Tuesday, August 8, 2023

A Self-Fulfilling Contested Convention?

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • Folks may sleep on the tightening Alabama Republicans did to their 2024 delegate selection over the weekend, but they will miss an important story. Last week in this space, FHQ discussed how the Trump campaign is "smoothing over any rough edges" in the delegate allocation/selection rules it missed last time around. The Alabama change illustrates that well and show the minute details Team Trump is nailing down for 2024. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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Tim Miller had an interesting piece up at The Triad yesterday picking up on a line of thought within DeSantis World that parallels FHQ's thinking on the Republican presidential race in some ways:
But now at least one of Trump’s opponents is wondering if the frontrunner’s legal troubles could change the calculus and require candidates to stay in for the long haul in order to try and amass delegates in case there is a convention battle because the former president is . . . otherwise indisposed. 
This not the first mention of long-haul strategies from with the super PAC branch of the DeSantis campaign network. There is some delegate rules savvy there. But the broader point here, I think, is something Miller picks at but does not fully dig in on. And that broader point is that Trump's legal situation presents a level of uncertainty in a presidential nomination race that may, in turn, create incentives for candidates to stick around longer than they otherwise would, sans frontrunner legal trouble. 

But the game -- call it the self-fulfilling contested convention theory -- is about more than theoretically sticking around longer to gain as many delegates as possible to take into a convention that may be more open with a convicted leading candidate (or one under threat of such in the midst of a trial or trials). First of all, Miller notes that candidates may tough it out and win delegates in late proportional states. Well, that dog probably won't hunt. There just are not that many proportional states late in the process (depending on how one defines "late"). And honestly, there are not that many delegates late in the process. The 2024 calendar on the Republican side is one that will likely have allocated 80 percent of its delegates by the first week in April. 

And none of that considers funding for such an operation. The goal in theory may be to hold on, but candidates will need donors (or to convince donors) to fund that effort and delegate candidates to enthusiastically put themselves forward to fill any delegate slots that are allocated to any non-Trumps. If Trump is winning contest after contest next winter/spring, the well of support in both those areas is likely to be tapped out or at least less interested in expending the money, time and/or effort in a losing cause. 

In other words, the winnowing pressure will still be there despite the uncertainty Trump brings to the race. The calculus may be slightly different, but that pressure will still be there if other candidates are not winning. But that assumes Trump is still winning contests. He may not once the voting phase commences. 

But as of now there appears to be a bit of a deficit for others to overcome....


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The latest Morning Consult tracking poll of the Republican presidential nomination race has Trump with a commanding lead and DeSantis flirting with another, even lower threshold in the delegate game. Most states with proportional rules have a qualifying threshold. Of them, the vast majority of those states have a threshold set to 15 percent or higher. A 20 percent threshold to qualify for delegates continues to be the modal threshold. Where does DeSantis sit in the tracker? 16 percent.


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And the outlook may not be any better for non-Trumps on the state level. 

No, the former president's share of support in the Granite state in a new co/efficient survey is lower than in national polling, but no one else even clears the 10 percent barrier to be allocated any delegate slots under New Hampshire rules. 13 percent were undecided and those candidates who placed second through fourth in the poll were all within the margin of error of the Republican delegate threshold in the Granite state.

Three of those top four -- Trump, DeSantis and Nikki Haley (in addition to Asa Hutchinson) -- will all descend on New Hampshire today. 
 

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From around the invisible primary...
  • Generra Peck is out as campaign manager for the DeSantis campaign and James Uthmeier, the governor's chief of staff in Tallahassee is in. 
  • Former Vice President Mike Pence had already hit the polling threshold to make the stage for the first Republican presidential debate later this month, but had been struggling to get to 40,000 unique donors for that threshold. That struggle is now over (for the first debate anyway).
  • In the endorsement primary, Vivek Ramaswamy will gain the backing of Wisconsin state Rep. Nate Gustafson today.
  • Ahead of his weekend visit to South Carolina, Trump picked up the endorsement of Palmetto state Speaker of the House Murrell Smith. There are not a lot of big name South Carolinians who have either not endorsed Trump or launched a bid themselves, so another second tier endorsement coming off the board -- and siding with Trump -- merits a mention.
  • The Erie Times-News has a nice rundown of endorsements thus far on both sides in the presidential race in Pennsylvania.
  • FHQ is late to this, but in the money primary, there are several candidates who are spending money at a potentially unsustainable rate according to Axios.
  • There are four early states on the Republican primary calendar and all have Republican governors. One has made an endorsement. Henry McMaster (R-SC) has again lined up behind Donal Trump. But the remaining three are on the sidelines, and a second of those -- Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo -- has pledged to remind neutral in the race, joining Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds.


