Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...
As 2018 came to a close a second wave of folks seemed to be getting in their two cents about the impact of the three month shift of the California presidential primary on the 2020 calendar.1
And it is not a move that is without import. While California pairing with Texas (among others) on Super Tuesday is a new wrinkle for 2020, frontloaded primary calendars with California on the heels of the earliest states are not. California was part of the logjam on the first Tuesday in March in 2000, and similarly just a month behind Iowa kicking things off on the 2008 calendar.
Of course, the dynamics of each of those races were different. Each cycle is always different in some way from its predecessors.2 The 2000 cycle saw fields of candidates on both sides that were comparatively small. And in 2008, California was early on a de facto national primary date, but other states -- Florida and Michigan -- sought to push even more directly into the early calendar territory Iowa and New Hampshire.
But maybe 2020 is when the stars align for a California primary move to be of consequence. Perhaps, but 2019 has already witnessed no lack of 2020 candidate maneuvering. And the attention, at least to this point, seems to be in the usual directions: toward the earliest states.
Yes, there is still time for that to change.
In fact, the increase in early voting in the Golden state and the stretch of that window of convenience voting to a point on the calendar in line with the caucuses in Iowa may be enough to alter the equation. It is that reality that has driven much of the renewed discourse about the California primary and 2020.
Some have argued that the implications of the California primary move coupled with that Iowa-aligned early voting start means that the Golden state cannot be ignored. If that is even partly true, then it will likely serve as an extension of the frontloaded calendars cited above. To be successful, candidates have to have the resources to plan for a crowded Super Tuesday, and in 2020, an early vote GOTV effort in the state. Both have winnowing possibilities layered into them.
Still others have made the case that a largely unwinnowed, or lightly winnowed, field entering into a month-long California primary voting window may lead to a fractious split of a large cache of delegates, raising the likelihood of an inconclusive outcome to primary season.
FHQ would submit another scenario altogether, a rather counterintuitive one.
Those rooting most heavily for a still crowded field by the time California rolls around in 2020 are those with some nominal frontrunner status, those with some experience winning statewide in the Golden state, or those with some combination of the two. The more crowded it is, the less likely it is that some number of candidates clears the 15 percent threshold to qualify for delegates in (each of the 55 races for delegates in) California.3
The fewer candidates that crest above 15 percent, the greater the delegate prize California would be to those who do. Bear in mind that, despite the fact that winnowing was slow in 2016 in a crowded Republican nomination race, no primary or caucus saw any more than three candidates receive 15 percent or more of the vote.
And hey, if it is crowded enough in the California results, then California could become a very big prize indeed. If early voting is great enough and distributes the votes in a way that only one candidate clears that threshold (in all 53 jurisdictions), then California becomes a winner-take-all affair.
Advantage: winner.
But it is early yet and the winnowing has only really just begun.
--
Elsewhere in the invisible primary...
1. Sanders is heading to the Palmetto state to speak at the Martin Luther King Jr. Day Rally.
2. Later this month Bloomberg will be in Virginia to speak to the Democratic Business Council. This one is more preaching to the choir than broadening any likely coalition of the former New York mayor's.
3. In Iowa today, Steyer is going to announce something. What can one announce in the Hawkeye state?
4. Speaking of announcements, Castro is building up to his own later this week. Yesterday he was in Iowa pledging to shun PAC money and in Nevada reaching out to the Latino community.
5. Meanwhile, Draft Beto stretches into Nevada and California with new hires in an attempt to pull the former Texas congressman into the 2020 race.
6. Finally, Harris has an entry for the 2020 Book Primary.
Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.
--
1 Second wave because there was an initial round back in 2017 when the California legislature pushed the presidential primary in the Golden state up.
2 That is the reason that even small rules changes can yield large impacts (or alternatively, be amplified by differing dynamics).
3 There will be 55 contests for delegates nestled in the broader California primary. Allocations of at-large and party leader and elected official (PLEO) delegates will be based on the statewide results, while the results in each of the 53 congressional districts will determine how the varying numbers of congressional district delegates will be allocated.
Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- On DNC Debate Requirements and Candidate Strategy
Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...
Recently, the Democratic National Committee announced a series of basically monthly primary debates that will start in June 2019 and run into primary season in 2020.
Although the qualifications for participation were left undetermined for the time being, the announcement was not without some important rules-related revelations. Most inventive among them was the plan to deal with an expected slew of candidates, a number likely to extend beyond what one debate stage could accommodate. Rather than repeat the Republican undercard/main event debate method from 2016, the DNC demonstrated it had learned some lessons and opted instead to randomize the participants across a doubleheader in each of at least the first two planned debates.
And the announcement has prompted another attempt at examining the importance primary debates on the candidates' fortunes.
But as news of the DNC debates considerations emerged over the course of fall 2018, FHQ returned to a constant drumbeat: No matter what decisions the party makes with respect to debates rules, there will be winnowing implications for candidates, potential candidates and candidates who opt to pass on officially running.
Mostly that is in reaction to the possible qualifications thresholds. But it is not clear that the DNC decision to not finalize those plans at this point in time is not also having some impact on [potential] candidate decision making.
All there is now from the DNC is a rough idea of what may be included in the qualifications, but not the specifics of the thresholds. We know polling. We know some measure of "grassroots fundraising". But we do not know the level of either. Nor do we know the balance between the two. Does polling count for more? Fundraising? Are they evenly counted?
Those are a lot of questions to answer if one is a candidate trying to find one's way in an overly crowded field. Now look, facing uncertainty is nothing new to presidential nomination politics, but this particular bit of uncertainty may be enough to freeze some candidates and to do so consequentially.
Let me explain.
Some candidates -- mostly the big names -- are planning early 2019 announcements. Warren is exploring already. Harris is supposed to be moving quickly. Biden is expected to make a decision by the end of January. The list goes on.
However, other candidates are planning later announcements. It was Jay Inslee's "by April" line on his decision-making calculus that prompted this line of thought.1 The question is why? Why would someone watch other candidates -- bigger names, more likely frontrunner-types -- emerge/announce and begin/continue laying the groundwork of a run while another candidate, seemingly further down the food chain, bides his or her time?
Part of the answer could be built on the idea that most 2016 candidates waited until slightly later into 2015 before officially throwing their hats in the ring. It also could be a decision spurred by a desire, like states on the primary calendar, to carve out a spot where a smaller scale candidate can draw some attention. None of that is implausible.
Yet, let's game out a debate rules scenario here. If you are, say, Eric Swalwell, then you are probably seeking an advantageous announcement time some time in the first half of the year in order to maximize the splashiness of the event. Part of that splashiness -- the timing of it anyway -- is very likely intended to influence the polling part of the debates qualifications equation. And the later the decision falls, the closer it is to the first debate. Such a delay helps that part of getting into the debates, but potentially hurt the grassroots fundraising part of it that will be more likely to rely on an extended period of fundraising (often helped along by an earlier announcement).
