Washington Senate Passes Democratic March Presidential Primary Bill

In a 29-18 vote that largely fell along party lines, the Washington state Senate passed SB 5273 on Wednesday. Two Republicans joined all but one of the Democrats in the upper chamber in forming a majority in support of the measure to shift up the date of the presidential primary in the Evergreen state but also define other aspects of the process like who can participate.

As the vote on final passage approached, the floor debate resembled the battle lines drawn earlier in committee hearings on this bill and a rival option state Senate Republicans and Secretary of State Kim Wyman (R) backed. The date change was consistent across both bills -- the second Tuesday in March -- but the dispute centered on whether unaffiliated voters would be able to participate in the process (without having to swear an oath to one party or the other in order to participate).¹

An amendment was offered to the bill by Senator Hans Zeigler (R-25th, Puyallup) to insert the provision allowing unaffiliated participation from the Republican-backed bill, but it was defeated in a near party-line vote. Despite the chamber's rejection of the amendment, Zeigler joined Democrats in passing the Democratic version creating a partisan presidential primary.

Proponents of the Democratic version of the bill, including Senator Sam Hunt (D-22nd, Olympia), the chair of the referring State Government Committee, argued that their alternative without the unaffiliated option conformed best to national party delegate selection rules. Furthermore, the argument went, given national party rule compliance, the Democratic alternative would best insure that the two parties could both utilize the presidential primary option rather than caucuses.

The lone Democrat to oppose final passage was Senator Tim Sheldon (D-35th, Mason) who balked at the use of taxpayer money to fund a partisan election that would exclude unaffiliated voters.

Wyman celebrated the passage of the legislation but lamented that it did not include any provision to allow unaffiliated voters to participate unfettered in the process. The measure now moves on to the state House for consideration there. Similar, House-originated legislation is already active in the lower chamber.

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¹ Under the provisions of the Democratic alternative -- the one ultimately passed -- the decisions made by voters as to which party they swear an oath to, and thus which party's primary in which they are participating, would be made public. Essentially the ballot choice but not the vote choice is made public; information the political parties value for general election campaigns. Importantly, this is an action commonly taken in other states lacking formal party voter registration.


Related:
Washington State Legislation Would Again Try to Move Presidential Primary to March

An Update on March Presidential Primary Bills in Washington: One Bill Through Committee

Senate-Passed Washington Presidential Primary Bill Passes House Committee Stage on Party Line Vote

Washington State House Passes March Presidential Primary Bill

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An Update on March Presidential Primary Bills in Washington: One Bill Through Committee

Two weeks ago legislation was introduced in the Washington state Senate to shift up the date of the presidential primary in the state from May to the second Tuesday in March.¹

This is not a new idea, and, in fact, was hashed out in the legislature in both 2015 and 2017-18. But in neither session did the legislation move past an affirmative vote in the originating chamber. That may or may not be the case in 2019.

The difference this time is that while Democrats in the Evergreen state enjoyed unified control of state government (in the last session at least), the urgency to move was lacking. That urgency is now present in two forms. First, the year before a presidential election is typically when most states make calendar moves. The date of a presidential primary is on more legislators' minds in 2019 than in 2017, in other words.

But another factor is that Washington Democrats have conducted, without exception, caucuses in lieu of a primary throughout the post-reform era. Democratic legislators, then, have never been particularly motivated to move a contest -- the presidential primary -- that the state Democratic Party was not going to use for the purposes of delegate allocation. However, following a 2016 cycle that saw enthusiastic caucusgoers in Washington and elsewhere overwhelm the party-run operations, some state parties and state legislatures have begun to reexamine the process. Externally, there has also been a push at the national party level on the Democratic side to encourage state government-run primaries over state party-run caucuses.

And the confluence of those factors has perhaps created a perfect storm in Washington. State legislative Democrats are motivated to establish a primary system that will entice the Democratic Party in the state to opt for the primary in 2020 over the caucuses the party has traditionally used.

So how have the bills been received in committee?

There is a partisan dimension to this, and that remains the best lens through which to examine the effort to move the Washington presidential primary to March. But then again, the date is not up for dispute. Both bills call for moving the primary to same date in March. Other sections of the bills are what is animating the partisan differences.

This was borne out in the initial committee hearing on SB 5229 and SB 5273. While a representative of the Washington secretary of state's office talked up the earlier date and adding a third unaffilated voter list of candidates to the ballots mailed out to Washington primary voters, DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) member and Washington Democratic Party parliamentarian, David McDonald chimed in that the measure had a handful of provisions that would make it less likely that the RBC would approve of a delegate selection plan using the primary. He cited the Republican bill's lack of a recount provision (especially in a crowded field) and an uncommitted option as reasons the RBC may reject a plan that included the primary, making it more likely that the state party would opt for a caucus again. In addition, McDonald cast doubt on how the RBC would approach a plan including a primary allowing unaffiliated voters to participate without having that information made public or automatically registering the voters with the party in the process.