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Saturday, August 5, 2023

[From FHQ Plus] Newly adopted California Republican delegate allocation rules offer clear benefits

The following is cross-posted from FHQ Plus, FHQ's subscription newsletter. Come check the rest out and consider a paid subscription to unlock the full site and support our work. 

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But the plan is a gamble for Trump and the state party for different reasons:


Did FHQ not just discuss California delegate allocation rules?

Yup. 

But the California Republican Party executive committee jettisoned that widely circulated (and panned) plan in favor of an alternate version, a version that seemingly balances the party’s desire to draw candidates into the Golden state and the Trump campaign’s push to maximize its delegates in the contest next year. Those benefits are clear enough on the surface, but neither is guaranteed. 

And that means the revised delegate allocation scheme for 2024 is a gamble of sorts. For California Republicans and for Trump. Delegate allocation rules can be a zero sum game and the friction that developed in and around the Executive Committee meeting on Saturday, July 29 from multiple sides was evidence of the high stakes involved. 

What changes did the California Republican Party make? And what does that mean for the 2024 race for the Republican presidential nomination?


The adopted changes

The initially proposed changes offered by the California Republican Party set up a plan with a few notable features:

  • A proportional allocation of the 13 at-large (and automatic/party) delegates based on the statewide vote with no qualifying threshold and no winner-take-all trigger (should one candidate win a majority of the vote statewide). 

  • A proportional allocation of the 3 delegates in each of the 52 congressional districts based on the results within each congressional district. The top finisher in a congressional district vote would receive two delegates and the runner-up would receive the remaining delegate. Like the allocation of the at-large delegates described above, there would be no winner-take-all trigger should one candidate win a majority of the vote within the district. 

That method differs from the system the state party utilized in 2020 and it is also different than the plan adopted on Saturday. The newly adopted plan — the allocation plan California Republicans will use in 2024 — shed the separate allocation scheme for at-large and congressional district delegates and returned to a system that resembles the 2020 plan with one big exception: there is no qualifying threshold. But exactly like the 2020 delegate allocation among Golden state Republicans, the 2024 system will have the following provisions:

  • All 169 delegates, including at-large, automatic/party and congressional district delegates, will be pooled (meaning they will all be allocated as one bloc). Again, that is just as it was for 2020.

  • All 169 delegates will be allocated proportionally based on the statewide results. That, too, is just the same as under the 2020 rules. 

  • If any candidate wins the California primary with more than 50 percent of the vote, then all 169 delegates will be allocated to that candidate. Just like the 2020 plan, California Republicans have included in their 2024 rules a winner-take-all trigger or winner-take-all threshold. 

However, unlike 2020, more candidates will likely be eligible for some share of the 169 delegates available because there will no longer be a 20 percent qualifying threshold, the highest bar allowed under Republican National Committee rules. That is a big difference. 

How big? 


The impact of 2020 versus 2024 rules

Pretty big.

Using the results from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary with the 2020 and 2024 California Republican Party allocation rules highlights the scale of the change.1

With no qualifying threshold, as under the 2024 rules, five additional candidates would have been allocated delegates as compared to the 2020 rules. And candidates with as little as two percent support would have claimed at least some share of the pool of 169 delegates.2 But importantly, the top two candidates — the only two who would have cleared the 20 percent threshold to qualify for delegates under the 2020 rules — would have lost a significant chunk of delegates in the transition from 2020 to 2024 rules. Sanders would have lost 34 and Biden, 26. 

Now, imagine that Sanders pulled in closer to half of the voters in the last California primary. Pretend Elizabeth Warren was not in the race and that the 13.2 percent the Massachusetts senator won went to Sanders instead. Under the 2020 California Republican allocation rules, Sanders would have won 108 delegates compared to 84 delegates according to the 2024 plan. What is clear is that Sanders would pay a price in delegates won without a qualifying threshold. 

FHQ raises the second scenario because Trump is currently hovering around the 50 percent mark in polling both nationally and in California. The penalty for not hitting the winner-take-all threshold, which is in the 2024 California Republican delegate allocation rules, would be significant, but it will be greater in the absence of a qualifying threshold. It makes strategic sense to secure the former threshold, but it is a gamble. 