And that does not count a situation where a candidate banks on one part of the two-pronged qualifications to find out the other is weighted more.
In the end, the DNC is already on record that the initial thresholds for participation will be quite low. But the specifics of those debate rules matter. A delay until likely March for those specifics matters. Bigger candidates can more easily gloss over those things, while they remain consequential hurdles to longer shot candidates. In other words, those rules can affect decision-making within those campaigns more than others. They create more uncertainty.
Related:
What Will a "Grassroots Fundraising" Threshold for Entry to Democratic Primary Debates Look Like?
--
Elsewhere in the invisible primary...
1. From Seth Market, what we know about 2020 and what we don't from the lessons of 2016. This one's going to be worth flagging now and returning to later as the invisible primary progresses.
2. This seems destined to be a line of demarcation in some way, shape, or form in the Democratic nomination process. Some candidates will approach Wall Street. Others will not.
3. O'Rourke is going to hit the "pop-in" circuit in the coming weeks. You say pop-in, I say listening tour. ...or could anyway.
4. More on Warren's trip to Iowa over the backdrop of what some potential Democratic caucusgoers in the Hawkeye state are looking for heading into 2020.
5. Five state legislatures came online for the 2019 session on January 7. There is not a lot of primary movement promise there.
6. Delaney has hired more staff in Iowa.
7. After a bunch of trips to Iowa, Swalwell is now heading to the Palmetto state.
8. McAuliffe saying his 2020 decision-making calculus is unaffected by Biden's moves and McAuliffe actually being unaffected by Biden are two different things. More importantly, expect a decision from the former Virginia governor in the first quarter of 2019.
9. And now it's time for something completely different: How about those Clemson Tigers!
Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.
--
1 Of course, Inslee looks to be fairly well organized despite the plan to possibly announce later.
Recently, the Democratic National Committee announced a series of basically monthly primary debates that will start in June 2019 and run into primary season in 2020.
Although the qualifications for participation were left undetermined for the time being, the announcement was not without some important rules-related revelations. Most inventive among them was the plan to deal with an expected slew of candidates, a number likely to extend beyond what one debate stage could accommodate. Rather than repeat the Republican undercard/main event debate method from 2016, the DNC demonstrated it had learned some lessons and opted instead to randomize the participants across a doubleheader in each of at least the first two planned debates.
And the announcement has prompted another attempt at examining the importance primary debates on the candidates' fortunes.
But as news of the DNC debates considerations emerged over the course of fall 2018, FHQ returned to a constant drumbeat: No matter what decisions the party makes with respect to debates rules, there will be winnowing implications for candidates, potential candidates and candidates who opt to pass on officially running.
Mostly that is in reaction to the possible qualifications thresholds. But it is not clear that the DNC decision to not finalize those plans at this point in time is not also having some impact on [potential] candidate decision making.
All there is now from the DNC is a rough idea of what may be included in the qualifications, but not the specifics of the thresholds. We know polling. We know some measure of "grassroots fundraising". But we do not know the level of either. Nor do we know the balance between the two. Does polling count for more? Fundraising? Are they evenly counted?
Those are a lot of questions to answer if one is a candidate trying to find one's way in an overly crowded field. Now look, facing uncertainty is nothing new to presidential nomination politics, but this particular bit of uncertainty may be enough to freeze some candidates and to do so consequentially.
Let me explain.
Some candidates -- mostly the big names -- are planning early 2019 announcements. Warren is exploring already. Harris is supposed to be moving quickly. Biden is expected to make a decision by the end of January. The list goes on.
However, other candidates are planning later announcements. It was Jay Inslee's "by April" line on his decision-making calculus that prompted this line of thought.1 The question is why? Why would someone watch other candidates -- bigger names, more likely frontrunner-types -- emerge/announce and begin/continue laying the groundwork of a run while another candidate, seemingly further down the food chain, bides his or her time?
Part of the answer could be built on the idea that most 2016 candidates waited until slightly later into 2015 before officially throwing their hats in the ring. It also could be a decision spurred by a desire, like states on the primary calendar, to carve out a spot where a smaller scale candidate can draw some attention. None of that is implausible.
Yet, let's game out a debate rules scenario here. If you are, say, Eric Swalwell, then you are probably seeking an advantageous announcement time some time in the first half of the year in order to maximize the splashiness of the event. Part of that splashiness -- the timing of it anyway -- is very likely intended to influence the polling part of the debates qualifications equation. And the later the decision falls, the closer it is to the first debate. Such a delay helps that part of getting into the debates, but potentially hurt the grassroots fundraising part of it that will be more likely to rely on an extended period of fundraising (often helped along by an earlier announcement).
And that does not count a situation where a candidate banks on one part of the two-pronged qualifications to find out the other is weighted more.
In the end, the DNC is already on record that the initial thresholds for participation will be quite low. But the specifics of those debate rules matter. A delay until likely March for those specifics matters. Bigger candidates can more easily gloss over those things, while they remain consequential hurdles to longer shot candidates. In other words, those rules can affect decision-making within those campaigns more than others. They create more uncertainty.
Related:
What Will a "Grassroots Fundraising" Threshold for Entry to Democratic Primary Debates Look Like?
--
Elsewhere in the invisible primary...
1. From Seth Market, what we know about 2020 and what we don't from the lessons of 2016. This one's going to be worth flagging now and returning to later as the invisible primary progresses.
2. This seems destined to be a line of demarcation in some way, shape, or form in the Democratic nomination process. Some candidates will approach Wall Street. Others will not.
3. O'Rourke is going to hit the "pop-in" circuit in the coming weeks. You say pop-in, I say listening tour. ...or could anyway.
4. More on Warren's trip to Iowa over the backdrop of what some potential Democratic caucusgoers in the Hawkeye state are looking for heading into 2020.
5. Five state legislatures came online for the 2019 session on January 7. There is not a lot of primary movement promise there.
6. Delaney has hired more staff in Iowa.
7. After a bunch of trips to Iowa, Swalwell is now heading to the Palmetto state.
8. McAuliffe saying his 2020 decision-making calculus is unaffected by Biden's moves and McAuliffe actually being unaffected by Biden are two different things. More importantly, expect a decision from the former Virginia governor in the first quarter of 2019.
9. And now it's time for something completely different: How about those Clemson Tigers!
Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.
--
1 Of course, Inslee looks to be fairly well organized despite the plan to possibly announce later.
Monday, January 7, 2019
#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Trump's Reelection and the 2020 Delegate Game
As we head into 2019 and the heart of the invisible primary, FHQ is beginning a series to catalog some of the maneuvering going on among and between the various campaigns and candidates as they move from the nascent to the real. We have been doing this for some time on Twitter, but in an effort to protect against some of the activities disappearing into the ether, we'll archive them here.
Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.