[Those issues are all avoided in the Democratic bill.]

Holes, then, were poked in the Republican bill from the secretary of state. And that is where partisanship returns, or rather where partisan control more clearly enters the picture. Democrats have unified control of state government in the Evergreen state in 2019-20 and the State Government Committee if not the Democratic caucus in the state Senate seem motivated to move the Democratic bill, SB 5273. Originally that bill had as sponsors nearly all of the party leadership in the chamber. That sponsor list has expanded in the time since the bill was introduced to include over half of the Democratic caucus in the Senate.

Additionally, the Democratic bill, after a minor technical change altering the canvassing and certification process for the primary, passed the Senate State Government Committee with a do pass recommendation by a 5-2 vote. The two dissenting votes were two of the three Republicans on the committee. One recommended no passage, while the other voted to refer the measure to the Rules Committee without any recommendation.

What the last two weeks have brought is some clarity in terms of which version of the bill to move the Washington presidential primary to March would win out. Clearly the Democratic bill is going to be moved by a Democratic-controlled chamber. SB 5229, the Republican version, looks as if it will remain in committee not to see the light of day.

Another test comes when the House begins its consideration of those versions.

Related:
Washington State Legislation Would Again Try to Move Presidential Primary to March

Washington Senate Passes Democratic March Presidential Primary Bill

Senate-Passed Washington Presidential Primary Bill Passes House Committee Stage on Party Line Vote

Washington State House Passes March Presidential Primary Bill


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¹ Subsequent companion legislation, matching the two state Senate versions, has been introduced in the state House. HB 1262 mirrors the language of the bill that has the backing of Washington secretary of state, Kim Wyman (R) while HB 1310 is a replica of the bill Senate Democrats have put forth. Neither bill has had a hearing as of yet in the House committee to which they were referred.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Howard Schultz, 2020 and Democratic Party Rules Changes

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the days that recently were...

A significant amount of chatter coming into the week on the heels of his 60 Minutes interview Sunday night was devoted to Howard Schultz potentially running for president. Not as a Democrat but as a centrist independent. And yes, that triggered a number of takes on the success of third party presidential bids and the potential impact of a center-left candidate on the 2020 general election race.

But rather than look forward and think about what may be (when there remains a great deal of uncertainty about whether a Schultz bid actually takes off in some meaningful way), let us look back and ask why or how it came to this. That, in and of itself, is a significant invisible primary story.

FHQ really is not compelled to think that Schultz started out here, thinking about an independent bid all along. Perhaps he did. However, it is more likely that he saw, felt or heard some hostility to a possible 2020 bid for the Democratic nomination. Sure, Schultz has added Bill Burton, formerly from the Obama orbit, to his team. But for every Burton addition that may signal some formal linkage to the party network, there are other signals -- potentially many other signals -- that that linkage was strained at best. There have not been any Schultz trips to typical early state haunts that mark the movements of the prospective candidates. There has not been any reporting of Schultz sending out feelers to the early states or actors within the broader Democratic Party network. And if there were it is entirely possible Schultz was rebuffed, signaling, if not hostility, then indifference to a run.

Those are all valuable signals, ones Schultz may have gotten.

But maybe the better signal came from the Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee this past summer. The rules adopted for the 2020 process last August included a formal codification of the basic agreement Bernie Sanders had with the DNC for the 2016 cycle: an affirmation that he [Sanders] would behave as a Democrat. That is the truncated version of that rule (Rule 13.K.1). And while much of the initial reaction to the Rules and Bylaws Committee deliberations about the change was about the potentially injurious effect it would have on Sanders for 2020, the true intent was less about Sanders and more about President Trump, or a Trump-like candidate on the Democratic side. What the party sought to avoid was either a Trump-like nominee or a sore loser who, having not secured the nomination, would support someone other than the Democratic nominee. This change was aimed at possible Bloomberg or Schultz candidacies.

No, FHQ is not suggesting that this change was precisely what drove Schultz to possibly launching an independent bid for president, but rather that it demonstrated some tension toward a run for the Democratic nomination, tension that has only heighten in the backlash to Schultz floating the idea. That hostility was there before.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. There has been an uptick in Iowa hires. Booker, Gillibrand and Harris have all added folks in the Hawkeye state.

2. The Post and Courier has a nice list of influential South Carolinians whose endorsements may matter in the Democratic nomination race.

3. The endorsement primary is underway. Harris pulled in a superdelegate endorsement from Rep. Ted Lieu and Delaney has added the support of a cadre of rural Iowa Democratic county chairs.

4. Meanwhile, other superdelegates are sitting on the sidelines and may remain there. Sen. Shaheen and the former Democratic presidents are waiting it out.