If Trump does not hit it, then the price is steep and the net delegate advantage coming out of the California primary would likely differ very little from the original 2024 rules proposal that Republicans in the Golden state floated. However, if Trump does eclipse the 50 percent barrier and trips the winner-take-all trigger, then it is clearly close to a death knell for his opposition. A +169 is tough to overcome even if Super Tuesday’s results are mixed and states with truly winner-take-all rules lie ahead on the calendar. 

It is not that there are not advantages for Trump in this change (either relative to 2020 or the alternate 2024 proposal), but the new rules do place a great deal of pressure on the campaign to make it happen.

 

But why is there not a qualifying threshold?

That is the gamble the state party is making. 

If more candidates are eligible for delegates, then that may be enough of a carrot to lure candidates of all stripes into the state to campaign and spend money. In theory that makes sense. But in practice, the cost/benefit analysis may not work in the favor of California Republicans who are championing this revised plan. 

The candidates will go to California. They always do to raise money. But turning around and spending that money (in a variety of ways) in the Golden state may not offer as much bang for the candidates’ buck as it might in other states. Yes, California is the most delegate-rich state out there — and promises 169 delegates to anyone who can clear 50 percent in the primary — but it is also prohibitively expensive to reach voters and in turn win votes/delegates. And as long as Trump is threatening to hit the winner-take-all trigger, it may be enough to ward off concerted investment in the state. 

But where this plan is clever is in the fact that it potentially motivates all of the candidates. It draws the Trump campaign in to expend resources in the state to win all of the delegates. Yet, it potentially entices other candidates to take a risk to keep Trump under the majority mark and minimize the former president’s net delegate advantage coming out of California and Super Tuesday. 

And that is just it. Much of the above discusses California in isolation. But the California primary is not an isolated event. It falls on Super Tuesday when roughly a third of the total number of delegates will be allocated. Few may be able to run a truly national campaign leading up to March 5. And few may choose to incorporate California directly into their investments for Super Tuesday.3 The options may be better (and cheaper) elsewhere. 

Still, the Trump campaign is calling the change in California a win for them. And it may be. But only if the former president can win a majority. And that is not a sure thing.


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1 FHQ is using the 2020 Democratic results because the California Democratic primary was both early (as the 2024 primary is) and competitive. The 2020 Republican primary in California was also on Super Tuesday but uncompetitive, and the 2016 Republican primary in the Golden state was later and fell after Donald Trump’s viable opposition had withdrawn from the race. 

2 That allocation outcome depends to some degree on how California Republicans choose to round. All fractional delegates are rounded up starting with the top vote-getter and progressing from there in descending order of vote share. Under different (and more conventional) rounding rules, even more candidates would have qualified for delegates (and with less than one percent support).

3 Candidates may choose to indirectly hit California through national ad buys instead.


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Friday, August 4, 2023

Is Trump rewriting the delegate rules or defending them?

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • Alabama Republicans are set to vote on and adopt delegate allocation rules for the Super Tuesday presidential primary. But where is the state party taking them? Making it easier to win delegates? Harder? Maintaining the status quo. One thing is clear: the party does not have much room to make them harder. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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Politico makes a contribution to the Trump and the 2024 delegate rules storyline that has periodically been touched on by most major national news outlets in 2023. And there is some nice color to Rachael Bade's story, but FHQ does not know how much it is actually adding to what is already known. Generally, candidates seek to influence the state level delegate selection rules, and Trump, in particular, is making some attempt at creating even more frontrunner-friendly rules in the Republican process this cycle. That was established at least as early as February.

And in some respects the Trump campaign has been very active in the process to craft rules at the state level that play to the former president's advantage. But the scope of that activity has been less rewriting -- the headline writer's word, not Bade's -- than it has been playing defense. Because as Bade describes in the piece...
The wonky-yet-important effort underscores just how politically savvy the Trump operation — once caught flat-footed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s attempted delegate mutiny at the 2016 Republican National Convention — has become. And it exposes how Trump’s aides have been running circles around his rivals, with only one of them — Ron DeSantis and his allies at the Never Back Down super PAC — even putting up a fight.
Again, that is consistent with what has been reported thus far in 2023. Yet, in context, this maneuvering is an extension of what the equally savvy, yet, far less opposed Team Trump did in 2019. Like this cycle, the RNC rules for the 2020 cycle carried over, largely unchanged. That confined any effort at massaging the rules -- within those national party guidelines -- to those on the state level. And the Trump campaign set out to do just that, pushing the bar so high for also-ran candidates in the 2020 cycle that it was nearly impossible for them to win any delegates. 

