Candidates Don't Always Choose the Delegates

In fact, that scenario may be exception rather than rule in the Republican presidential nomination process.

FHQ says this in response to a section in an otherwise fantastic piece by Jonathan Bernstein on the brokered deadlocked convention chatter that has cropped up over the last week or so. Look, Jon and I are 100% on the same page on the overarching premise he presents: The winnowing mechanism in the party-adapted, post-reform era of presidential nominations is strong.¹ It works. Candidates drop out or withdraw from a race when the writing is on the wall. That writing tends to come in the form of a combination of not winning contests/delegates and/or the financial backing of donors drying up.²

But while we tend to almost always agree on the theoretical end, we sometimes part ways on process. Such is my wont, rules nag that FHQ is. Here is what I take issue with:

This has all changed. Delegates don’t represent state parties at all anymore. Instead, they are chosen by the candidates, who have an incentive to recruit the most gung-ho loyalists they can. Or, sometimes, they’ll use the delegate slots as an inducement (or a reward) to persuade important party actors -- the people who hold sway over the nomination process -- to join them.

Candidates having control over who fills delegate slots is a Democratic Party practice. The DNC ushered in the post-reform era and more or less dragged the RNC into it in the process. To comply with the rules of the new nomination system, the states -- increasingly state governments as primaries proliferated -- passed laws to govern the new processes on the state level. Those laws affected not only Democrats but Republicans as well.

That dynamic has had something of a ripple effect throughout the post-reform era. Democrats have tended to be the ones reforming the process -- they were the party out of the White House for the early portion of the period -- and have been much more centralized in their response; mandating proportionality, requiring certain diversity quotas, etc. Part of the centralization on the Democratic side is that the candidates basically have the right to review their delegates. The national party gives them the ability to weed out a Bernie Sanders supporter in a Hillary Clinton allocated delegate slot for example.

By contrast, the Republican Party has tended to be much more decentralized in its approach to the delegate selection/allocation process. The mantra had, up until the last couple of cycles, been let the states figure it out. It, in that instance, means an array of things: caucuses or primary, proportional or winner-take-all allocation formulas, etc. But that principle also applied and still applies to delegate selection, or perhaps more particularly to candidates picking and choosing their delegates. In states where the law requires the filing of delegates or delegate slates, candidates have some control. Think loophole primary states like Illinois, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where delegates are listed on the ballot and directly elected. Ohio is another example. Remember, Rick Santorum did not have a full slate of delegates in a number of Ohio districts that the former Pennsylvania senator actually ended up winning in the primary.

The candidates have more control in those types of states than they and their campaigns have in others. In other states, the delegate selection process is completely different from the delegate allocation process. The latter awards slots to candidates based on the results of a primary or caucus.  But the identity of who fills those slots occurs in the (sometimes, especially in primary states) separate delegate selection process (usually through the election year caucus/convention system). This is how Ron Paul-aligned delegates made it to the convention in Mitt Romney slots in 2012.

And this happened in 2012 in more than just those non-binding caucuses that have been eliminated by the RNC for the 2016 cycle.³ Though it did not ultimately end well for Paul delegates, they were able to overrun the Massachusetts Republican delegate selection process and fill Romney delegate slots temporarily. It was only because Romney campaign surrogates in the Massachusetts Republican Party required an affidavit of those delegates pledging to support Romney -- an action those delegates refused -- that there were Romney delegates from Massachusetts at the national convention in Tampa.

That reality -- that candidates do not have full control over the delegate selection process -- presents something of a problem in this deadlocked convention scenario. Though it should be pointed out how that Massachusetts case ended. Romney sent delegates to the convention. But that was not because Romney and his campaign had chosen the delegates. Rather, it was a function of Romney having surrogates in positions of power within the Massachusetts Republican Party. It is different, but the outcome was the same.