--
While the Republican National Committee had an opportunity in 2017 and stretching into the first three-quarters of 2018 to make changes to aspects of the presidential nomination process for 2020, the party largely left well enough alone. And that is in keeping with how parties have approached process questions when they occupy the White House. Candidates who have won not only nominations, but the presidency tend to like the process that got them there. As such, the parties under their direction more often than not will either make no changes at all or only minor changes.
Look at the DNC in the 2009-2010 period. There was a commission -- the Democratic Change Commission -- that examined the way in which the party nominated its presidential candidates, but once the recommendations had worked their way through the Rules and Bylaws Committee, the result was a just a handful of small changes. The clustering bonus, where neighboring states could schedule their contests together after a certain point on the calendar in order to net a 15 percent increase in their delegation, stands out. But the most consequential, although often overshadowed change, was the increase in the total number of base delegates from 3000 to 3700 in the convention call. That had the effect of diluting the impact of superdelegates, or would have if the 2012 Democratic nomination had been competitive. In reality, it rewarded more Democrats with a trip to the national convention.
But those are the sorts of changes that often come out of White House-occupying parties.
And the 2017-2018 Republicans were no different. They had an opportunity through the Temporary Committee on the Presidential Nominating Process to examine the rules for 2020 and make any recommendations for changes. And they did. But the only change that emerged was the elimination of a 2016 creation: the debates sanctioning committee.
Everything else was left untouched. And that included the Rule 40 threshold determining whose name can be placed in nomination at the national convention. That was left alone because only the convention can change it.
And though the low bar of that threshold remains as it was set in 2016 at the convention, it has been a topic of some discussion in recent weeks. But the efforts to change it -- to raise it -- are both too late and have been shot down by the Trump reelction effort.
The campaign will endeavor instead to protect itself by "dominating the delegate game," by focusing not on changes to the national rules governing delegate selection, but on state-level rules for selecting and allocating delegates (created in response to the national guidelines).
In that patchwork of state party rules opportunities exist for presidential candidates. Creating the most advantageous calendar, for example. Or altering the balance of winner-take-all or proportional states for another.
Actually, this is at least part of where we are likely to see some changes during 2019. State parties will finalize their delegate selection processes in both parties as 2019 wears on. And although it is a gamble -- because what appears advantageous now may not be in 2020 -- we may see an effort on the Republican side similar to what was witnessed on the Democratic side in 2011: a national party urging action on the part of the states.
If a state is viewed now as a strong Trump state in the nomination phase of the process, then why not move it to a point on the calendar where the number of Trump delegates could be maximized? Take Georgia. Traditionally the Peach state has been a Super Tuesday mainstay. And it may still be in 2020. However, the newly elected Republican secretary of state there may hear from the Trump campaign. So might the Georgia Republican Party. The former could set the date of the Georgia primary for some point after March 15 and that would allow the latter to set the allocation method for winner-take-all (without penalty).
The same could be said for other early primary states where there is some combination of Republicans control of state government and perception of Trump doing well there in 2020. If one wanted to massage the delegate game a bit in order to raise the number of Trump delegates at the national convention, then this would be the way to do it.
And bear in mind, any changes to the primary calendar that Republicans make affects the Democratic process too. While the Democrats of 2011 sought to potentially influence the 2012 Republican process, this 2019 Republican maneuvering adds an additional element: protecting the president.
--
Elsewhere over the weekend...
1. Elizabeth Warren had a pretty good roll out to her presidential campaign from exploratory committee announcement to the trickle of stories about staffing hires to her initial Iowa trek. She was in the news or steadily made it all week.
2. Castro has surround his January 12 announcement event with trips to all the early states but South Carolina.
3. Cory Booker won't be the first and won't be the last to visit the Palmetto state, but he'll speak there on MLK.
4. The Booker super PAC continues to take shape.
4. Biden continues to hold support at home.
5. And no one has passed his test to keep him out of the 2020 sweepstakes yet either.
6. California donors are willing to let the dust settle a bit on the Democratic nomination contest.
7. One can't do one of these without an O'Rourke mention. Draft Beto has moved into South Carolina.
8. According to his wife, Sherrod Brown is heading for an announcement "within the next two months".
Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.
--
While the Republican National Committee had an opportunity in 2017 and stretching into the first three-quarters of 2018 to make changes to aspects of the presidential nomination process for 2020, the party largely left well enough alone. And that is in keeping with how parties have approached process questions when they occupy the White House. Candidates who have won not only nominations, but the presidency tend to like the process that got them there. As such, the parties under their direction more often than not will either make no changes at all or only minor changes.
Look at the DNC in the 2009-2010 period. There was a commission -- the Democratic Change Commission -- that examined the way in which the party nominated its presidential candidates, but once the recommendations had worked their way through the Rules and Bylaws Committee, the result was a just a handful of small changes. The clustering bonus, where neighboring states could schedule their contests together after a certain point on the calendar in order to net a 15 percent increase in their delegation, stands out. But the most consequential, although often overshadowed change, was the increase in the total number of base delegates from 3000 to 3700 in the convention call. That had the effect of diluting the impact of superdelegates, or would have if the 2012 Democratic nomination had been competitive. In reality, it rewarded more Democrats with a trip to the national convention.
But those are the sorts of changes that often come out of White House-occupying parties.
And the 2017-2018 Republicans were no different. They had an opportunity through the Temporary Committee on the Presidential Nominating Process to examine the rules for 2020 and make any recommendations for changes. And they did. But the only change that emerged was the elimination of a 2016 creation: the debates sanctioning committee.
Everything else was left untouched. And that included the Rule 40 threshold determining whose name can be placed in nomination at the national convention. That was left alone because only the convention can change it.
And though the low bar of that threshold remains as it was set in 2016 at the convention, it has been a topic of some discussion in recent weeks. But the efforts to change it -- to raise it -- are both too late and have been shot down by the Trump reelction effort.
The campaign will endeavor instead to protect itself by "dominating the delegate game," by focusing not on changes to the national rules governing delegate selection, but on state-level rules for selecting and allocating delegates (created in response to the national guidelines).
In that patchwork of state party rules opportunities exist for presidential candidates. Creating the most advantageous calendar, for example. Or altering the balance of winner-take-all or proportional states for another.
Actually, this is at least part of where we are likely to see some changes during 2019. State parties will finalize their delegate selection processes in both parties as 2019 wears on. And although it is a gamble -- because what appears advantageous now may not be in 2020 -- we may see an effort on the Republican side similar to what was witnessed on the Democratic side in 2011: a national party urging action on the part of the states.
If a state is viewed now as a strong Trump state in the nomination phase of the process, then why not move it to a point on the calendar where the number of Trump delegates could be maximized? Take Georgia. Traditionally the Peach state has been a Super Tuesday mainstay. And it may still be in 2020. However, the newly elected Republican secretary of state there may hear from the Trump campaign. So might the Georgia Republican Party. The former could set the date of the Georgia primary for some point after March 15 and that would allow the latter to set the allocation method for winner-take-all (without penalty).