That was the baseline that Team Trump established for 2024. And honestly, the campaign then gave the campaign now very little additional room to maneuver. It is not that they cannot make any further changes to make delegate allocation harder for other candidates, but that there just are not that many places where they can lobby to turn the knob up even higher (within RNC rules). 

Consequently, most of what the Trump campaign has done in 2023 is play defense. They did so in California, warding off an alternate plan that would have eroded the gains there from four years ago. The same seems true of Alabama. At the end of June, there was talk of DeSantis World having some potential success in nudging the qualifying threshold for delegates there lower. But again, Trump has been playing defense in the Yellowhammer state. The Massachusetts Republican Party chair recently suggested that the party was considering dropping its winner-take-all threshold altogether. Bade seems to indicate that Trump is playing defense there as well. 

And then there are Colorado and Louisiana, sites of Cruz success in the behind-the-scenes delegate battle against Trump in 2016. Both are pretty much maxxed out in terms of delegate allocation barriers allowed under RNC rules, but Team Trump has been fixated on completely ending any thought of a possibility of unbound delegates in either. Proposals in each would have delegates bound through two ballots at the national convention. That might be overkill, but it also fits the pattern of the former president's campaign playing defense with the rules established for 2020, not allowing them to ebb much if at all. 

This will continue. It will continue all the way up to October 1, the deadline by which state Republican parties are to submit their delegate selection plans to the Republican National Committee. And as October 1 approaches, it is important to consider these efforts in this context. Trump is mostly defending the high water mark created in 2019 and smoothing over any other rough edges that they missed then for this cycle. That is the story here. 
 

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From around the invisible primary...


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Monday, July 31, 2023

Let's talk about the state of Republican delegate selection rules for 2024 (Part One)

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • California Republicans have new delegate selection rules for 2024. And it seems like some folks are racing to score the change as a win for Trump. It might be! But that is not guaranteed. There are some California-sized caveats, but CAGOP may be the big winner. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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FHQ will level with you. I have found the Washington Post's coverage of the evolving Republican delegate selection rules to have been fabulous all year. Reporters there have done a fantastic job of digging up state-level changes, large and small, and have furthermore done well in contextualizing them for a unique 2024 Republican nomination race. Look, the Post has a much larger, much broader audience than FHQ, and the stories are crafted with such an audience in mind. 

They do not necessarily get down in the weeds. And they do not have to! Leave that to niche sites like FHQ with equally niche audiences. Hey, we are happy to fill the void. 

And while that overall view of WaPo coverage has not changed, FHQ did find their article on delegate selection rules following the change in California from this past weekend lacking. And some of this is just cranky blogging, pet peevish stuff for FHQ. But there were also some nuggets in the piece that left me shaking my head, stuff simply not backed up by the facts. So let us endeavor to set the record straight on a Monday. 


Winner-take-all by congressional district

Right out of the gate, Maeve Reston and Michael Scherer hit readers with this:
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign notched a major victory Saturday when members of the California Republican executive committee voted to parcel out convention delegates based on the statewide vote next year — doing away with the state’s longtime system of awarding them by congressional district, which had been perceived as a more level playing field for lower-tiered candidates.
Okay. That is a loaded clause highlighted there. And some of it is technically correct even if it glosses over the nature of delegate selection rules changes made by California Republicans in recent cycles. It is true that California Republicans have had a winner-take-all by congressional district allocation scheme for most of the 21st century. And it was still on the books until its death sentence was signed this weekend (technically for 2024 and for good afterward). 

However, that allocation method was overridden in 2019 for the 2020 cycle with a contingency provision that called for the proportional allocation of the entire California Republican delegation. [Yes, that sounds an awful lot like what the Republican Party in the Golden state just adopted. It is quite similar.] That temporary condition was added in 2019 because the Republican National Committee rules prohibit winner-take-all by congressional district methods of allocation before March 15. Therefore, the state party had to make a change because the 2020 primary fell on Super Tuesday, before March 15. 

But again, that was a temporary contingency that expired at the beginning of 2021, leaving California Republicans with the same default winner-take-all by congressional district method in place. Time passed and the RNC carried over the same winner-take-all prohibition for the early calendar into the 2024 rules. So that was never going to be the method Golden state Republicans used in 2024. Look, California Republicans were not going to give up the one feather in their cap in this process. Theirs is the most delegate-rich state on the Republican calendar. The state party was not going to give up half its delegation -- the penalty for using an unsanctioned winner-take-all by congressional district allocation method in an early March primary -- to keep that method. They just were not. 