The RNC recognizes this as a problem. The party attempted to close that loophole among the many others that Ron Paul delegates and supporters railed against at the convention in 2012 and continue to rail against even now. The original change to Rule 15(b) -- now Rule 16(a)(2) -- gave candidates the ability to "pre-certify" or approve delegates in order for those delegates to be certified by the RNC for the convention. But that was one of the Ginsberg rules that did not make it out of Tampa.⁴ Instead, the national party -- the RNC -- now has all the power (a fact that is consistent with Bernstein's point about parties doing what they can to avoid the deadlocked convention scenario or any sticky situation for that matter). Delegates are now bound to candidates based on the earliest, statewide election, and if those delegates, regardless of what preference they hold, fail to reflect the binding in their convention vote, then the vote will be recorded as if they had voted the binding.

But there are some questions about how that works in the scenario where no candidate has a majority of the delegates heading into the convention. That is a matter that FHQ has promised some folks on Twitter that I would address. ...tomorrow.

The bottom line: In the Republican process, the candidates do not necessarily choose the delegates, at least not across the board as is the case on the Democratic side. There is variation across state on the issue of how much control the candidate and their campaigns have over the delegate selection process.

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There is one other bit of nuance that FHQ would add to one of the footnotes in Bernstein's piece. I don't want to belabor this. It is a footnote, after all and I have gone on for some time already. Usually when I hit four footnotes of my own, that is a telltale sign that it has been a long post. Yet, let's look at Jon's point about the differences between the two parties on delegate allocation rules:

It’s unlikely Cruz and Paul could win that many delegates (especially that many each) because Republican rules don’t produce many delegates for losing candidates in most states. And because Republicans don't have the proportional representation rules that Democrats insist on, even a close contest between two leading candidates is unlikely to leave them with (almost) equal delegate hauls.

On not producing many delegates for losing candidates.
That depends. It is certainly true in the case of truly winner-take-all states like Florida. The number of winner-take-all states is pretty limited and confined to the area of the calendar after March 14 when it is less likely to matter (i.e.: post-winnowing). However, outside of that handful of truly winner-take-all states there is some variation in terms of how able losing candidates are to win delegates. It depends first on how many candidates are on the ballot and active/viable. But being awarded delegates also depends on the thresholds of the vote that state party bylaws or state laws require a candidate to win. The RNC allows states to set that as high as 20%, but does not require states to have any threshold. Some states do (Alabama and Mississippi), some states don't (Alaska and Hawaii). This tends only to be a minor point. FHQ retrospectively looked at some of these factors in the context of 2012 and the thresholds only really affected things at the margins.

On proportional representation rules.
Well, here's the thing: What the RNC has in place for 2016 in terms of the proportionality requirement (for all states with contests from March 1-14) is now a lot like the DNC proportionality mandate for all states. That is part of the RNC tightening its definition of proportionality. Basically, it requires either a proportional allocation of all delegates based on the statewide result or the proportional allocation of at-large delegates based on the statewide vote and the proportional allocation of congressional district delegates based on the result within the congressional district. The only real differences between parties are that...

1) The DNC requires a 15% threshold for anyone to receive delegates (Rule 13.B) while the RNC only suggests states maintain such thresholds.

...and...

2) The DNC does not treat each district the same with respect to how many delegates are apportioned it. While the RNC has three delegates per district, the DNC allows for those numbers to vary based on how loyally Democratic the district has been in past elections. For primaries and caucuses in that two week proportionality window in early March, then, those Republican delegate hauls between candidates may be closer than they otherwise would have been during past cycles.


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¹ By "party-adapted" FHQ means the post-reform period after the national parties (and the states and candidates for that matter) had been through a round or two in the new system and had learned the ropes. 1980 onward is a good way of thinking about this. Democrats had used the new system twice (1972, 1976) and the Republicans had been through it once (1976).

² I know, I know: super PACS! FHQ is still not really convinced that super PACs are really going to change any of the established dynamics of the nomination process. It may mean more money floating around out there, but super PAC financial backers are going to be guided by the same sorts of constraints that campaign funders have always faced. That constraint can be summed up in one question: Do I keep giving to a candidate/campaign that is not going to win the nomination? This is kind of the same principle that guides the candidates as well as Bernstein points out.

³ That move offers some evidence that the RNC can behave in a centralized, top-down manner when it perceives a need to do so.

⁴ Washington, DC national committeeman, Ben Ginsberg, was the Romney campaigns man behind the rules changes in Tampa that tightened the RNC grip on nomination process. ...in a way that drew the ire of some within the party.

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Let's Talk About the Primary Calendar and the Republican Nomination Race, Part Two

FHQ has received some questions from a handful of reporters and emails from interested readers this week concerning the state of the 2016 presidential primary calendar. Mainly, the subject has revolved around a simple question: Why are there differences between the FHQ calendar and other calendars out there? This is particularly relevant in view of the fact that I sketched out a different tentative calendar at the Monkey Cage earlier this week.

Think of those two versions as two opposite ends of a spectrum. FHQ will call them the ideal national party calendar (the Iowa on February 1 version) and the real time FHQ calendar (the Iowa in January version).

The latter calendar is devised under the premise that if primary season began today, knowing what we know now, where would the carve-out states fall? Given that the New York primary is still scheduled on February 2 as of today, that means that at least Iowa and New Hampshire would ease into calendar slots ahead of that. And if Colorado Democrats and/or Republicans opt into the February 2 caucus option that is available to them under Colorado law, that may bump Nevada up too. That would have a domino effect, pushing Iowa and New Hampshire up even further into early January.

FHQ would be surprised if New York did not move to a compliant primary date. The legislature in the Empire state just moves more slowly than others. With a year round session they can afford to legislate at a more leisurely pace than states with legislatures that adjourn in May. As a point of reference, New York did not begin the process of moving its primary until June 2011 for he 2012 cycle.

Similarly, FHQ does not think Colorado Republicans will opt into a February 2 caucus date in 2016 like the party did in 2011. It has not really been talked about, but Colorado got one of the nine Republican primary debates -- the October CNBC one -- and that either is or was a nice bit of leverage for the Republican National Committee to have. [A debate is what Governor Jan Brewer was angling for in 2011 when she threatened but did not move the Arizona presidential primary into January.]

Yet, New York is scheduled for February 2 and until that primary is moved via legislation, then Iowa and New Hampshire would be ahead of that point.

...if primary season began today.

That separates the FHQ calendar from the ideal national party calendar. And bear in mind that the national parties both have an interest in telling everyone that primary season will begin on February 1. The parties both want the certainty of a set schedule as soon as possible and tend to act as if everything is fine until it very obviously is not. That is what got FHQ a call from the RNC legal counsel's office in 2011. They were curious, if not upset, that I had the carve-out states penciled into calendar spots in January. That discussion ended in a stalemate: the RNC arguing that their rules said the carve-out states would be in February and FHQ countering that the 50% penalty did not seem to be deterring some states, notably Florida, from moving to non-compliant positions on the calendar. [NOTE: Not wanting to appear political science smug prevents me from pointing out who ended up being right on that one. Oops.]

The lesson? The calendar is not set until it is set. And the 2016 presidential primary calendar is not set yet. It is a heck of a lot closer to the national parties' ideal calendar in 2015 than it was in 2011 though. And the national parties have to like that.

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Let's Talk About the Primary Calendar and the Republican Nomination Race

Maggie Haberman at First Draft this morning:

After the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee changed the voting calendar to try and avoid repeats of the brutal and long-lasting fight between Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. 

The previous calendar – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, followed by Florida — no longer exists. Instead, a slew of states moved up their votes to March 1, before Florida’s vote. Such compression, and so many candidates, could produce the opposite effect of what was intended, prolonging both the duration and the intensity of the process. 

That means that Florida, which is crucial to its former governor, Jeb Bush, and to a current senator, Marco Rubio, might not be the same firewall as in previous years. That raises the significance of South Carolina and the others states that vote before Florida’s contest on March 15.

FHQ wants to focus on that second paragraph. The set up is fine. The RNC, after what they perceived to be an injurious 2012 presidential nomination fight, tweaked the party's delegate selection rules, compressing the calendar and tightening the proportionality requirement. The goal: speed up the nomination.

But that's when the wheels fall off for Haberman.

First of all the previous calendar did not follow a sequence of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada and Florida. Florida's move into late January for the 2012 cycle triggered a turf war between New Hampshire and Nevada that ended with the Silver state caucusing after Florida in early February.

Sure, that is something of a minor point. But sequence matters and the sequence is wrong in Habermas's piece.

The bigger issue is looking forward to the 2016 calendar. This idea that a "slew of states" has moved up to March 1 is just not right. A slew of delegates maybe, but not a slew of states; not yet anyway. Texas is back where it should have been on the calendar in 2012: the first Tuesday in March. But a dispute over redistricting in the Lone Star state forced that contest back to May 29. That is a significant movement of delegates from the end of the calendar to up near the front of the queue. But that is not a slew of states. The only other state that is new to the first Tuesday in March for 2016 is Minnesota. The shift in the case of the North Star state was a shift back relative to 2012. Four years ago, Minnesota Republicans held one of those non-binding caucuses that Rick Santorum won on the heels of the Nevada caucuses.

Look, sequence matters. More importantly, the states that comprise that sequence affects the course of a nomination race (maybe not its outcome, but certainly the path the nominee takes to the nomination). This story right now is basically Texas and its 150+ delegates is much earlier in 2016 and Florida set a date that is not right after South Carolina. That is not without consequence.

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Shorter Primary Calendars and Unintended Consequences

FHQ heard from Mark Murray at NBC News the other night. He said they were doing a story on the 2016 presidential primary calendar and its potential implications and wanted my take. [Thanks!] I responded with a lot of what has filled the pages here for the last several months: the calendar formation stuff is winding down (calmer than in past cycles), but we're still waiting on the Republican delegate allocation rules at the state level to be layered on top of the calendar order. Also, I briefly discussed some of the quirks covered in our recent three part proportionality rules series -- backdoor winner-take-all contests in the proportionality window and the important distinction between truly winner-take-all contests and everything else after the proportional mandate ends after March 14 (not all states are rushing to change to truly winner-take-all rules).

One thing FHQ did not discuss was the shortened primary calendar the RNC has seemingly successfully manufactured for the 2016 cycle. I did not bring that up because the compressed calendar is likely to speed the process up rather than slow it down, not likely adding to the chaos that some are expecting from the 2016 Republican presidential nomination process. This is something FHQ touched on over at Crystal Ball last month, piggybacking on something that John Sides and I wrote in the days before Rick Santorum suspended his campaign in 2012.

The one line in the First Read piece that troubled me most was this one:

But the unintended consequence of a shortened nominating calendar is that about 70% of the delegates might not be decided until May.

Wait a minute. Kevin Collins had this great tweet a few months ago that was essentially, "so much of social science research boils down to one question: 'compared to what?'" That applies here. Fine, 70% of the delegates might not be decided until May. Compared to what?

Well, first the line -- and I know I'm nitpicking here (That's what I do.) -- is a bit ambiguous. Does it mean that only 70% of the delegates will have been allocated by May or that 70% of delegates will be allocated in May? I think it is the former, but one could make the argument that delegate allocation does not happen until state conventions have formally selected them. Even if that is the case, because of the new binding rules in place in the Republican race in 2016, that formal selection of delegates will have no bearing on how they are allocated/bound to particular candidates.

But let's examine the idea that 70% of the delegates will be allocated by May in 2016. How does that stack up against other cycles? Once the caucuses states more than likely slot into March positions on the calendar, the likely 75% delegates allocated mark will be passed on the last Tuesday in April. That is a full month before the May 22 date on which the 2012 Republican nomination race surpassed the 75% delegates allocated mark; the week before the Texas primary when Romney passed 1144.