The same could be said for other early primary states where there is some combination of Republicans control of state government and perception of Trump doing well there in 2020. If one wanted to massage the delegate game a bit in order to raise the number of Trump delegates at the national convention, then this would be the way to do it.
And bear in mind, any changes to the primary calendar that Republicans make affects the Democratic process too. While the Democrats of 2011 sought to potentially influence the 2012 Republican process, this 2019 Republican maneuvering adds an additional element: protecting the president.
--
Elsewhere over the weekend...
1. Elizabeth Warren had a pretty good roll out to her presidential campaign from exploratory committee announcement to the trickle of stories about staffing hires to her initial Iowa trek. She was in the news or steadily made it all week.
2. Castro has surround his January 12 announcement event with trips to all the early states but South Carolina.
3. Cory Booker won't be the first and won't be the last to visit the Palmetto state, but he'll speak there on MLK.
4. The Booker super PAC continues to take shape.
4. Biden continues to hold support at home.
5. And no one has passed his test to keep him out of the 2020 sweepstakes yet either.
6. California donors are willing to let the dust settle a bit on the Democratic nomination contest.
7. One can't do one of these without an O'Rourke mention. Draft Beto has moved into South Carolina.
8. According to his wife, Sherrod Brown is heading for an announcement "within the next two months".
Wednesday, January 2, 2019
Trump and the 2020 Republican Delegate Selection Rules
Rule 40 is back.
Remember all that chatter from last cycle about a potentially crowded field of candidates vying for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and the possibility that the ensuing chaos would lead to a scenario where multiple (or no) candidates would control a majority of delegates from eight states and have all/none of their names placed in nomination at the convention, leading to even more chaos?
It is fine if you do not. But FHQ does. Vividly. It was all the rage from 2014 into 2016, peaking in April of that year and gathering steam again in the lead up to the July convention.
Now, however, the 2016 chaos narrative is being replaced by a 2020 threat narrative, all with Rule 40 as the predicate.
The short version of the threat narrative is this:
The current RNC rules for the 2020 nomination process set a low bar for a potential challenger to President Trump. At Trump's own nominating convention in 2016, delegates adopted a revision to Rule 40 for 2020. Rather than requiring the control of the majority of delegates from eight states to have one's name placed in nomination, the 2020 process would require the control of a plurality of delegates from only five states. This was a reversion to the threshold from before 2016. By extension, the thinking goes that the lower threshold for 2020 means a greater potential threat to the president and that the threshold should be raised.
Of course, there is a rule for that. Well, rules anyway.
First, Rule 12, added at the 2012 convention for the 2016 cycle and carried over to 2020, allows for amendments to Rules 1-11 and Rules 13-25. Noticeably, that is a list of amendable rules that does not include Rule 40. And even if Rule 40 was among the amendable rules, amendments to the 2020 rules had to be adopted by September 30, 2018.
Second, there was a vehicle put in place to devise recommended amendments to the group of rules that could be changed. Rule 10(a)(10) created the Temporary Committee on the Presidential Nominating Process (TCPNP) whose charge was to make such recommendations by May 31, 2018 in order for them to be considered, adopted and/or rejected by the full Republican National Committee prior to the September deadline laid out in Rule 12. Although their discussions were wide-ranging, all the TCPNP recommended and the RNC adopted was the elimination of the debates sanctioning committee the RNC created for the 2016 cycle.
In other words, the window for making changes to the rules has passed and Rule 40 was not among the rules that could be changed anyway.
None of those realities have stopped some from suggesting that because the RNC is a private organization, it can change its rules at any time. Nor has it dissuaded (at least one) RNC member from raising the idea of a suspension of the rules in order to fix "loopholes" in the 2020 process.
Look, FHQ is skeptical of that. It is not that there are doubts because of some rules technicality that guards against changes. Those are outlined above. Rather, there is reason to be skeptical of a change in the rules at this point because of something I often told folks with respect to the rules discussion ahead of the 2016 Republican National Convention: it is fine to talk about potential changes to any rule that any voting member finds unsavory for whatever reason. Yet, it is another thing altogether to devise an alternative that can win the support of the requisite number of voting members to make that change.
In other words, the devil is in the details.
And if the details include the RNC acting unilaterally to change the nomination rules for 2020 in a way unprecedented in the history of the party, then cobbling together winning coalition to make any change would likely be a very steep climb indeed. Morton Blackwell, the national committeeman from Virginia, spoke against a motion to create this very change during the Convention Rules Committee meeting the week before the party convened in Cleveland in 2016. That motion was withdrawn.
In the end, parties have these rules in place and keep them relatively constant for a reason. They create certainty, or if not that, then prevent chaos. A party that changes rules mid-cycle and outside of the process laid forth for making changes -- typically from the highest authority for both of the major US political parties, the national convention -- is a party with no rules. To make a change now sets the precedent that similarly-timed changes can be made in the future, potentially pitting the party organization against the convention itself (because the convention could change the rules back or to whatever a majority there could agree on). Recognition of constant, stable rules, like constant and stable law, is necessary.
Take the rule in question, Rule 40. The national committeeman from the Virgin Islands, Jevon Williams, suggests that the rules, and Rule 40 in particular, were adopted at a time when there was no thought toward how they may affect an incumbent running for renomination/reelection, creating "loopholes".
[NOTE: That is not the case for anyone who watched the proceedings of the Republican National Convention Rules Committee in the lead up to the convention.]
But even if that was true and there were "loopholes", the plan was to return to the way the Rule 40 looked prior to 2016. George W. Bush was renominated in 2004 under those same rules. Before that in the 1990s, the threshold was even lower, set at a plurality in just three states. And prior to that, there was no threshold in the early equivalent to Rule 40. Past Republican presidents, then, have been renominated and reelected under similar rules.1
So, it should be noted that the overarching rules of the process are being made the scapegoat here for a problem that is not rules-based. If a given president is popular enough, particularly among his or her primary electorate, then that tends to 1) ward off a primary challenge and by extension, 2) renders the rules-based issues at least nonexistent and at most a minor nuisance.
As a coda to all of this FHQ will say that rules tinkering is nothing new here. What is new in this instance in 2019 is the timing. The cycle is beyond the point at which national rules can be changed. The process is in the midst of another phase now. Yes, most will be paying the primary amount of attention in the coming days and weeks and months to candidate jumping in to the race and what they are up to.
However, behind all of that is a parallel process where past presidents have wielded some influence: the rules on the state level. Typically incumbent presidents are loathe to change the rules that got them the nomination in the first place and in turn the national parties typically hold pat with those overarching rules. Yet, on the state level, there are opportunities to make small scale changes that may benefit a particular candidate. State governments for years have changed the dates of their primaries and often to help out a favorite son or daughter. Illinois, for example, uprooted its traditional March primary for the 2008 cycle to ideally give Barack Obama a leg up on a crowded Super Tuesday.