That brings the timeline to May of this year when the LA Times had an article describing how California Republicans were going to have this strategically unique delegate allocation method for 2024. The method? Winner-take-all by congressional district. Yes, the very same noncompliant method detailed above. FHQ raises the LA Times piece because it set a baseline that has subsequently poisoned the discourse on these changes that California Republicans have actually made for 2024. 

It was that article that made it seem as if California Republicans were going to use that noncompliant method when all it ever was was a placeholder until the state party set rules for 2024 this summer (just as the party did in the summer of 2019). Indeed, before the new plan was adopted over the weekend, there was an alternative proposal that called for a proportional districted method of allocation. Still districted, but proportional and compliant.

Moreover, that baseline set in the LA Times piece from May has led subsequent news accounts to compare changes relative to what was never going to be a winner-take-all by congressional district allocation method. In reality, the comparison should have been to the rules used by the state party in 2020, rules that were compliant. Yes, those rules expired, but to better understand the nature of the change for 2024, the 2020 rules are the better comparison and the better encapsulation of the state party's thinking on how to craft compliant rules for an incumbent cycle (2020) versus a competitive one (2024). 

The press has dropped the ball on this one. 

Fortunately, the newly adopted 2024 California Republican delegate allocation rules sunset at the end of next year. Not just the subsection detailing the compliant proportional allocation, but the whole section including the legacy winner-take-all by congressional district method. Make note of that now. Hopefully that means we all will not be talking about these same noncompliant rules in California in 2027. No one should be comparing any changes then to that method anyway. 

To circle back to the WaPo reference to "the state’s longtime system of awarding them [delegates] by congressional district," it really was not necessary. That is a false point of comparison for the new method. And it is one that did not need to feature as prominently as it did in that story or the similar story about the rules change from the LA Times. 

Did the winner-take-all by congressional district method warrant a mention somewhere in either story? Sure, but the endless parade of quotes from Republicans in California seemingly pining for the "old system" just made those folks look out of touch. To repeat, the California Republican Party was not going to sacrifice half of their delegates to allocated delegates the old way (2016 and before). 

Okay. FHQ got that one off its chest. What else? 

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Thursday, July 27, 2023

Are the Republican debate qualification rules hurting business as usual in Iowa?

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • The Trump campaign influenced frontrunner-friendly delegate allocation rules on the state level for 2020. One of the state parties that made it that way was Massachusetts, but Bay state Republicans are eyeing rules changes for 2024 that may diminish the frontrunner advantage in the allocation. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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The Des Moines Register had a fantastic and well-researched piece on the impact the Republican National Committee debate qualification rules may be having on the regular rhythms on the campaign trail in Iowa, home to the first-in-the-nation caucuses. Visits are down versus previous cycles. Ads are up.

What's different? For one there is a more stringent set of RNC debate criteria requiring both a polling and donor threshold for the first debate rather than the either/or requirement Democrats had four years ago. It is a persuasive argument about the nationalization of the presidential nomination process overall. But that is not new in 2023. And it was not new in 2019 either. But this is the latest manifestation of the nationalization of the process that has been going on for quite some time, pushing further and more meaningfully into the invisible primary every cycle. 

Look, it is not that Iowa does not and will not matter. There will continue to be value in being first (no matter which state is there). It is only that the Hawkeye state, first or not, is just another state. Still first, but first after significant jockeying in the invisible primary. The debate qualifications build on that evolution. 


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Benjy Sarlin had a nice piece up at Semafor today that kind of builds on something Amy Walter touched on last month. It is one of those 2024 is not 2016 because Trump is more popular pieces. But it takes things a step further, pushing back against the recent Romney notion that Republicans should consolidate behind a Trump alternative before Super Tuesday next year. 

And the argument is simple enough: Republicans already did that for 2024. They massed behind the idea of DeSantis and it is not going at all well to this point. As Sarlin points out, there are not alternatives waiting in the wings who can save this thing in the way that only the rosiest depictions of Rick Perry (pre-launch) could in 2012. [Or Jeb Bush. Or some other white knight.]

It just does not work that way. And it is not that parties cannot coordinate in that way. It is that a broader party network cannot coordinate in that way that quickly, try as it might. Folks might respond that Democrats coordinated quite quickly, aligning behind Joe Biden after South Carolina in 2020. And while that is true, Biden had been the frontrunner throughout much of the invisible primary in 2018-19. He was the former vice president. He was not coming into the race anew at that point in late February 2020. In other words (and probably too simplistically), Biden was an easier point of coordination. 

