Showing posts with label consolidated primaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label consolidated primaries. Show all posts

Saturday, April 8, 2023

From FHQ Plus: Drama Introduced into Effort to Move Idaho Presidential Primary

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

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The 2023 state legislative session drags on in Idaho. Gem state lawmakers had targeted last Friday, March 24, as the date on which the body would adjourn. But last Friday came and went and the work has continued well into this week. 

One bill that was a part of that unfinished business was S 1186, the trailer bill to legislation that now sits on the desk of Governor Brad Little (R), having already passed both chambers of the legislature. Together, H 138 and S 1186 were intended to eliminate the separate presidential primary in March and consolidate the election with the primaries for other offices in May. Actually, the House bill was intended to do all of that on its own. But despite the stated intent, all H 138 ever did was strike the presidential primary language from state code. It never built back the statutory infrastructure to add the presidential line to the May primary ballot. S 1186 was the patch for those omissions.

Only, that patch ran into trouble in committee on the House side on Thursday, March 30. Again, H138 is on the governor’s desk. It overwhelmingly passed both chambers with bipartisan support, and S 1186 had cleared the state Senate as well. All that seemingly stood in the way of the intended elimination and consolidation was a quick committee hearing and another presumably lopsided vote in favor of the trailer bill. 

But then came Thursday’s House State Affairs Committee consideration of the measure. The hearing itself covered familiar ground. Sponsors (and the secretary of state) touted the more than $2 million savings consolidating the elections would have while those tightly associated with the state Republican Party cried foul for not being consulted about the potential change ahead of time (before its winter meeting earlier this year).

And it was during that Republican Party backlash to the legislation that the hearing got interesting. Idaho Republican Party Chair Dorothy Moon spoke in opposition to the bill, saying that, if anything, the state party would prefer to move the primary up even further on the calendar than the second Tuesday in March rather than back to May. She went on to say that she and the party would like to have been given the chance to work with the Republican National Committee to move the primary to February; to make Idaho the “Iowa of the West.”

Put a pin in that for a second. That is a storyline in and of itself, but there was another twist. 

All the witnesses who lined up to testify spoke, and it then looked as if the committee was going to move quickly to vote on S 1186 and presumably push it to the floor. Again, the three floor votes that each of these two bills had faced ended with bipartisan passage. The assumption, then, was that State Affairs was going to move this to the House floor for final consideration. Instead, this happened:

State Affairs Committee Chair Brent Crane (R-13th, Nampa): “Senate bill 1186 is properly before the committee."

Silence. [Crane glances around with a slight, knowing grin on his face.]

Chair Crane: “Senate bill 1186 dies for lack of a motion.”

From the Democratic side of the dais: “Uh.”

Chair Crane: “Already made my decision.”

So, with that S 1186 died in committee. 

Now, that could mean a lot of things moving forward. But what it means in the near term is that Governor Little has a decision to make about H 138. If he signs the measure into law, then the March presidential primary is eliminated, but has no home alongside the May primary. If, however, he vetos the House bill, then everything with the presidential primary stays the same as it has been in Idaho for the last two cycles. 

Maintaining the status quo on the March primary may hinge on how much the governor values the cost savings of eliminating the stand-alone presidential primary. If he prioritizes that roughly $2 million savings, then Little may very well sign the bill or allow it to become law without his signature. 

But that means there would be no Idaho presidential primary in 2024, at least not without further action in a special legislative session. It could be that consideration in that setting may occur after enough time that the state Republican Party has had a chance to consult with the RNC about their February primary idea. Granted, that proposal would be dead on arrival with the national party. The RNC set the early calendar in the rules it adopted in April 2022, and Idaho was not among the states given a carve-out to hold February or earlier primaries or caucuses. Additionally, Idaho Republicans would face the national party’s stiff super penalty if it opted to thumb its nose at the rules and conduct a February contest.

That may or may not be enough to deter the Idaho state legislature from going along with an unsanctioned (by the RNC), state-funded presidential primary in February or even raising the presidential primary issue again in a special session. But the Idaho Republican Party may forge ahead without the primary, whether a state-funded option is available or not. 

Gem state Republicans may choose to hold caucuses instead. And, like West Virginia, Idaho fits into this sort of sweet spot with respect to the RNC super penalty. Yes, the penalty would eliminate all but 12 delegates if Idaho broke the timing rules. But there are only 30 Idaho delegates to begin with. Yes, that is a penalty and one that is greater than the old 50 percent reduction that the RNC employed in the 2012 cycle. Yet, it may not be enough to keep Idaho Republicans from forcing the issue and attempting to become the “Iowa of the West.”