5. And they are not the only ones playing the waiting game. Big donors are continuing to be less than active so far.

6. Clinton has not closed the door on a 2020 run. Yes, that may be true, but it is also true that several of her former staffers from 2016 have already begun to populate the staffs of other campaigns for 2020.

7. Hickenlooper nixes a joint ticket with Kasich in Iowa.

8. And finally, Jeff Flake formally passes on a challenge to Trump for the Republican nomination.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Republicans Opting Out of Primaries and Caucuses for 2020

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the days that recently were...

FHQ will say that it has quite enjoyed David Drucker's periodic check ins with Republican state parties about their plans for 2020 delegate selection. Some are opting to drop presidential primaries in favor of caucuses, while others a contemplating dropping their caucuses.¹ And as he noted in his initial dispatch about South Carolina Republicans forgoing a presidential primary is standard protocol during a cycle where an incumbent Republican president is seeking renomination.

Incumbent renomination cycles are littered with examples of the scaling down of delegate selection operations. Florida and Michigan, famous rules breakers in the 2008 cycle for scheduling primaries in  calendar positions too early based on national party rules, were repeat offenders along with Arizona in 2012. Those too-early primaries forced Democratic parties in those states to opt for caucuses that could be scheduled later in the process. The same was true during a competitive cycle in 2000 when the Republican Party allowed February contests, but the Democratic Party did not. Several Republican-controlled states held early primaries that cycle that potentially put Democrats in their states in a bind. The way out for those Democratic state parties -- in Arizona and Michigan, oddly enough -- was to hold caucuses that could be scheduled in compliant calendar positions.

Of course, it is worth pointing out that the above scenarios all differ from what is happening among Republican state party actors ahead of the 2020 primaries and caucuses. None of these parties are opting out of primaries or caucuses because of something out of their control (eg: the date of a state-funded primary out of compliance with national party rules).

But even this is fairly typical. And the answer ultimately is based in reasoning that we see layered into election law in a number of states. It is not unusual to see states with laws that eliminate primaries, presidential or otherwise, when there is just one candidate on the ballot.

Yes, it is perhaps presumptuous for Republican actors to assume that President Trump will remain unopposed for the Republican nomination in 2020. The ballots, after all, have not been set as of yet. Of course, through another lens, the act of choosing a caucus over a primary can also be viewed as protective of the president.

But another reason this is more customary on the Republican side -- standard protocol as described above -- is that the rules of the Republican Party have always allowed state committees to choose delegates to the national convention. That institutional valve has traditionally allowed Republican state parties to cancel primaries as New York, for example, has in uncompetitive Republican nomination cycles (see 2004), or for state parties to go the caucus route rather than conduct a primary as South Carolina Republicans have done in the past (particularly in the era prior to 2008 when state parties were on the hook for primary costs).

So what is happening, or potentially is happening, in Kansas -- the state Republican party likely opting out of its caucuses next year -- is not unusual. What may be considered unusual in today's light is what Kansas Republicans did in 1996, a competitive Republican nomination cycle. Not only did the Republican-controlled state government decide not to fund the presidential primary in the state, but the state party opted not to hold caucuses and allocated delegates via its state committee.

The reason? The party thought native son, Bob Dole, would win anyway. Kansas Republicans in 2019 may feel the same way about President Trump, but at least he is an incumbent president. Times change, but these types of activities are not unusual.


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¹ The latter is a cost-saving measure for the state party.

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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Gillibrand's hired a press secretary with some connections to New Hampshire.

2. Speaking of the Granite state, no, Harris has not visited yet, but her campaign's first state-based field director hire is for New Hampshire.

3. Exploratory committee: √; planning a trip to Iowa: Buttigieg is working on it.

4. There are undoubtedly Biden allies in Michigan who would support a White House bid by the former vice president, but there may be fewer in the sixth congressional district if the district Democratic Party chair is any indication.

5. Paul Kane looks in on the House Democrats considering 2020 runs.

6. Early travel plans among those Democrats who have announced include Puerto Rico. [I don't know that I buy the headline that Iowa should move over. When the formation of the primary calendar is more orderly, there is more certainty that allows candidates and campaigns to look further down the calendar to other contests/constituencies. Iowa will be fine.]

7. Finally, longshot presidential contender and former West Virginia state senator, Richard Ojeda quietly bows out of the 2020 race.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Anxious in Iowa and New Hampshire?

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

If it is the year before a presidential election, then it is time once again for folks to wonder aloud about the role of Iowa and New Hampshire in the presidential nomination process.

No, this is not the strain that asks, and often too late, why are Iowa and New Hampshire first on the presidential primary calendar. The national party rules are set there and there are no direct threats to any of the four carve-out states at this time. Sure there are those who have raised the early voting window in California (and others who have urged caution there), but no state as of early 2019 is plotting to schedule a primary or caucus right on top of one or both of the two earliest states in the queue.