Trump is popular and DeSantis may still be the best point of alternative coordination for Republicans in 2023-24. And that may be a cause for celebration among DeSantis fans as much as it is depressing for a certain segment of Republicans. 


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From around the invisible primary...


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Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Revisiting the Frankenstein's Monster

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • There is some great reporting in the recent AP account of the under-the-radar battle to set the Republican delegate rules for 2024. But there was some important context missing from the state-level updates in that article. FHQ attempts to bridge the gap. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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A month before Ron DeSantis officially entered the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race, FHQ described the basic organization of the nascent campaign as "a bit of an attempt at a better Frankenstein's monster in 2023, taking elements of the Bush super PAC build out in 2015 and melding it with the deep organizing -- staff, grassroots and delegate efforts -- of the Cruz campaign. Neither were particularly successful against Trump separately in 2015-16, but fused in some respects in 2023, it may prove different."

Two months after the Florida governor announced his campaign, it appears that Dr. Frankenstein has lost control of the monster. From Playbook: 
But behind the scenes, there are serious doubts whether the layoffs will do anything to address a fundamental weakness of DeSantis’ presidential bid: the rising tension and distrust brewing between his campaign and the main super PAC supporting him, Never Back Down.
Look, DeSantis and company may yet turn this thing around, but this is more evidence that there is a certain balance to be maintained between a campaign proper and its affiliated super PACs (and other groups). The broader DeSantis effort very simply seems to have outsourced a lot to Never Back Down and that makes it tough for a candidate and the campaign to rein in without the ability to directly coordinate. 

FHQ spent much of the candidate entry phase earlier this year discussing candidates and campaigns learning lessons from 2016. Unless DeSantis mounts a comeback, one of the lessons potentially learned from 2024 may be about properly calibrating the balance between campaign and super PAC. 


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Illinois Republican National Committeeman Richard Porter appears to have endorsed Ron DeSantis in an op-ed at Real Clear Politics. He will not necessarily be an automatic delegate to the national convention next year because the Republican state convention in the Prairie state will select the national committeeman and committeewoman to attend the convention in Milwaukee next year. Unless there is a significant change to Illinois Republican Party rules, then the three RNC members will be bound to the statewide winner of the March 19 primary. Theoretically, Porter could be reelected at that convention and then bound to a candidate other than DeSantis. 

The RNC has pledged to say neutral in the presidential contest and not many members have gone out of their way to weigh in on the race at this point in the invisible primary. But this counts as an early (initial?) exception to that, and it is someone taking a position. Porter not only talks up DeSantis as likely to emerge as nominee, but also gives an explicit unendorsement of Trump in the process. 

At a time when there are not a lot of rays of sunshine for the Florida governor, this counts as one: a national committee endorsement.


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From around the invisible primary...


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Tuesday, July 25, 2023

It is not a national primary, but...

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • Haven't had a chance to read the piece on the proposal California Republicans have for delegate allocation in 2024 yet? Go check it out. There is a story there that is floating under the radar about how the changes could affect the sort of delegate bonus a primary winner will take from the Golden state. It will not be like 2020 for a lot of reasons. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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Monmouth just released a new national survey on the Republican presidential nomination race and at first glance it appeared to be a reality check for the sort of consolidation theory that Senator Mitt Romney described in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed:
Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president. That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person race before Mr. Trump has the nomination sewn up. For that to happen, Republican megadonors and influencers—large and small—are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed. That decision day should be no later than, say, Feb. 26, the Monday following the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. 
First of all, that resembles in some respects the reaction Democrats had in 2020 after Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses. Candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Kobluchar withdrew and aligned with an alternative, Joe Biden, after his victory in South Carolina and before Super Tuesday. That is basically what Romney is describing. 

Of course, win though Sanders did early in the 2020 calendar, he did not represent the sort of force that Donald Trump currently does at this juncture in the invisible primary ahead of 2024. And the Monmouth poll demonstrates the difference. 
When asked whom they would like to see as the Republican nominee for president in 2024, 46% of GOP-aligned and leaning voters name Trump and 20% name DeSantis without any prompting. In a primary ballot question that explicitly lists 14 announced candidates, Trump’s support increases to 54% while DeSantis’ vote share barely moves (22%) and no other candidate gets above 5%. In a head-to-head contest between just the two, Trump garners 55% support and DeSantis gets 35%. These results are similar to a Monmouth poll taken two months ago when DeSantis officially launched his campaign.
Sanders was successful enough, but the Vermont senator never consistently approached majority support in primary surveys or at the ballot box in 2020. Trump has consistently hovered around the 50 percent mark for a while now. And even if one theorizes that the former president's position in the extant polling is a sugar high, the consistency of his position over time augurs against that conclusion. 