And honestly, that may be a good thing for the overall Republican primary calendar for 2024. The Democratic calendar — with South Carolina at the top on February 3 — is likely to push the early Republican states into January, leaving a barren expanse with no contests for all or much of February until Super Tuesday on March 5. A February Idaho caucus and/or a Michigan primary (with waiver) may help fill in that gap.

However, all of that remains to play out. First thing’s first: Governor Little has a decision to make on H 138. And it is a bigger decision than one might expect for a seemingly simple presidential primary bill.

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NOTE: It was reported this past week upon the Idaho legislature adjourning sine die that Governor Little signed H 138 into law. That eliminates the stand-alone March presidential primary in the Gem state, but bigger questions remain about where the Idaho delegate selection events for both parties end up on the 2024 presidential primary calendar.

Sunday, March 26, 2023

California Bill to Change Primary Date Amended

Earlier this week, significant changes were made to a California Senate bill that, upon its introduction, appeared to affect the date of the consolidated primary, including the presidential primary, in the Golden state.

In fact, the original version of that bill -- SB 24 -- struck the entire section of the California code dealing with various aspects of the primary, leaving the date unspecified. In brief, the introduced bill described the legislation like this:
This bill would change the date of the presidential primary and consolidated statewide direct primary described above to an unspecified date.
As it turns out, however, that was a change meant to serve as a placeholder while the particulars of the intended bill were worked out. The newly amended version of SB 24 was released on Monday, March 20 and revealed that the date of the presidential primary would remain unaffected moving forward. In its place, grander language to put a public financing (of elections) system before the voters of California was inserted. 

California, it seems for now, will remain one of the anchors of Super Tuesday alongside the primary in Texas. 


Saturday, March 25, 2023

Bill Eliminating Idaho Presidential Primary Ready for Governor

The leadership of the Idaho legislature had targeted Friday, March 24 as the last day of the 2023 regular session. 

But that did not happen

Instead, the state Senate dragged through another legislative day at a glacial pace as the state House stood by, finished with its work and awaiting further action from the upper chamber. 

One matter the Senate was able to dispense with was defining the parameters around which the presidential primary will operate for the 2024 cycle. Those bills -- one to eliminate the stand-alone March presidential primary (H 138) and one to consolidate that election with the mid-May primaries for other offices (S 1186) -- were passed on Thursday, March 23. And since the former bill had earlier passed the state House in it current form, the bill was signed by the requisite parties in both chambers and enrolled, ready to be transmitted to the governor for consideration.

But again, that bill merely ends the separate March presidential primary. It does not build the necessary infrastructure into state code to add a presidential line to the May primary for other offices. That amending action is contained in the trailer bill, S 1186. If the amending bill does not also get a thumbs up from the House, then there would simply be no presidential primary in Idaho for 2024. However, that was not the intent of the original bill, incomplete though it may have been. And that likely is not the intent of legislators in the lower chamber either. 

Nonetheless, S 1186 is not yet on the House calendar for when it is due to reconvene on Tuesday, March 28. New to the chamber, the bill would first have to go through committee, and although it has been referred to House State Affairs, S 1186 is not yet on the panel's docket. FHQ is not suggesting that the trailer bill will not be dealt with. It likely will be. The delay is only a function of the end-of-session logjam. 

But what is interesting is that the state Republican Party opposes the primary's shift to May, and it retains the ability to opt for earlier caucuses as a means of assessing presidential preference among Republicans in the state in 2024. Should the governor sign H 138, then proponents of the bill will have gotten at least part of what they wanted out of the 2023 regular session: they will have eliminated the separate presidential primary and saved the state more than $2 million. But the second part of this -- adding the presidential line to the May primary ballot -- becomes superfluous if the state Republican Party ultimately opts to caucus instead of using the later primary. 

The legislative delay at the end of this session, then, may provide legislators (if not the Idaho Republican Party) some time to consider those options in a way that may affect further progress on S 1186. In other words, that action could be saved for a special session (should one be called) after the Republican state central committee makes any decisions on its 2024 delegate selection process. The party may not want to conduct caucuses, but it also does not want such a late presidential primary. It would appear to be a bit of a lose-lose proposition for state Republicans at the moment. 

Yet, that is all speculative. The state legislature will answer some if not all of these questions as it presumably wraps up its regular session work in the week ahead. 