No, this is not about that.

Instead, it is another variant of the quadrennial strain of the Iowa and New Hampshire discussion, the one where some will wonder aloud whether this is the cycle that some candidate or group of candidates strategically looks beyond those states to other potentially more fertile electoral opportunities.

The New York Times' Jonathan Martin set off such a thread yesterday with this tweet:

The other big q looming over ‘20, that @LeahDaughtry gets at: will some (or 1) of candidates have a lighter footprint in heavily-white Iowa/NH, go harder Nev/SC before Super Tues? @KamalaHarris coming first to SC to speak to her fellow @akasorority1908 is no scheduling quirk

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) January 22, 2019

That, in turn, prompted New York Magazine's Gabriel Debenedetti cite worries in the Granite state...

there's real sensitivity to this already in NH, at least. The grumbling class operatives there are already lifting eyebrows at even the idea that there *might* be a perception that NH is at all sail-thru-able. https://t.co/NPkyV0ALV2

— Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) January 22, 2019

And The Guardian's Ben Jacobs to echo the same observation from the Hawkeye state.

Can confirm similar attitudes in Iowa https://t.co/9v5pkQilfo

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) January 22, 2019

And FHQ is not here to dispute any of those observations. But I would say that none of that anxiety is particularly abnormal in either Iowa and New Hampshire. In fact, one could even argue that it is somewhat natural reaction for Democrats and Democratic activists in those states on the heels of a contest in 2016 that had a limited field and to be followed by a cycle that is shaping up to have no lack of candidates (in 2019 anyway). In other words, it has been since 2008 there has been as wide open a field of candidates on the Democratic side.

Expectations, then, are fairly high for visits and lots of them.

And those visits are likely to come, but in combinations that may differ from the expectations. Look, candidates are not going to skip Iowa or New Hampshire. They may adopt a strategy similar to Mitt Romney's in 2012 and emphasize one over the other -- New Hampshire over Iowa in Romney's case -- but they are not going to skip either one entirely to focus on some state deeper into the calendar. That has very simply been too big a strategic risk in the post-reform era. Players just do not successfully skip steps in a sequential game. It runs the risk of empowering other opposing players; not all of them, but some of them.

And that brings this back to Leah Daughtry's point in that Martin tweet above, the part about a "lighter footprint" in Iowa and New Hampshire to focus elsewhere. While the perception may exist in each of those states that they may be missing out in some way, there is not a lot of evidence to back it up at this point. Yes, a lot of candidates are heading to South Carolina, but they are heading to Iowa and New Hampshire in droves as well.

Among the announced candidates alone, their early itineraries included the earliest two states. Warren spent her first weekend post-rollout in Iowa and then spent the next two in New Hampshire. Castro hit Iowa and Nevada before his announcement and New Hampshire after it. Gillibrand did Colbert, ventured back to New York and then headed to the Hawkeye state. And Harris may be going to South Carolina first and then California, but ends up in Iowa.

Perhaps a "lighter footprint" strategy will develop in some campaign or campaigns as 2019 progresses, but the early signs are not exactly pointing in that direction. Iowa and New Hampshire remain winnowing contests for the candidate who are further down the list and opportunities for those most viable candidates. The strategies of that latter group will reflect that, and that will become clearer the closer 2020 gets.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. South Bend mayor, Pete Buttigieg, is exploring a run.

2. Warren stops by Puerto Rico, which allocates delegates next year too.

3. New California governor, Gavin Newsom, has been testing digital messages outside of the Golden state in presidential general election battlegrounds.

4. The Harris campaign adding a number of former Clinton operatives is a noteworthy series of hires.

5. Klobuchar is reaching out to folks in New Hampshire to set up a potential visit.

6. Speaking of the Granite state, California congressman, Adam Schiff, has plans to head north.

7. Sherrod Brown is paying New Hampshire a visit as well, and his PAC has hired a former Sanders staffer.

8. One name to potentially strike -- perhaps in pencil -- from the list of those running for 2020 is Connecticut senator, Chris Murphy. He does not sound as if he is going to mount a bid.

9. Having stumped in Iowa already, Kirstin Gillibrand is taking the tour to South Carolina in the coming days.

10. Finally, Hickenlooper will rejoin the traveling party and trek back to Iowa.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- The Devil's in the Details of Any Iowa Caucus Rules Changes

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

Rules matter.

That is not anything that should come as revelatory from this site. The national parties have set their rules for the 2020 process and now the cycle has entered a phase where states are considering whether and how to adapt to those rules and their changes.

Iowa, in particular, is at a bit of a crossroads. On the one hand, the DNC instituted a bevy of new encouragements for caucus states in the 2020 cycle in an effort to broaden participation. But the state party in the Hawkeye state is also trying to remedy those problems that it diagnosed coming out of the 2016 cycle. And most of those had to do with the crush of participants that did or tried to caucus three years ago.