Moreover, that Trump is around 50 percent in national polling is instructive for how one thinks about the delegate battle that lies ahead. FHQ has spoken on occasion about how DeSantis has been flirting with the qualifying threshold since he officially jumped in the race, but Trump is doing some flirting of his own. 

Look, this is one poll and it is a national poll of contest that will play out sequentially from state to state during the first half of 2024. But if Trump is flirting with 50 percent when the votes start coming in next January, then the conversation will quickly turn to the former president tripping winner-take-all triggers when the race actually turns more national in scope on Super Tuesday next March 5. The chatter in some Republican circles may now be about stopping Trump in one of the early states, but the former president may be looking to stop his opposition and with an emphatic exclamation point on Super Tuesday if he is triggering those winner-take-all thresholds. 

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There is more news on DeSantis below, but it is not all bad. The Florida governor pulled in an additional six endorsements in New Hampshire, five state representatives and a county commissioner. And he has not done poorly in the endorsement primary. No, more often than not, they are not high profile endorsements. But as Newsweek reports, DeSantis has quietly put together a robust roster of lower profile backers, the sorts of folks who can help organize in caucuses in both the allocation and selection phases and who can also serve as national convention delegate candidates on down the line. 

Of course, Ted Cruz followed a similar path in 2016. 


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From around the invisible primary...

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On this date...
...in 2000, Texas governor and presumptive Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush tapped former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney as his running mate. On the same date and in answer to a reporter's question, Alan Keyes announced that he was no longer a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. 



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Posted by Josh Putnam at 4:00 PM 0 comments
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Monday, July 24, 2023

On "the nitty-gritty battle for delegates" for 2024

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • California Republicans were always going to have to do something with their delegate selection plan to bring it into compliance with national party rules. But under those RNC rules there are variations in the proportional methods required before March 15. And consequentially, Republicans in the Golden state are planning to use a different proportional in 2024 than they did in 2020. All the details at FHQ Plus.
If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.


In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
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Look, I thought the AP story on Trump and the delegate battle now and ahead was a good and informative read. It did well in pulling together a number of disparate pieces to tell a story about how the Trump campaign has done well playing defense on the delegate rules it established in 2020 and even some of the offense it has played on a smaller scale. 

It is an important story. There have been more wins -- as measured by status quo maintenance -- for the former president than losses, and that is no small thing as the invisible primary pushes deeper into the third quarter of 2023. Whether this 2024 Republican presidential nomination race develops into an actual delegate battle or not is colored to a great degree by how the frontrunner (or front-running campaigns if there are multiples) shuts the door now on opponents in the delegate rules and across the various other invisible primary metrics (fundraising, endorsements, staff, etc.).

Yes, the polling support could collapse for Trump at some point, but for now the former president has some built-in advantages that insulate him to some extent. It is not the incumbency advantage, but this [understatement alert] has not been the typical competitive nomination cycle either. 


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Still, it can be tough for me not to read accounts like the AP's with anything other than a critical eye. There are a couple of things FHQ would highlight:

1) On Michigan Republicans' and the process they have laid out for delegate allocation and selection in 2024...
"In Michigan, where the state GOP has become increasingly loyal to Trump, the party’s leadership this year voted to change the state’s longtime process of allocating all its presidential delegates based on an open primary election. Under a new plan widely expected to benefit Trump, 16 of the state’s 55 delegates will be awarded based on the results of a Feb. 27 primary. The other 39 will be distributed four days later in closed-door caucus meetings of party activists."
There will be a congressional district caucus process in Michigan at some point, but it is not clear whether that will fall on March 2, four days after the state-run primary. Yes, that plan was adopted last month, but the caucus scheduling hit a snag with the RNC earlier in July.


2) On California Republicans and their plans for 2024...
"One potential opening for a challenger like DeSantis could be California, which has 169 delegates to dole out, more than any other state. 
"Thanks to changes passed by Democrats in the state Capitol, California’s primary contest will be on March 5, requiring the state GOP to change its delegate plan in order to comply with national GOP rules for early contests. 
"The changes, which the state’s Republican Party is set to consider and approve late this month, are set to award delegates proportionately to the candidate’s share of the vote, rather than award all delegates to the winner. 
"That could give a candidate trailing in second place a chance to make up ground—especially someone like DeSantis, who has made a point of campaigning in the state."
Democrats in Sacramento did change the primary date to Super Tuesday. 