But presidents do this too. The Carter reelection effort foresaw a 1980 challenge from Ted Kennedy and as a result sought to alter the playing field. Their prescription was not to change the national delegate rules, but to manage things at the state level, lobbying a cadre of southern states to hold a subregional primary early in the primary calendar. That Alabama-Florida-Georgia primary was seen as a potential positive response for Carter to any gains Kennedy might make in the earlier New Hampshire and Massachusetts primaries.
While that specific sort of maneuvering is not yet evident in the actions of those officials in the Trump reelection campaign, there is evidence that delegate slates are being built on the same level. That is far more fertile ground for advantageous changes than altering the national delegate process at this late stage. Don't look for changes to Rule 40. Look to the states and what Team Trump is doing there.
--
1 Actually, the reversion to the pre-2016 threshold was met joyously by the voting members of Convention Rules Committee in 2016. But the change in 2012 -- for the 2016 cycle -- raised the bar to a majority of delegates in eight states with an incumbent President Romney in mind. That is why Ben Ginsberg and Jon Sununu took so much flak coming out of Tampa. But the changes each time were made by the party's highest authority, the national convention.
Remember all that chatter from last cycle about a potentially crowded field of candidates vying for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and the possibility that the ensuing chaos would lead to a scenario where multiple (or no) candidates would control a majority of delegates from eight states and have all/none of their names placed in nomination at the convention, leading to even more chaos?
It is fine if you do not. But FHQ does. Vividly. It was all the rage from 2014 into 2016, peaking in April of that year and gathering steam again in the lead up to the July convention.
Now, however, the 2016 chaos narrative is being replaced by a 2020 threat narrative, all with Rule 40 as the predicate.
The short version of the threat narrative is this:
The current RNC rules for the 2020 nomination process set a low bar for a potential challenger to President Trump. At Trump's own nominating convention in 2016, delegates adopted a revision to Rule 40 for 2020. Rather than requiring the control of the majority of delegates from eight states to have one's name placed in nomination, the 2020 process would require the control of a plurality of delegates from only five states. This was a reversion to the threshold from before 2016. By extension, the thinking goes that the lower threshold for 2020 means a greater potential threat to the president and that the threshold should be raised.
Of course, there is a rule for that. Well, rules anyway.
First, Rule 12, added at the 2012 convention for the 2016 cycle and carried over to 2020, allows for amendments to Rules 1-11 and Rules 13-25. Noticeably, that is a list of amendable rules that does not include Rule 40. And even if Rule 40 was among the amendable rules, amendments to the 2020 rules had to be adopted by September 30, 2018.
Second, there was a vehicle put in place to devise recommended amendments to the group of rules that could be changed. Rule 10(a)(10) created the Temporary Committee on the Presidential Nominating Process (TCPNP) whose charge was to make such recommendations by May 31, 2018 in order for them to be considered, adopted and/or rejected by the full Republican National Committee prior to the September deadline laid out in Rule 12. Although their discussions were wide-ranging, all the TCPNP recommended and the RNC adopted was the elimination of the debates sanctioning committee the RNC created for the 2016 cycle.
In other words, the window for making changes to the rules has passed and Rule 40 was not among the rules that could be changed anyway.
None of those realities have stopped some from suggesting that because the RNC is a private organization, it can change its rules at any time. Nor has it dissuaded (at least one) RNC member from raising the idea of a suspension of the rules in order to fix "loopholes" in the 2020 process.
Look, FHQ is skeptical of that. It is not that there are doubts because of some rules technicality that guards against changes. Those are outlined above. Rather, there is reason to be skeptical of a change in the rules at this point because of something I often told folks with respect to the rules discussion ahead of the 2016 Republican National Convention: it is fine to talk about potential changes to any rule that any voting member finds unsavory for whatever reason. Yet, it is another thing altogether to devise an alternative that can win the support of the requisite number of voting members to make that change.
In other words, the devil is in the details.
And if the details include the RNC acting unilaterally to change the nomination rules for 2020 in a way unprecedented in the history of the party, then cobbling together winning coalition to make any change would likely be a very steep climb indeed. Morton Blackwell, the national committeeman from Virginia, spoke against a motion to create this very change during the Convention Rules Committee meeting the week before the party convened in Cleveland in 2016. That motion was withdrawn.
In the end, parties have these rules in place and keep them relatively constant for a reason. They create certainty, or if not that, then prevent chaos. A party that changes rules mid-cycle and outside of the process laid forth for making changes -- typically from the highest authority for both of the major US political parties, the national convention -- is a party with no rules. To make a change now sets the precedent that similarly-timed changes can be made in the future, potentially pitting the party organization against the convention itself (because the convention could change the rules back or to whatever a majority there could agree on). Recognition of constant, stable rules, like constant and stable law, is necessary.
Take the rule in question, Rule 40. The national committeeman from the Virgin Islands, Jevon Williams, suggests that the rules, and Rule 40 in particular, were adopted at a time when there was no thought toward how they may affect an incumbent running for renomination/reelection, creating "loopholes".
[NOTE: That is not the case for anyone who watched the proceedings of the Republican National Convention Rules Committee in the lead up to the convention.]
But even if that was true and there were "loopholes", the plan was to return to the way the Rule 40 looked prior to 2016. George W. Bush was renominated in 2004 under those same rules. Before that in the 1990s, the threshold was even lower, set at a plurality in just three states. And prior to that, there was no threshold in the early equivalent to Rule 40. Past Republican presidents, then, have been renominated and reelected under similar rules.1
So, it should be noted that the overarching rules of the process are being made the scapegoat here for a problem that is not rules-based. If a given president is popular enough, particularly among his or her primary electorate, then that tends to 1) ward off a primary challenge and by extension, 2) renders the rules-based issues at least nonexistent and at most a minor nuisance.
As a coda to all of this FHQ will say that rules tinkering is nothing new here. What is new in this instance in 2019 is the timing. The cycle is beyond the point at which national rules can be changed. The process is in the midst of another phase now. Yes, most will be paying the primary amount of attention in the coming days and weeks and months to candidate jumping in to the race and what they are up to.
However, behind all of that is a parallel process where past presidents have wielded some influence: the rules on the state level. Typically incumbent presidents are loathe to change the rules that got them the nomination in the first place and in turn the national parties typically hold pat with those overarching rules. Yet, on the state level, there are opportunities to make small scale changes that may benefit a particular candidate. State governments for years have changed the dates of their primaries and often to help out a favorite son or daughter. Illinois, for example, uprooted its traditional March primary for the 2008 cycle to ideally give Barack Obama a leg up on a crowded Super Tuesday.
But presidents do this too. The Carter reelection effort foresaw a 1980 challenge from Ted Kennedy and as a result sought to alter the playing field. Their prescription was not to change the national delegate rules, but to manage things at the state level, lobbying a cadre of southern states to hold a subregional primary early in the primary calendar. That Alabama-Florida-Georgia primary was seen as a potential positive response for Carter to any gains Kennedy might make in the earlier New Hampshire and Massachusetts primaries.