It is a bit of a double whammy, then, to have to show signs of broadening participation for the next cycle and simultaneously troubleshoot around even more potential participation the next time around.

One of the potential work-arounds proposed has been tele-caucusing, something Iowa Democrats tried on a more limited scale in 2016 among military personnel stationed abroad or outside of the state. But the party also planned for satellite caucuses as well as a means of accommodating those with conflicts with the exact timing of the caucuses.

But both of those efforts were targeted pretty narrowly and had only a small impact on the overall delegate allocation. The military tele-caucuses only affected the allocation of two state convention delegates while the satellite caucuses allocated three state convention delegates. Those were state convention delegates that had some say among the nearly 1300 state convention delegates in the ultimate allocation of the 15 statewide delegates (at-large and PLEO).

The questions that arise from that are fairly obvious:
1. Will the tele-caucuses be scaled up to affect the allocation of delegates at the county or state level in some way? If the expectation is that turnout will rise significantly over this ease of participation, then that has to be reflected in the impact it has on delegate allocation in some way.

2. Can the tele-caucuses be scaled up from the trial run in 2016? Yes, there was a trial run, but opening it up more would mean the logistics increase by an order of magnitude.

The first of those has a rules-based answer whose blank has not yet been filled by the Iowa Democratic Party. But the second is more of a leap of faith, or perhaps a trial by fire that can have rules crafted to address the front side, but reveal shortcomings under scrutiny on the back end.

First thing's first, however: let's see what Iowa Democrat specifically devise and then attempt to divine the potential impact.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Harris got a lot of bucks for the bang out of her presidential rollout.

2. Inslee was allowed into New Hampshire after all, and his timetable for a decision has shrunk.

3. Draft Beto has stretched into the Granite state now.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- How the 2020 Endorsement Primary Will Be Different

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the days that recently were...

It is not going too far out on a limb to say that any one aspect of a presidential nomination cycle is or will be different than it was in previous cycles. That is and has been the nature of the process in the post-reform era. Rules change. Candidates change. Conditions change.

2020, then, is not exactly like 2016 in the same way that 2016 was not a carbon copy, at least on the Democratic side, of 2008.

One area where 2020 will differ from 2016 is in how candidates running for 2020 accrue endorsements along the way. Much has been made of the rules changes the Democratic National Committee made with respect to superdelegates. That group of unplugged delegates was not eliminated, but their collective voting power at the national convention was curbed to some degree. However, left untouched by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee was the ability of individual superdelegates to endorse candidates vying for the 2020 nomination.

In that way, superdelegates could play much the same role in 2020 that they have in previous cycles.

But the conditions of 2020 may augur against that. For one thing, there are far more candidates who are seemingly running this time around than four years ago. And there is also no clear frontrunner at this point in 2020 as there was in 2016. The clarity of Clinton's status was buttressed by the endorsements she had. At a similar point in 2015, the former secretary of state had 62 high profile endorsements. And that was before she had announced her bid.

No one candidate for 2020, announced or not, has anything approaching that level of institutional support. Joe Biden's name has been invoked by California senior senator, Diane Feinstein, and New York governor, Andrew Cuomo. And while that may be significant given that folks from those two states -- Harris from the Golden state and Gillibrand from the Empire state -- are running, the total falls far short of Clinton's from four years ago (if one can even consider those full-throated endorsements for Biden at all).

Again, however, with a larger field of candidates and no clear frontrunner, some of that is to be expected. But there may also be other forces at work here that are worthy of further consideration.

One that has been mentioned in light of the 2016 controversy over superdelegates and resulting rules changes that stemmed from that is that some elected officials in the position to endorse may opt to wait as others have in the past until after their constituents have voted (or all of the voting is complete). In some way, superdelegate decision making on the endorsement question is like that of the calculus that big money donors are facing now: wait for the dust to settle a bit and then weigh in.

Yet, the extent to which superdelegates may be frozen out of making an endorsement goes beyond that which donors are encountering. Some may be waiting on a signal rather than more actively/forcefully giving one; a reverse of the causal relationship noted in Cohen, et al. in The Party Decides.

Another aspect of this that I have not seen picked up on to this point is the reduced potential for high profile endorsements this cycle as (unfairly?) compared to the far less wide open 2016 cycle. And what I mean by that is there are already a fair number of superdelegates who are vying for the Democratic nomination in 2020. On a basic level, then, there are just fewer superdelegates to provide endorsements. Elizabeth Warren is not going to endorse Cory Booker anymore than Kamala Harris is going to throw her support behind Jay Inslee.

...at this time.

This, too, to some hypothetical extent has a freezing effect on other high profile would-be endorsers. Why support someone now only to see them withdraw from the race in the coming months? Why endorse a colleague/ally now over another colleague/ally?