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

Thursday, March 23, 2023

Idaho Presidential Primary Bills Pass Senate

The two bills that would eliminate the stand-alone March presidential primary in Idaho and merge it with the May primaries for other offices passed the state Senate on Thursday, March 23. 


Kansas Presidential Primary Push Faces Friday Deadline

The Kansas state Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee convened on Thursday, March 23 to conduct a hearing on the newly introduced SB 321. Brought forth formally just one day prior, the measure would establish a presidential primary election in the Sunflower state for the 2024 cycle. 

The Thursday hearing was revealing for several reasons:
1. This bill is going to move fast if it is going to move at all. Across the legislature, committees face a deadline of Friday, March 24 to complete work on certain bills. SB 321 is among those certain bills. It faces a very quick trip from introduction one day to public hearing the next and finally followed by a working session after which there will be action to either pass the bill on to the Senate floor for consideration or leave it in committee. That working session will fall on deadline day and is still awaiting a fiscal note being delayed by counties who have been asked to quickly ascertain how much an additional election would cost at the local level. 

2. The principal driver behind the effort to reestablish the Kansas presidential primary is the state Republican Party. The state Democratic Party was unaware of the possible change.

3. While the state Republican Party entertained an earlier Super Tuesday date for the primary, March 19 -- the first Tuesday after March 15 -- was chosen in order for the party be able to allocate delegates in a winner-take-all manner. March 15 is important because that is the date before which truly winner-take-all allocation methods are prohibited by Republican National Committee rule. [This is something FHQ raised on social media earlier.]

4. The sponsor of the competing Senate bill to reestablish the presidential primary but pair it with the primaries for other offices spoke in favor of the new legislation. But Senator Caryn Tyson (R-12th, Anderson) urged the committee to consider consolidating the primaries to cut down on the total costs associated with carrying out nominating elections. [The Kansas secretary of state's office at the hearing roughly estimated -- again, without full input from the counties -- that the price tag would come in around $4.5 million. That expenditure may or may not be an issue for legislators.] Tyson continued that her bill was intended as a conversation starter on shifting to a primary and that the first Tuesday following the first Monday in May date was a suggestion based on how little it would overlap with the legislative session. A consolidated primary any earlier would have legislators campaigning and raising funds during the legislative session, a conflict of interest issue that often pops up in states when consolidated primaries are discussed. The cost savings may be tempting to legislators but the campaigning conflict may offset it. The bottom line with respect to Tyson's bill (SB 290) is that it is not going anywhere and the May timing may or may not be workable. One thing consolidation would do would be to permanently schedule all the primaries for a particular time. 

5. On a similar note, as mentioned in the post about the introduction of SB 321, this is a one-off action for 2024. That there would just be a presidential primary in 2024 was confirmed in the course of the hearing. Kansas would revert to a system in which the parties run the process in 2028 and beyond. The consolidation path would avoid that drawback.

6. The state Democratic Party was not present to comment on the bill or whether they would opt into a primary, if available. Kansas Democrats held a party-run primary by mail in 2020.

Given the haste with which this measure has already moved, it is likely that it will come out of committee in some form after the working session on March 24. There may be some changes, but it seems unlikely that any of the thornier issues like consolidation will be addressed. It would open a can of worms in a process that has already been maximally streamlined and can afford no delays given the deadlines facing the committee. 

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Alternate Kansas Bill Would Reestablish a Presidential Primary in March

New legislation out of Kansas would reestablish a presidential primary in the Sunflower state and schedule it for mid-March. 






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This legislation has been added to FHQ's updated 2024 presidential primary calendar



Idaho Presidential Primary Inching Toward Move to May

Time is winding down in the 2023 Idaho legislative session, and it looks like all the pieces may come together for the presidential primary to move back to May, where it stood for much of the history of the post-reform era. 

The filing of a trailing bill last week to amend H 138 cleared the way for the original bill, intended to eliminate the stand-alone March presidential primary and merge it with the primaries for other offices in May, to move forward in the Senate. On Tuesday, March 21, H 138 came off of the purgatory 14th order calendar and was read again on the Senate floor for a second time. A third and final reading is all that stands in the way of Senate passage.

And S 1186, the amending bill to add the necessary legal infrastructure to the actually place the presidential line on the May primary ballot, cleared the Senate State Affairs Committee with a Do Pass recommendation and no dissenting votes. Both bills -- the entire package of which would end the separate March presidential primary and add it to the May general primary in Idaho -- are now ready to be considered on the floor of Idaho Senate. 