While that specific sort of maneuvering is not yet evident in the actions of those officials in the Trump reelection campaign, there is evidence that delegate slates are being built on the same level. That is far more fertile ground for advantageous changes than altering the national delegate process at this late stage. Don't look for changes to Rule 40. Look to the states and what Team Trump is doing there.
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1 Actually, the reversion to the pre-2016 threshold was met joyously by the voting members of Convention Rules Committee in 2016. But the change in 2012 -- for the 2016 cycle -- raised the bar to a majority of delegates in eight states with an incumbent President Romney in mind. That is why Ben Ginsberg and Jon Sununu took so much flak coming out of Tampa. But the changes each time were made by the party's highest authority, the national convention.
Saturday, December 8, 2018
Nebraska Democrats Opt to Move Back to Presidential Primary for 2020
This is a reversion to the mode of delegate selection Cornhusker state Democrats used prior to 2008. For that cycle and the succeeding two cycles, the party held caucuses. And the primary motivation for the switch from primary to caucus ahead of 2008 was to move to an earlier date on the presidential primary calendar. That allowed for (Saturday after Super Tuesday) February caucuses as opposed to the traditional May primary.
But that move never got rid of the primary. By Nebraska law, caucus or not, a party's candidates appear on the presidential primary ballot. And in both of the competitive Democratic presidential cycles of 2008 and 2016 the later primary added two turnout data points for comparison to the caucuses. Despite the later date of the non-binding primary contests, the turnout was higher than in the caucuses.
That has remained a sticking point in discussions in and out of the state party in Nebraska and has been a primary incentive to move back to a primary election currently scheduled for May.
Nebraska now becomes the sixth state to make a switch from a 2016 caucus to a 2020 presidential primary; joining Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, and Utah.
The Nebraska change has been added to the FHQ 2020 presidential primary calendar.
--
Related Posts:
Caucus or Primary? Nebraska Democrats Have the Decision Before Them
Nebraska Democratic Party Platform Committee Passes Caucus-to-Primary Resolution
Nebraska Democrats Signal Caucus-to-Primary Switch for 2020
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Caucus or Primary? Nebraska Democrats Have the Decision Before Them
Yet, the party is not newly coming into this discussion. In fact, at its 2018 state convention this past June, Democratic delegates considered the matter as well. The state convention platform committee at the time ultimately passed a resolution calling for a switch to a primary from the caucus system the party has used to select and allocate national convention delegates from the Cornhusker state for each of the last three cycles (since 2008).
But news of the inner workings within the party on the caucus-to-primary question went quiet after that point. The convention resolution on the matter did not (and does not now) appear among the listed resolutions that were passed on the floor of the convention at the time.
However, it was listed among the passed resolutions in late June. Here's the language:
Ultimately, this really is neither here nor there, but it was odd.
Regardless, the resolution would have been non-binding on the party. Additionally, the progression of the idea -- switching from a caucus to a primary -- has followed if not taken an expedited path as laid out by NDP Chair Jane Kleeb at the time of the state convention:
The party’s State Central Committee most likely won’t make a final decision until March, after the national Democratic Party issues guidance to the states, said Chairwoman Jane Kleeb.The party has seemingly moved the consideration of caucus-to-primary up a quarter from March 2019 to December 2018 in order to incorporate the decision on mode of delegate selection into the party's draft delegate selection plan to be submitted to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee by early May.
Heading into the decisive State Central Committee meeting December 7-8, it should be noted that the resolution to eliminate the caucuses drew cheers back at the state convention when it was introduced in the platform committee and as of late November the idea of a caucus-to-primary shift was said by party Chair Kleeb to have held a three to one advantage among the party's grassroots.
Take that as internal momentum to change the state Democrats' mode of delegate selection for 2020. And that parallels the external momentum to move from caucuses to primaries in Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, and Utah that has already produced change in 2016-18.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
In Wisconsin, Legislature Moves on Other Measures But Ends Effort at Earlier Presidential Primary
In the end, the price tag associated with creating an all-new and separate presidential primary election was too much for Wisconsin legislators. The Joint Finance Committee balked:
Obviously, any proposal to save the expenditure and move everything to March would additionally fail to lower the turnout on the judicial election. It would still be tethered to the presidential primary.
As described in an earlier post, this discussion of a primary move happened under unique circumstances in the Badger state, unique enough that it likely will not be repeated as the legislature convenes a new session in January. Often proposed primary shifts will come up on a recurring basis in state legislatures, but this one in Wisconsin is unlikely to follow that trend.
And all is not lost: that first Tuesday in April date would have Wisconsin -- as of now anyway -- all by itself in 2020.
The plan to move the presidential primary was aimed at making sure conservative state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly is not up for election on the same day as the presidential primary in April 2020, when Republicans fear Democratic turnout will be high.
Moving the primary to March would cost taxpayers nearly $7 million and municipal clerks warned it would be hard to conduct so many elections so close together.
The committee didn't approve the legislation and leaders said they doubted it would come up on the floor of the Senate or Assembly.SB 885 did not come up on the floor, and will end up a casualty of this brief legislative lame duck session. The idea of a March presidential primary likely ends there. First, Republicans in the legislature pushing the measure would face resistance from the same elections clerks in January but would also have to contend with a Democratic governor then. And even if they sought to move everything -- presidential primary and judicial election -- up to March, such a proposal would save on expenditures, but also likely continue to draw the ire of elections officials because of the quick turnaround from the February spring primary.
Obviously, any proposal to save the expenditure and move everything to March would additionally fail to lower the turnout on the judicial election. It would still be tethered to the presidential primary.
As described in an earlier post, this discussion of a primary move happened under unique circumstances in the Badger state, unique enough that it likely will not be repeated as the legislature convenes a new session in January. Often proposed primary shifts will come up on a recurring basis in state legislatures, but this one in Wisconsin is unlikely to follow that trend.
And all is not lost: that first Tuesday in April date would have Wisconsin -- as of now anyway -- all by itself in 2020.
Monday, December 3, 2018
Wisconsin Bill Would Shift Presidential Primary to March
Given the 2020 calendar layout, that would mean a shift up by four weeks for the Wisconsin primary, pushing it up in line with previously scheduled contests in Michigan and Ohio. Conceivably, the new Minnesota presidential primary could end up on that date as well. Parties there can decide on a date other than the first Tuesday in March. With Minnesota and Wisconsin on board, the second Tuesday in March would look like a Great Lakes/Big Ten primary on the heels of Super Tuesday.