...in 2017. 

California Republicans had to make a change to the winner-take-all by congressional district system -- NOT truly winner-take-all -- used before then for the 2020 cycle. The problem was that the changes to the CAGOP bylaws in 2019 were only temporary and reset to the same noncompliant winner-take-all by congressional method after 2020. That Republicans in the Golden state have to change back to a more proportional system for 2024 is a condition of their own making. There is really no need to place the blame on Democrats in 2017.

And FHQ does not know if a second place finisher in California is going to make up ground in the delegate count. They will lose less ground than if it were winner-take-all by congressional district, but they will not make up ground. 



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From around the invisible primary...


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Posted by Josh Putnam at 7:30 PM 0 comments
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Saturday, July 22, 2023

[From FHQ Plus] A second state-run primary option in New Hampshire?

The following is cross-posted from FHQ Plus, FHQ's subscription newsletter. Come check the rest out and consider a paid subscription to unlock the full site and support our work. 

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Talk about burying the lede. This came in over the wires from NBC News this morning...
New Hampshire Republicans would prefer to keep their primary in late January, after Iowa, rather than see [New Hampshire Secretary of State David] Scanlan have to leapfrog Iowa because of Democrats’ maneuvering. Republican state Rep. Ross Berry, who chairs the House Election Law Committee, said he is considering “contingencies” that might prevent that.

Berry said he is considering introducing legislation that would allow Scanlan to set two different primary dates, one for each party. He called it a “last resort option” that would give Scanlan a new tool if he makes the determination that Iowa’s Democratic caucus is functionally the same as a primary.

“We don’t want to get caught flat-footed on it,” Berry said. “If the secretary of state says, ‘You know what, I’m cool with Iowa mailing in their stuff,’ we have no problem, I see no reason to change things,” he continued.
The rest of the piece is standard fare for stories covering the back and forth over the calendar between Iowa Democrats and the New Hampshire secretary of state. It builds up the tension that seemingly exists without getting too far down into the weeds to explain that there probably is not much tension there at all. As the piece notes, it is not unusual for New Hampshire to string this decision out. Long-time and former Secretary Gardner pulled the trigger on a choice for 2008 the day before Thanksgiving in 2007 and waited into November again in 2011. In both cases, a decision was made roughly two months before January primaries in both cycles. Regardless of the timing of a decision from Scanlan, the choice boils down to answering one simple question. And Iowa Democrats are not showing their cards at the moment (even if the state party's actions seem to tip their hand).

But still, even if the early state calendar tension is on a low simmer (at most), the notion that there is a proposal for an emergency legislative fix in the Granite state is newsworthy. Well, it is newsworthy on the surface anyway.

Digging in a bit, creating an option for the secretary of state to schedule a second presidential primary would bail out Democrats currently at odds with the national party over the DNC’s new calendar rules for the 2024 cycle. That New Hampshire Republicans would even consider that is enough to raise eyebrows. And that is without considering the costs associated with a second state-run presidential primary election. The state footing the bill for that is one thing that is almost unbelievable, but creating a carve-out for (what some perceive as) Democrats’ collective own-goal in a battleground state would seem to be a bridge to far for Republicans in control of the levers of power in the state.

But it also goes to show just how far at least one Republican is willing to go to preserve the first-in-the-nation tradition in the Granite state.

Of course, none of this appears necessary at the moment. There are questions surrounding the scheduling of the all-mail Iowa Democratic presidential preference vote. [The Democratic caucuses will be on January 15.] But why would Iowa Democrats go to the trouble of devising this bifurcated caucus/preference vote process in an incumbent cycle if they were just going to break the rules. The system is one that allows Iowa Democrats to have their cake and hopefully (from their perspective) eat it too. The caucuses will remain first (the same night as Iowa Republicans), but the delegate allocation (through the preference vote) can conclude later than that at a time that is either in the Democrats’ early window (with a waiver from the DNC) or on or after March 5. It is a system designed to preserve tradition and comply with DNC rules. It is also a system that allows Iowa Democrats to stay out of the way of business as usual in the New Hampshire secretary of state’s office.

So maybe NBC News did not bury the lede here. Maybe they just got an interesting quote from a legislator in New Hampshire with a proposal for a novel rip cord the state could pull in case of emergency. The only thing is that there does not appear to be an emergency in the near term or on the horizon.

All there actually is is an inability in the press to dig in on this story and describe what is happening between Iowa and New Hampshire. Less than meets the eye.



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Posted by Josh Putnam at 11:00 AM 0 comments
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