Together, the package would save the state an estimated $2.7 million (from the eliminated extra primary), but the measures would also need to pass both the state Senate and head back (in the case of H 138) to the House in this likely final week of the regular legislative session. Idaho would be just the second state to change primary dates in 2023 and the first to move to a later date on the 2024 presidential primary calendar. Louisiana shifted back a few weeks for 2024 during the 2021 session.

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Ohio Bill to Move Presidential Primary to May Has Second Committee Hearing

The Ohio legislation to shift the presidential primary in the Buckeye state from March to May had a second hearing before the House Government Oversight Committee on Tuesday, March 21. 

The hearing was short and sweet. Testimony on just three bills was heard and the panel made quick work of them. That included HB 21, the bill introduced by Rep. Daniel Troy (D-23rd, Willowick) to make May the uniform primary position in Ohio regardless of election year. Troy spoke on the measure in late February, but this time, it was Gail E. Garbrandt of the Ohio Association of Elections Officials who gave testimony on behalf  her bipartisan group in support of the legislation. 

Garbrandt echoed many of the points Troy made in the February hearing, espousing the virtues of "election processes and procedures [that] are uniform, consistent, and easily understandable for our voters." But she also made the case about further reducing the burdens on taxpayers and election administrators. The March primary increases costs because the filing deadline falls during the holiday season at the end of the preceding year when overtime pay is often required in order for election officials to meet state-mandated deadlines. 

The committee once again failed to pose any questions to the lone witness, and it remains unclear whether the case has been successfully made to the committee for moving the primary in presidential years. That silence could mean a lot of things. However, it is worth acknowledging the fact that Ohio has managed to pull off primary elections every March since 1996. Proponents of the change push back on the idea of Ohio being a big draw in any of those seven cycles. And while that may be the case, it is also true that seven cycles have created a measure of consistency in the Ohio election calendar that bill supporters would interrupt in order to establish a "uniform, consistent and easily understandable" primary permanently scheduled for May in all years. That may or may not be convincing to the members of Government Oversight.

Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

May Presidential Primary Bill Continues Its Quick Pass Through Idaho Legislature, but...

The Idaho legislation to consolidate the stand-alone March presidential primary with the primary elections for other offices in May emerged late last week from the Senate State Affairs Committee with a Do Pass recommendation. 

With just two dissenting votes, the panel passed off H 138 to the full state Senate for consideration on the floor. But that move followed quick passage through the state House and a committee hearing on the upper chamber side that heard far more testimony against the move to consolidate the presidential primary with later contests. And both the trade-offs involved in the discussion and the battle lines drawn offer an interesting mix of factors in a state long under unified Republican control.

Part of the equation is a classic tale in the journey that some bills take to move a presidential nominating contest around on the primary calendar. Bill sponsors (and Secretary of State Phil McGrane) in this case have touted the savings that eliminating the separate presidential primary will have once merged with the primaries for state and local office in late May. Indeed, the move would strike an estimated $2.7 million from the state budget. No one providing testimony offered much to counter that reality. 

Instead, the resistance came from the Idaho state Republican Party and to the supposed infringement on its right to free association under the first amendment. To boil the session down to its essence, it was a struggle between a state party's right to determine when to hold a nominating contest and the state's obligation to foot the bill for such an election. 

That happens across the country from time to time. But what is unique here is that this is a Republican-on-Republican dispute. A majority of Republican legislators are driving a change to a process that the state Republican Party opposes. The latter wants an earlier presidential primary that does not fall after the nomination has already been decided. That is the typical draw for the frontloading of presidential primaries and caucuses. 

But interestingly, Idaho is stuck in this weird vicious cycle where the lessons of the past are forgotten and bound to be re-learned on some level. To garner attention in the presidential nomination process, the state Republican Party abandoned the May primary in 2011 in favor of earlier (Super Tuesday) caucuses. That pushed the state government -- again, under Republican control -- to eliminate the presidential primary line from the May primary ballot altogether. And those moves had implications. First, the earlier caucuses actually brought 2012 Republican candidates into the Gem state to campaign. But the caucus process also proved arduous for the state party. Financing it was one thing, but finding the requisite manpower to pull it off was another. Often, there is no substitute for a state-run process, even if that means a later date. 

But it did not end up meaning a later date. In fact, ahead of the 2016 cycle, Idaho legislators revisited the idea of a presidential primary. And the legislature opted to set aside funds for a separate, earlier election a week after Super Tuesday. That expenditure was offset by the prospect of bringing in candidates again and bringing in any financial windfall that brought for Idaho businesses in the process. Only, that windfall never came. 2016 Republicans focused on delegate-rich Michigan instead. And not only did those gains not come in 2016, but the Idaho presidential primary was even less of a draw to Democrats in 2020 on a date crowded with other, more delegate-rich contests. 

