

Now waiting to see if Nevada follows suit.

[Mr. Morden]

Looks like Kansas also cancelled their caucus yesterday:

https://twitter.com/Melissa_Brunner/status/1170040100480311296

[Mr. Morden]

The Nevada GOP has now joined in cancelling their caucuses:

https://www.newser.com/article/f9b91b5614da4760bcb4875bb508af77/nevada-sc-kansas-gop-drop-presidential-nomination-votes.html

A similar move followed in Nevada, where party spokesman Keith Schipper said, "The vote to opt out of the caucus has passed. We will vote to endorse and bind the delegates to the President at a later date."

So the presumed primary calendar on the GOP side will go Iowa caucuses, then NH primary a week later, then Super Tuesday three weeks later (featuring CA, TX, and several other states.....though in the event that Trump is actually kept off the ballot in CA due to the new law requiring candidates to release their taxes, I would assume that the CA primary won't end up counting towards delegate allocation, because the CA GOP isn't likely to allow a primary to award delegates if Trump is excluded from the ballot).

This all assumes that the New York legislature does as expected and moves the primary there to a later date.  State law currently puts it in February, and in the unlikely event that it stays there, it would come before Super Tuesday but would suffer delegate penalties for going earlier than party rules allow.

[Mr. Morden]

The California GOP has passed a rule change that would allow the state party to hold a special convention after the primary in order to award delegates to the RNC, in the event that Trump doesn't appear on the primary ballot:

https://apnews.com/ee5adc940b0f48c498751d8df9642478

It's a response to California's new law that would block presidential candidates from appearing on the ballot if they don't release their tax returns.  In the event that the law isn't struck down in court, then Trump will presumably opt not to file for the primary in California, but there would still be a Republican primary with Sanford, Weld, etc., assuming they qualify for the ballot.  But the Trump-less GOP primary wouldn't actually count for delegate allocation, given this rule change, since the state party would ignore the primary results and award the delegates on their own.

[Mr. Morden]

I agree that substantively it’s not a big deal that republicans are skipping the primaries but it’s going to drive Trump nuts that the Dems will get all of the media attention next spring as a result.

Most Republican primaries are still going to happen, since they're state run, and the GOP can't do anything to stop them (and the Iowa GOP is also going ahead with a caucus, presumably for symbolic reasons to assert its primacy in the calendar).  We'll still have an Iowa Republican caucus, a New Hampshire Republican primary.  Nevada and South Carolina are being skipped on the GOP side, but then the majority of Super Tuesday states will still have Republican primaries, and there's nothing the state parties can do about that.  There'll probably be more cases where they make the primaries meaningless by not having them allocate delegates, but the votes will still happen.

The next thing to look for though is where the state parties will try to block Trump's challengers from appearing on the ballot.  They can't stop the primaries in most states, but there are some where they can try to keep the challengers off the ballot.  E.g., I believe in Florida the state parties submit a list of candidates they want on the ballot, so the Florida GOP could just submit Trump's name and no one else's.  Not sure if there's any recourse for the candidates to appeal that decision, or get on the ballot some other way.

[Mr. Morden]

The Arizona GOP makes it official:

https://www.knau.org/post/arizona-gop-scraps-2020-presidential-party

Arizona Republicans are scrapping their 2020 primary, joining GOP leaders in three other states that are forgoing a presidential nominating contest as President Donald Trump seeks re-election.

State GOP Chairman Kelli Ward told election officials Monday about the party's decision. Arizona joins Nevada, South Carolina and Kansas in skipping primaries or caucuses next year.

[Mr. Morden]

Virginia Republicans have also opted out of the state's primary, and will just elect their delegates to the RNC at a state convention:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2019/09/virginia-republicans-will-hold-2020.html

[Mr. Morden]

https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/Alaska-Republican-Party-cancels-Presidential-Preference-Poll-560997931.html

The Alaska Republican Party announced Saturday that it will not hold a Presidential Preference Poll in 2020, declaring support instead for the re-election of President Trump.

In a brief written statement, ARP said its State Central Committee determined Saturday that "conducting a PPP would serve no useful purpose when we have an incumbent Republican president, such as President Trump, running for the Republican nomination for President."

[Mr. Morden]

Bob Inglis, along with another Republican official in South Carolina, have filed a lawsuit against the South Carolina GOP, saying that the state party violated its own rules by the manner in which they cancelled the primary:

https://www.postandcourier.com/politics/south-carolina-republican-party-sued-for-canceling-its-gop-primary/article_33891534-e452-11e9-9a8b-7b4072b62d5e.html

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in state court in Richland County, alleges the party scrapped its 2020 election contest illegally and violated party rules and state election law.

The suit further contends the near-unanimous decision made by the party’s Executive Committee deprives Inglis, of Greenville, and fellow plaintiff Frank Heindel of Mount Pleasant, of their right to vote for the candidate of their choosing in a primary.
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The 26-page suit, however, alleges the party broke its own rules. The complaint cites Rule 11(b)(1), which states that “Unless decided otherwise by the state party convention within two years prior to each presidential election year, the  ... party shall conduct a statewide presidential preference primary on a date selected by the chairman of the party and this date must be within two weeks after the New Hampshire Republican Primary, or earlier if necessary to preserve South Carolina’s ‘First in the South’ status.”

When Republicans met for their state convention in March, they did not vote on holding a presidential primary.

The lawsuit additionally alleges Republicans broke state law that requires political parties to follow their own rules.

In other news, today is the deadline for state parties to tell the RNC how they plan to allocate delegates next year, so we may get more clarity on whether other states will opt out of primaries or caucuses.  OTOH, many of the caucus states never bound delegates to presidential preference votes in the first place, so if more of them end up cancelling the preference vote like Alaska did, that might not yet be announced.

[Mr. Morden]

I’ve mentioned before that most of the GOP primary cancellations are in small to medium sized states where the number of delegates at stake is modest, whereas the biggest states are still holding primaries.  In that vein, the Florida GOP is tentatively going ahead with holding a primary next year:

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20190930/florida-gop-chair-says-republican-primary-on-challengers-will-be-annihilated

*However*, as Josh Putnam notes here:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2019/10/florida-gop-eschews-presidential.html

Florida does have a law on the books that cancels the primary if only one candidate qualifies for the ballot.  And the decision for who gets onto the ballot is determined by the state party itself.  (They have until Nov. 30th to decide who makes it.)  So there’s still a chance that the GOP primary gets cancelled there if the state GOP plays hardball and just declares that they don’t want Sanford, Walsh, or Weld on the ballot, though based on the comments by FL GOP chair Joe Grutens, it sounds like they’re probably going to allow the challengers onto the ballot.