In other words, there is a timing element to layer into this decision-making framework. The confluence of everything above may -- may -- give less incentive to early endorsements, but really increase the likelihood (and impact?) of later endorsements once the field has winnowed some and some of these superdelegates are culled from the pack.

In the meantime, there may be other endorsements to fill the void: state legislators. They may not meaningful on an individual endorsement basis, but in the aggregate may give us an idea of which candidates have some institutional support on the state level. And that may, in turn, influence where some of the heavier endorsement hitters wind up in the end.

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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Add Kamala Harris to the list. The California senator is officially in and not just exploratory committee in -- like Castro, Gillibrand or Warren -- but in in.

2. Brown's PAC continues to add staff in Iowa.

3. Recent speeches are giving the potential Larry Hogan challenge of the president for the Republican nomination some steam.

4. If his was a run *for* 2020, it was a very half-hearted run from Bob Casey that is now over. It never really got beyond the "I won't close the door on it"/"I'm thinking about it" stage.

5. Booker gets encouragement to run while in Louisiana and Georgia on his trips through the states on the way to South Carolina on the MLK holiday.

6. New Hampshire got a visit from Warren for the second consecutive weekend, and South Carolina will see her there this week.

7. Howard Schultz and his advisers floating the idea of an independent bid seemingly indicates an awful lot about how things are going for him in the Democratic invisible primary.

8. There were no endorsements, but one would rather have potentially influential Iowa Democrats at a  speech during a first trip to the Hawkeye state than not. Gillibrand had the state party chair and 2018 Democratic for secretary of state stop in.

9. Both Gillibrand and Harris are touting widely distributed fundraising successes following their presidential announcements.

10. Swalwell's Palmetto pitstop over the weekend gave a bit more of a glimpse into his thinking on a run.

11. Finally, Elaine Kamarck has a solid piece on the 2020 rules and the Democratic nomination. The only omission is some of the superdelegates/endorsements-related implications which were more controversial in 2016 and were not affected, at least not directly, by the changes for 2020.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

Maine Lost its Presidential Primary

Since early 2016, a trend has evolved in how the 2020 presidential nomination process will operate. In that time, several formerly caucus states have abandoned the format in favor of a state-funded primary. That has happened in states like Idaho and Nebraska where there was already a primary option included in state law, but also in states like Colorado and Minnesota, where citizen-driven initiative or the legislature, respectively, created the primary option.

The latter group used to include the caucus-to-primary shift in Maine.

Used to.

The 2016 effort to re-establish a presidential primary in the Pine Tree state passed and became law, but most of the provisions in the bill (then law) expired on December 1, 2018. The sole surviving component -- the only part that did not expire -- was the study the Maine secretary of state was to have conducted with respect to the funding of the election. And while that report was issued on December 1, 2017, as called for in the statute, questions lingered about how state reimbursement to the counties conducting the elections would function among other issues.

The impetus for the sunset provision, then, was to allow for some fact finding on the funding issue, but also in order to force legislators to consider those implications before solidifying the primary for 2020. That consideration continues now.

However, there is legislation -- LD 245 -- newly before the Maine legislature to make permanent the provisions that re-established the presidential primary, but which expired toward the end of 2018. As FHQ described in 2016, those provisions include the following:

• The secretary will then by November 1 of the year prior to a presidential election year set the date of the contest for some Tuesday in March. This date selection process will be done in consultation with the state parties. 
• That last part is key. The state parties obviously have the final say in all of this. Despite there being presidential primary, the state parties are not required to opt into it. Those parties could continue to use caucuses as a means of both allocating and selecting delegates. But by providing some (early calendar) flexibility and by consulting with the parties, the new law maximizes the likelihood that the two state parties opt into the primary and allocate delegates through the vote in the contest. 
• This legislation does a couple of interesting things. First, as mentioned above, the secretary of state has some carefully calibrated discretion on setting the date of the primary. The law does not set the primary for a specific date, but rather calls for it to happen on a Tuesday in March. More importantly, though, the decision on the date of the primary for 2020 and in the future rests with the secretary of state -- like in New Hampshire and Georgia -- instead of having to filter any date change through the legislative process. The discretion that the Maine secretary of state will have on this is far more restricted than in either New Hampshire or Georgia, but there is some flexibility there. That makes Maine a bit more adaptable than states with primaries scheduled for specific dates.

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Related:
2/1/19: Maine Decision to Re-Establish a Presidential Primary Option for 2020 Hinges on Money

2/9/19: Maine Committee Hearing Highlights Familiar Divisions in Caucus to Primary Shifts

3/16/19: Alternative Bill Would Reestablish a Presidential Primary in Maine but with Ranked Choice Voting

3/22/19: Maine Committee Hearing Finds Support for and Roadblocks to a Ranked Choice Presidential Primary

3/30/19: Maine Democrats Signal Caucuses in Draft Delegate Selection Plan, but...