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UPDATE (12/4/18):
The potential primary move continues to draw the ire of elections administrators on both sides of the aisle in Wisconsin:
The bipartisan panel [the Wisconsin Election Commission] voted 6-0 on a motion to inform lawmakers of the difficulties of moving the election, which could cost as much as $6.8 million and which a top Republican leader has said is aimed at helping re-elect conservative state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly.FHQ talked about some of that opposition here:
Find much more about the contours of the potential Wisconsin move here.
This legislation will also be added to the 2020 presidential primary calendar here.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Wisconsin Republicans Consider Lame Duck Push to Create a Separate March Presidential Primary for 2020
In the wake of the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans in Wisconsin are looking at a change to the scheduling of the 2020 presidential primary in the Badger state.
To the extent the scheduling of presidential primaries is localized like that, it almost always focuses on the costs (see the 2012 cycle in particular). It is rarer to see something as politically raw in its calculations as the proposal in Wisconsin. Although one could look on it as a logical, albeit localized, extension of a slippery slope one could trace to national Democratic maneuvering in the lead up to 2012.
Look, this is not one of those "on both sides" sorts of things, but as the 2020 cycle heads into 2019, these are the sorts of process tales that need to be told beyond the regular rhythms of primary movement in the post-reform era.
And in the scope of all post-reform shifts in the dates of presidential primary elections across the country, it is not a typical proposed move. To be more precise, the proposed move forward -- from an April position on the calendar to March -- is entirely within the norm. State actors began to consider pushing up primary dates for 1972 almost before the ink was dry on the McGovern-Fraser reforms and they were adopted. That is not what is atypical about the potential move in Wisconsin.
Instead, it is the how, the why, and the when of the proposed shift in Wisconsin that deviates from how most states have gone about these changes in the past.
First, the timing of this is unusual. Although it is not unheard of, it has historically been the case that most of the movement on the presidential primary calendar has taken place in the year before the presidential election. There are exceptions of course. Missouri legislators pushing the 2004 presidential primary in the Show-Me state up from March to February in 2002 comes to mind. But while there are exceptions, the year prior to a presidential has been the window in which states have tended to make these scheduling decisions.
The reasoning is sound enough: That is when state actors the most up-to-date information (who is running, which parties have contested races, what other states are doing, etc.). It is also a time that occurs at the confluence of new legislatures being sworn in following midterms and when the urgency for a change of primary dates is at its highest (or at least when the timing is most on the radars of state legislators).
But by that mark, Wisconsin legislators are only slightly jumping the gun, right? After all, Texas legislators in 2010 prefiled legislation to move the primary in Lone Star state up for the 2012 cycle. However, Texas legislators introduced that legislation in anticipation of the start to the 2011-12 session. That is not what is happening in Wisconsin. Rather, legislators in the Badger state are considering these changes as part of a lame duck session as the bookend to unified Republican control of state government.
That draws this back to the how and why of the proposal.
Again, it is not atypical for states to move up the dates of their presidential primaries in post-reform era. In fact, Wisconsin has done this in the past: moving the spring election, including the presidential primary and the general election for judicial and other offices, from April to March for the 1996 cycle.1 And then for the 2004 cycle, legislators there bumped the presidential primary from the spring election in April to the spring primary in February.
But in both of those cases the Wisconsin presidential primary move was either tethered to the move of a set of elections -- the whole spring election was moved -- or toggled from one pre-existing election (the April spring election) to another (the February spring primary). The distinction is subtle, perhaps, but meaningful. Those moves meant the budgetary requirements were close to neutral.
Neither added to the budgetary bottom line in Wisconsin.
Contrast that with the proposed shift for the 2020 cycle. The idea of the hypothetical bill -- and none has been introduced to this point -- would be to create an all-new and separate presidential primary to be scheduled in March 2020, between the February spring primary and the April spring election. That new election would cost the state at least $7 million (and mean a third election in consecutive months for election administrators).
But why not shift into that February position as legislators in Wisconsin did during the 2004 cycle? That is not a viable option to legislators in 2020. Whereas February contests (outside of Iowa and New Hampshire) were allowed by national party rules during 2004, they are not in 2020. Nor were they in either 2012 or 2016 when states faced penalties to their national convention delegations for timing violations. This is why the 2015 bill to once again move the Wisconsin primary from April to February went nowhere. It would have put the Wisconsin delegations to both parties' national conventions at risk of penalty.
Left with no realistic alternative among the elections already on the calendar (the costs of which are already accounted for), Wisconsin Republicans are focusing on separate March option. That option, if not the price tag, are additionally enticing to a party set to lose unified control of state government when Democrat Tony Evers is sworn in as governor because it would hypothetically separate a high-profile, high turnout presidential primary from the spring election for judicial offices.
That would put the spring election at the close of a February-March-April election-a-thon (elect-a-thon?) in Wisconsin. That is not only difficult for election administrators and places a significant burden on voters as well. Turning out for three elections in three months runs the risk of driving up voter fatigue and driving down turnout. The latter is seen as potentially advantageous to Republicans in the state and those behind this proposed primary move being floated.
And that makes the why of this unusual too. It counters the exact kind of maneuvering that FHQ mentioned just recently: that idle Republican legislators facing an at-this-point noncompetitive presidential renomination race would consider moving primaries back rather than forward. That, however, is more nationally-focused maneuvering. The proposed Wisconsin move is more locall-minded. Procedurally, it is aimed not at the national implications in either the Democratic or Republican presidential nomination races, but at a methodical severing of one high-profile election (presidential primary) from another election (the judicial election set to occur during the April spring election).
To the extent the scheduling of presidential primaries is localized like that, it almost always focuses on the costs (see the 2012 cycle in particular). It is rarer to see something as politically raw in its calculations as the proposal in Wisconsin. Although one could look on it as a logical, albeit localized, extension of a slippery slope one could trace to national Democratic maneuvering in the lead up to 2012.
Look, this is not one of those "on both sides" sorts of things, but as the 2020 cycle heads into 2019, these are the sorts of process tales that need to be told beyond the regular rhythms of primary movement in the post-reform era.
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1 That move for 1996 was part of an effort to create a Great Lakes regional primary that included Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.
Monday, November 19, 2018
Cross-Party Involvement in Presidential Nominations: 2020 Primary Calendar Scheduling
In the time since the midterms nearly two weeks ago, FHQ has been mulling over a morning after tweet from The National Journal's Hanna Trudo:
After all, we seemingly are a long way from back channel comments attributed former President Bush about some of the candidates involved in the 2008 cycle. But that was more commentary than outright attempt to intervene. And Republicans had their own active nomination race that cycle anyway.
Yet, typically, parties will keep the other party's process at arms length. Sure, press releases and mass emails are always going to be a part of this exchange in the open market of the battle between parties. But as is our wont here at FHQ, we tend to put these things in the context of the mechanics of presidential nominations. And that is what I turned to upon reading Trudo's tweet.
Often we think of partisan actors in elective office behaving in a manner to best advantage their party's interests (if not the party). Think in particular about the lengths to which actors on the state legislative level have sought to position their presidential primaries in calendar positions over the years to have some impact on the presidential nomination process in their own party.