And that is why proponents of H 138 are talking up the cost savings and the potential gain in turnout in the May primary. The irony, of course, is that those turnout gains may never be realized. The state Republican Party may be forced to abandon the potentially later presidential primary to hold earlier caucuses once again. And that, in turn, may put legislators in 2027 right back where they were in 2015: considering an earlier presidential primary for the upcoming cycle. And so it continues in Idaho.


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A few other odds and ends from this hearing:
1. Former state senator and current Ada County Commission chair, Rod Beck noted in his testimony before the committee that the bill they are considering does not, in fact, do what proponents set out to do. It eliminates the separate presidential primary, but does not also build back the legal infrastructure that was in place before the presidential line was eliminated from the May primary ballot in 2012. This is something FHQ noted in the initial post on H 138. In other words, under the provisions of this bill, there will not be a presidential primary in March OR May. That is an additional nudge to the state party (or state parties) to move to caucuses for 2024.

2. As another in a long line of folks testifying on this bill noted, a late May primary also creates a logistical nightmare for the state party. The point was that a late May primary forces a caucus/convention process to select delegates into a very small window before a July national convention. That point was, perhaps, a bit exaggerated. After all, other states have begun the selection process before a late primary allocates slots to particular presidential candidates in the past. There would be ways to work around that in Idaho as well. However, that late May primary date would push Idaho much closer to the new 45 day buffer the RNC has put in place for 2024. States have to have completed their delegate allocation and selection processes before the end of May. So there is probably some wiggle room for Idaho under the scenario where the state conducts a late primary, but not a whole lot. 

3. Yet another person who offered testimony raised questions about the supposed impact a move to consolidate the primaries would have on turnout. Obviously, if the parties move to adopt a caucus procedure, then those effects will be minimal. But the point made was that Idaho has changed the process so often in the last decade plus that it is difficult to get a baseline to compare turnout to, a baseline that is not just some function of the quirks of any given presidential nomination cycle. 

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More on the committee hearing in the state Senate here and here.

Saturday, March 4, 2023

Kansas Bill Would Reestablish Presidential Primary in the Sunflower State

New legislation introduced this past week in Kansas would reestablish a presidential primary, schedule it for May and consolidate that election with the primaries for other offices.


Thursday, February 23, 2023

Idaho Committee Advances May Primary Bill

The Idaho House State Affairs Committee made quick work of legislation to move the presidential primary in the Gem state to May on Wednesday, February 22. 

The panel advanced HB 138 to the House floor with a Do Pass recommendation. Bill sponsor Rep. Dustin Manwaring (R-29th, Pocatello) made the case to the committee that consolidating the stand-alone March presidential primary with the primaries for other offices in May would save the state $2.7 million. And those savings were something Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane (R) reiterated in supporting the legislation according to the Idaho Capital Sun.
“As I came into office and began working on the budget for the office, this was one of the biggest things that stood out,” McGrane told legislators Wednesday. “So we started asking the question on what is the utility of what we are trying to do? I think Rep. Manwaring framed it very well — we just haven’t seen the return on investment.”
Indeed, it was always going to be a difficult proposition to draw presidential candidates to Idaho for a March primary that often got overshadowed by other, more delegate-rich contests. But with Michigan already having vacated that second Tuesday in March date for a spot in the pre-window on the Democratic party calendar, and Hawaii potentially shifting to a primary a week earlier, Idaho stands to actually be able to draw Republican candidates in March 2024. That is especially true in light of the fact that neighboring Washington also has a primary on the same date and will be the biggest delegate prize on a surprisingly thin date so early on the calendar. There would be more delegates at stake in the Pacific and Mountain northwest than in Mississippi, the only other state currently occupying the second Tuesday in March. 

But those considerations seem to have taken a back seat to the cost considerations and the likely turnout gain for the May primary even with presidential primary that may fall after the nomination has been wrapped up. 

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As noted in the previous post on this bill, it still is not clear that this legislation builds back the same legal infrastructure that existed in 2011 when the presidential primary was wiped from the May primary portion of the electoral code and eliminated it altogether. The bill that created the separate presidential primary in 2012 (for the 2016 cycle) did not affect the May primary. However, that appeared to be of little concern to the State Affairs Committee on Wednesday. And it remains to be seen if that will be problematic to members on the floor of the state House. 


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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies.