Why the State Conventions Matter So Much Right Now
There’s a reason most people, even most people who follow politics, don’t pay a lot of attention to how the convention delegates get selected. Most years, it doesn’t matter: The front-runner wins by such a wide margin that the question of who goes to the convention and does the voting is entirely symbolic. But obviously, this year is not like most years.
So as noted in Friday’s Jolt and a now-infamous television appearance, the rules for each state’s delegation are set by each state’s party, and clear enough if you bother to look them up. For example, here’s Iowa:
Saturday, April 9, 2016: Republican Party District Conventions convene in each congressional district to choose the state’s district delegates to the Republican National Convention according to the results of the Precinct Caucuses. Each of Iowa’s 4 congressional districts is assigned 3 National Convention delegates.
Saturday, May 21, 2016: The Iowa State Republican Convention officially convenes. 15 of 30 National Convention delegates are selected according to the results of the Precinct Caucuses.
The State Convention as a whole chooses Iowa’s statewide delegates (10 base at-large delegates plus 5 bonus delegates) to the Republican National Convention.
In addition, 3 party leaders, the National Committeeman, the National Committeewoman, and the chairman of the Iowa’s Republican Party, will attend the convention as pledged delegates by virtue of their position.
Are Iowa delegates free to pick someone else after the first ballot? Yes! “Iowa’s National Convention delegates are bound for the first ballot unless only one candidate is nominated at the Republican National Convention. In that case, Iowa’s delegates are bound to vote for that candidate on the first ballot providing that candidate received votes in the Precinct Caucuses.” These rules, in most cases, are on the state party’s web site or at a site like GreenPapers. They’re not secret. They’re not locked away in the warehouse that has the Ark of the Covenant.
You may recall that on caucus night, Ted Cruz got eight delegates, Donald Trump got seven, Marco Rubio got seven, Ben Carson got three, and Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich and Mike Huckabee got one each. No matter who gets selected to go to Cleveland at the district conventions and the state conventions, they have to sort themselves out to vote the way those caucus results shake out . . . on the first ballot.
After that first ballot, those 30 delegates can vote any way they want. If they want to keep voting for the guy they voted for in the first round, they can do that. The candidates can urge them to support another candidate, but they’re not obligated to follow the candidate’s instructions. In other words, it matters a great deal whether the people going to Cleveland are dyed-in-the-wool Trump supporters, Cruz supporters, or prefer some other option.
In Arizona, all 55 delegates are obligated to vote for Donald Trump on the first ballot -- it’s a winner-take-all state. But Cruz’s campaign is putting the pieces in place to have a lot of their friends sent to Cleveland as part of the Arizona delegation. They’ll vote Trump on the first ballot, and then switch to Cruz on subsequent ballots.
It’s a similar story in North Dakota, Tennessee, and Louisiana.
You’ll hear a lot of accusations from Trump fans that this is “cheating” -- even though the rules are clear: in most of these states, delegates are only obligated to vote for the candidate they’re bound to on the first ballot. The Trump campaign is free to bring their people to the county, district, and state conventions and use their numbers to get their people sent to Cleveland instead. At this point, it appears the Trump campaign just isn’t paying close attention to this part of the process. And according to some reports, the candidate knows it:
But when Mr. Priebus explained that each campaign needed to be prepared to fight for delegates at each state’s convention, Mr. Trump turned to his aides and suggested that they had not been doing what they needed to do, the people briefed on the meeting said.
There’s still time for Trump to win these fights, but this means his state operations have to realize that the effort continues after primary election day. They’ve got to go to those county, district, and state party meetings and make sure their loyalists are represented in the delegate pool.
You would think that the guy who touts himself as a masterful dealmaker would have learned to read the fine print by now.
Jim Geraghty
Cruz has people going to state conventions getting committed Cruz supporters in delegations. Kasich might be doing some of this. None of the candidates that aren't in the race anymore are ... they don't have working campaigns anymore. I guessTrump hasn't been doing this because his campaign manager is too busy shielding the candidate from potential bomb-carrying young female reporters.
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