4/23/19: New Super Tuesday Presidential Primary Bill Introduced in Maine

5/10/19: Maine Committee Working Session Offers Little Clarity on 2020 Presidential Primary

6/3/19: Maine Senate Advances Super Tuesday Primary Bill

6/4/19: On to the Governor: Maine House Passes Super Tuesday Presidential Primary Bill

6/19/19: Fate of a Reestablished Presidential Primary in Maine Not Clear Entering Final Legislative Day

6/20/19: Governor Mills' Signature Sets Maine Presidential Primary for Super Tuesday

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The Maine bill has been added to the FHQ 2020 presidential primary calendar.

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- What Will a "Grassroots Fundraising" Threshold for Entry to Democratic Primary Debates Look Like?

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

Just prior to the holidays the Democratic National Committee released a schedule for upcoming presidential primary debates. The party at that time even included a contingency plan for the very real possibility that a slew of candidates have entered the race, forcing the party to have double-bill debates. Rather than follow the Republican big fish/little fish format from 2016, the DNC will instead randomize the selection of participants in each part of a two-tiered debate kickoff.

Outside of those provisions, however, the DNC remained relatively silent on the specifics of an important aspect of the process: how does one qualify? What measures will be utilized to separate participating presidential candidates from those who, well, do not measure up?

It was not that the announcement was without specifics, but they lacked definition. There were two main measures laid out and it was stated that the bar for entry would be kept low for the first debate (and likely rise over time).

Polling was listed as one component, but one that is not without drawbacks given a large field of candidates and the lack of, at this point in time anyway, a clear (and clearly separated) frontrunner. Any resulting polling-based threshold can end up rather arbitrary in such a scenario. What is to say that there is a true difference in sentiment for and between candidates sitting at or just above five percent in polls and those just below that level in the hypothetical situation where the cutoff is set at five percent? Well, not that much in many cases.

It is partly for that reason that the DNC has signaled that it will lean on other metrics as well to determine who gets in and who is left out of the initial two part debates. The other component is some demonstration of "grassroots fundraising". Outside of personal funds and money from PACs, super PACs and/or other groups, how much can/should a campaign pull in and how widespread should those donations be (in terms of from where they are coming)?

That remains an open question before the DNC at this point. But it is not coming into that discussion blindly. This same basic concept has been used elsewhere in the presidential nomination process.

Although it is more than a little outdated, other than for campaigns desperate for a cash infusion to stay alive, the federal matching funds system that in a bygone era helped fund presidential nomination campaigns sets a few markers that may serve as a baseline for the DNC as it continues its deliberations about debates qualifications.

The matching funds system continues to set a minimum of $100,000 raised across at least 20 states (at least $5000 in each) as the threshold for access to federal funding. No, serious candidates do not ultimately end up opting into that system anymore. They can far out-raise not only the threshold but their share and the match combined.

But that reality is beside the point in this setting. Candidates are not attempting to qualify for funding. Instead, they are attempting to do what the matching funds system was originally set up to accomplish: force the candidates and their campaigns to demonstrate wide enough support. Polling and widespread fundraising can build a more robust picture of that support than any one metric alone can.

Yet, that does leave one question unsettled; one with which the DNC will have to wrestle before it finalizes the rules likely in March. If the matching funds system is a starting point, then is the threshold it sets too low, too high, or just right for debate entry? And does the party use any of the information out there about the fundraising being done by candidates officially in or exploring a run up to that point? It is hard to imagine that data not making its way into and potentially influencing those discussions. And that may impact those who are already in versus those who are not at that point.

That may be problematic for a party coming off a cycle when accusations that it played favorites in 2016 continue to bubble up, not to mention the pressure it may continue to put on candidates to expedite announcement decisions.



Related: On DNC Debate Requirements and Candidate Strategy


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Gillibrand officially joins the fray.

2. Pete Buttigieg gets a lengthy profile in WaPo.

3. Sanders continues to staff up.

4. Expectations are already being set for Warren in New Hampshire.

5. Brown now has carve-out state trips planned, but any official announcement will have to wait.

6. Once openly talked about as potential presidential candidates in 2020, Stacy Abrams and Andrew Gillum are now being discussed as sought after endorsements and signal-givers for those candidates who have or will throw their hats in the ring.

7. Add Seth Moulton to the list of folks heading to New Hampshire.

8. Booker's travels take him to Louisiana, a state with a primary the weekend just after Super Tuesday.

9. Klobuchar's potential bid gets a thumbs up from her family.

10. Nate Silver has a coalition-building theory about the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

11. Kevin Collins responds with an alternative hypothesis centered on invisible primary resource acquisition.

12. A component of those resources is the team campaigns, nascent or otherwise, put together. There is only so much seasoned staff to go around in a large field, and potential staff are biding their time.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

Washington State Legislation Would Again Try to Move Presidential Primary to March

Legislators are back at it in Washington state.

Since eliminating the presidential primary for the 2012 cycle, there have been ongoing, albeit unsuccessful, attempts made to not only reposition the presidential contest on the primary calendar, but to reconfigure the process in the Evergreen state as well.

The sticking point in 2015, as illustrated in the descriptions linked to above as well as in 2017 when similar legislation was introduced, has always been how to balance both the lack of party registration in Washington and the history of a top two primary ballot in the context of a presidential primary.

None of the remedies to this point have been sufficient enough to get an omnibus presidential primary bill passed. And that has continued to keep the contest in its relatively late May position, but has also given Democrats continued opportunities to opt for caucuses in lieu of the presidential primary.

And now there are competing, partisan bills in the Washington state Senate to again make some attempt in 2019 at changing several aspects of presidential nomination process in the state. The Republican version -- SB 5229, and its House companion, HB 1262 -- would move the primary from the fourth Tuesday in May to the second Tuesday in March. This mirrors the date on which neighboring Idaho currently has its presidential primary scheduled and the date legislation in southern neighbor, Oregon, is targeting in a similar move.

In addition, the bill would also grant the secretary of state the ability to shift the date of the primary from that new March position to a date as early as February 15 or to move it to a later date. The added flexibility is intended to help the secretary to potentially facilitate a western regional primary with any state from among Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, or Utah.

The current law already gives the secretary the power to initiate a date change, but the ultimate decision to do so resides in a bipartisan group that includes the secretary as well as state legislative and state party leadership. Changes outlined in the new legislation would shift even more discretion to the secretary of state, but not without some guardrails. Should any new date chosen deviate from the second Tuesday in March date by more than three weeks, then the secretary would continue to have to receive a green light from bipartisan committee detailed above in order to move the primary.

All of that is relatively uncontroversial. Again, the point of contention has always been over who gets to participate in the presidential primary in a state with no party identification. Under the Republican proposal all registered voters would be able to participate, but it would be up to the state parties to decide which of those votes actually counts toward their delegate allocation.

Here's how that would work:

• All candidates -- Democrats and Republicans -- would be listed on the ballot with their party affiliation listed as well. 
• Partisans who wish to declare and affiliation with a particular party -- swear an oath through a mark on the ballot -- would only be able to vote for a candidate who shares that affiliation. Democrats can vote for Democrats in other words. 
• Unaffiliated voters  -- whether they wish to declare that they are unaffiliated on the ballot or not -- would be able to vote for whomever they want, regardless of party, but may not ultimately have that vote counted toward the delegate allocation. 
• Again, that decision rests with the state parties. 

Under the Republican plan none of the information stemming from the party declarations would be made public as it is in semi-open primary states with similar sorts of oaths.

In contrast, the Democratic bill, sponsored by nearly the entire Democratic leadership in the Washington state Senate and including the chair of the State Government, Tribal Relations and Election committee to which the bill has been referred, differs in subtle ways. SB 5273 would also shift the date of the presidential primary from the fourth Tuesday in May to the second Tuesday in March. And the measure would also allow the secretary of state to alter the date in order to form a western regional primary (with the same group of nine states).

However, the secretary, unlike under the provisions in the Republican bill, would only be allowed to shift the date of the primary up as far as the national parties' delegate selection rules would allow (the first Tuesday in March under the current national party rules). That eliminates the potential for Washington to go rogue as is allowed under the Republican legislation.

Moreover, the secretary would have similar discretion to what secretaries of state have under the current law. Deviations from the second Tuesday could continue to occur, but not without a thumbs up from two-thirds of the bipartisan committee described above.

Again, these are subtle differences, but the secretary of state would have less latitude under the Democratic bill than the Republican one.

The framework also differs under the Democratic plan with respect to participation. The all-encompassing ballot would remain as would the partisan declarations. But the Democratic plan does not include the possibility of unaffiliated declarations; declarations that a voter is unaffiliated with a party. Yet, any voter who does not declare an affiliation could vote, but at the discretion of a state party, not have their votes counted toward the the delegate allocation. Finally, the Democratic legislation would make public partisan declarations of affiliation sworn to on the ballot.

There is a lot to digest in these bills, but the main takeaways are that both seek to change the date of the primary and both make some attempt at balancing the history in the state of a blanket primary-type ballot and the state parties' desire to tamp down on crossover voting in particular, but potentially curbing unaffiliated voters influencing the presidential nomination process.


Related:
An Update on March Presidential Primary Bills in Washington: One Bill Through Committee

Washington Senate Passes Democratic March Presidential Primary Bill

Senate-Passed Washington Presidential Primary Bill Passes House Committee Stage on Party Line Vote

Washington State House Passes March Presidential Primary Bill


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The Washington bills have been added to the FHQ 2020 presidential primary calendar.