Southern Democratic leaders, for example, famously pined for a process that would yield a southern moderate-to-conservative nominee throughout the two cycles in the 1970s and into the 1980s. The idea was that that type of nominee would stand a better chance at winning a general election. And the stars aligned in 1988, at least procedurally. Fourteen southern states -- headed by Democratic-controlled state governments -- shifted to and coalesced on the second Tuesday in March; just on the heels of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
Sometimes, however, the best laid plans go awry. And that was the case for southern Democrats in the 1988 cycle. Try as they might, the plan did not work. Rather than speaking with one regional voice, the results across the South were split on the Democratic side. Dukakis won the big states (Florida and Texas), Jackson the Deep South, and Gore the peripheral South. The plan backfired.
But what can be gleaned from that is how state actors have typically approached the calendar scheduling part of this process: To the extent they sough to have influence, it was either to give voters a larger voice in the process (by moving earlier) or to influence who the nominee was in the party of legislators making the decisions.
In other words, the impact was to be an intra-party positive for some candidate (favorite son) or some faction within the broader party coalition.
Yet, this logic was turned on its head in the 2012 cycle. No longer was the motivation for states to move forward on the calendar to have some positive impact. Instead, the negative incentive in the form of (flawed) national party penalties was to push states back in the process in an effort to create a later start to primary season, one not bumping up against the New Year's festivities.
States retained the ability to cluster on the earliest -- although theoretically later compared to 2008 -- date, but all of those February 2008 states shifted in a seemingly partisan manner. Those with Republican-controlled state governments tended to move their presidential primaries back less than those in Democratic-controlled states. And there was at least some (anecdotal) evidence that the Democratic side of the equation was a concerted effort; to shift more liberal states later in the process to draw out and stir up a hypothetical race that foresaw a Mitt Romney nomination. Now, the logic underlying that effort can certainly be questioned -- liberal states in the aggregate do not necessarily have moderate-to-liberal Republican primary electorates -- but the intervention is there.
And that is where at least some of the focus should be heading into 2019: how will states shift around on the 2020 calendar? Much of the spotlight has been on the impact the re-positioning of the California presidential primary will have on the Democratic nomination process. That is not wrong. It is a noteworthy shift. But it leans on a logic rooted in the past: partisan actors (Democrats in California) making positive, partisan decisions (to move the primary in the Golden state up).
How much can we expect Republican actors to act? Will Republican-controlled states sit idly by and maintain early calendar positions? Or will Republican states, say those involved in the SEC primary from 2016, proactively move to another position so as to have some impact on the Democratic nomination process? Those southern states moving back would mean the shift of an important bloc in the Democratic primary electorate: African Americans.
There are no clear answers to these questions at this point, but 2019 will begin to offer them as state legislatures begin to convene for their 2019 sessions and begin to weigh primary calendar moves.
Yes, this is evidence of the Republican National Committee chipping away at a potential high-profile 2020 challenger to the sitting Republican president in a press release. That is not exactly uncommon. However, that email left me wondering about the extent to which either the RNC and/or the broader Republican Party would/will attempt to intervene in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and how overt those efforts might be..@GOP just sent mass email marking Tuesday as “an especially bad night for Elizabeth Warren” pic.twitter.com/HFbbiewEum— Hanna Trudo (@HCTrudo) November 7, 2018
After all, we seemingly are a long way from back channel comments attributed former President Bush about some of the candidates involved in the 2008 cycle. But that was more commentary than outright attempt to intervene. And Republicans had their own active nomination race that cycle anyway.
Yet, typically, parties will keep the other party's process at arms length. Sure, press releases and mass emails are always going to be a part of this exchange in the open market of the battle between parties. But as is our wont here at FHQ, we tend to put these things in the context of the mechanics of presidential nominations. And that is what I turned to upon reading Trudo's tweet.
Often we think of partisan actors in elective office behaving in a manner to best advantage their party's interests (if not the party). Think in particular about the lengths to which actors on the state legislative level have sought to position their presidential primaries in calendar positions over the years to have some impact on the presidential nomination process in their own party.
Southern Democratic leaders, for example, famously pined for a process that would yield a southern moderate-to-conservative nominee throughout the two cycles in the 1970s and into the 1980s. The idea was that that type of nominee would stand a better chance at winning a general election. And the stars aligned in 1988, at least procedurally. Fourteen southern states -- headed by Democratic-controlled state governments -- shifted to and coalesced on the second Tuesday in March; just on the heels of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
Sometimes, however, the best laid plans go awry. And that was the case for southern Democrats in the 1988 cycle. Try as they might, the plan did not work. Rather than speaking with one regional voice, the results across the South were split on the Democratic side. Dukakis won the big states (Florida and Texas), Jackson the Deep South, and Gore the peripheral South. The plan backfired.
But what can be gleaned from that is how state actors have typically approached the calendar scheduling part of this process: To the extent they sough to have influence, it was either to give voters a larger voice in the process (by moving earlier) or to influence who the nominee was in the party of legislators making the decisions.
In other words, the impact was to be an intra-party positive for some candidate (favorite son) or some faction within the broader party coalition.
Yet, this logic was turned on its head in the 2012 cycle. No longer was the motivation for states to move forward on the calendar to have some positive impact. Instead, the negative incentive in the form of (flawed) national party penalties was to push states back in the process in an effort to create a later start to primary season, one not bumping up against the New Year's festivities.
States retained the ability to cluster on the earliest -- although theoretically later compared to 2008 -- date, but all of those February 2008 states shifted in a seemingly partisan manner. Those with Republican-controlled state governments tended to move their presidential primaries back less than those in Democratic-controlled states. And there was at least some (anecdotal) evidence that the Democratic side of the equation was a concerted effort; to shift more liberal states later in the process to draw out and stir up a hypothetical race that foresaw a Mitt Romney nomination. Now, the logic underlying that effort can certainly be questioned -- liberal states in the aggregate do not necessarily have moderate-to-liberal Republican primary electorates -- but the intervention is there.
And that is where at least some of the focus should be heading into 2019: how will states shift around on the 2020 calendar? Much of the spotlight has been on the impact the re-positioning of the California presidential primary will have on the Democratic nomination process. That is not wrong. It is a noteworthy shift. But it leans on a logic rooted in the past: partisan actors (Democrats in California) making positive, partisan decisions (to move the primary in the Golden state up).
How much can we expect Republican actors to act? Will Republican-controlled states sit idly by and maintain early calendar positions? Or will Republican states, say those involved in the SEC primary from 2016, proactively move to another position so as to have some impact on the Democratic nomination process? Those southern states moving back would mean the shift of an important bloc in the Democratic primary electorate: African Americans.
There are no clear answers to these questions at this point, but 2019 will begin to offer them as state legislatures begin to convene for their 2019 sessions and begin to weigh primary calendar moves.
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