Again, that 75% mark will hit a full month earlier in 2016 than it did in 2012. It is counterintuitive to suggest that this will slow things down in 2016, invite more chaos, and lead to a brokered deadlocked convention. All the compressed calendar is, is all the January and February states crowding back into March. Only a few states are actually attempting to move into March from later dates. Texas is the big one of those, but did not really move. The only reason Texas was forced away from the first Tuesday in March date in 2012 was because of unresolved redistricting issues. The primary date shift was forced on the state by the courts.

This may not be the typical Republican presidential nomination cycle, but if history is our guide then things will run their course and have fallen into place somewhere in the window of time between when 50% of the delegates have been allocated and when 75% of the delegates have been allocated -- the 50-75% Rule. That falls roughly between March 8 and April 26.

...before May.

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On Rand Paul, the Republican Presidential Nomination and Delegate Selection Rules

Jim Rutenberg has a look in today's New York Times Magazine at one advantage the Rand Paul campaign may have in a protracted race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination: its knowledge of and ability to strategize about the Republican National Committee's intricate delegate selection rules. As Rutenberg describes it in one segment:

The process by which presidential candidates are nominated is, at its most basic level, a race toward a magic number of party delegates — in the Republican Party’s case, 1,235 required to win — amassed state by state and, in some cases, congressional district by congressional district. Getting them depends not only on the speechifying, door-to-door vote-hunting and million-dollar ad buys we associate with campaigning, but also on a bewildering array of procedural minutia: obscure national bylaws that overlay a mind-bending patchwork of local rules that can vary drastically from state to state, some of which award delegates not based on votes received in primary elections but on back-room wrangling at local party conventions and meetings that take place weeks or even months after votes are cast.

FHQ has a few thoughts on this and Rand Paul campaign strategizing in general. First, as Rutenberg points out later in the article, the RNC has tightened its rules since 2012. The objective was to cut down in 2016 on some of (what the national party viewed as) the shenanigans the Ron Paul campaign and its supporters pulled in the last campaign. This affects three areas of the nomination process for the 2016 cycle. First, there are no more non-binding caucuses. Any statewide presidential preference vote -- like a vote at precinct caucuses -- now has to guide the delegate allocation in states like Iowa or Minnesota or Maine (among others).¹ That means that even if there is "back-room wrangling at local party conventions and meetings" later in the course of the caucuses/convention sequence, it will only affect who a delegate is, not to whom that delegate is bound. The preferences expressed in the first, statewide step -- the precinct caucuses -- is the one that guides subsequent steps. While the selection of delegates is still open in district conventions and at the state convention, the allocation part is mostly done after that first step. [FHQ will revisit that "mostly" momentarily.]

To make sure that the binds created during the primary or first step caucuses phase stick, the RNC also altered the process voting on the nomination at the convention. These are the other two ways in which the national party tightened its rules for 2016. First, even if a delegate bound to, say, Mitt Romney preferred Ron Paul, said delegate could not vote for Ron Paul at the convention in 2016. Rule 16(a)(2) directs the secretary of the (national) convention to "faithfully announce and record each delegate's vote in accordance with the delegate's obligation under these rules, state law or state party rules." If a candidate is bound, then, the secretary of the convention will recognize the binding rather than the delegate's preference if there is a conflict. What happens in those precinct caucuses is the guide.

That rules change is further buttressed by the increased threshold a candidate must meet to have his or her name placed in nomination. According to Rule 40, a candidate must in 2016 control delegations from eight states rather than the five that were required in 2012 to be formally nominated.

Together, those three changes makes any "wrangling" less meaningful when it comes to the nomination part of the national convention. Delegates can also affect planks on the platform and other party business, but the nomination is the big ticket item for the convention. And the RNC has closed a number of loopholes.

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FHQ spoke with Rutenberg about this story, and we raised and discussed the change that closed off the non-binding caucuses loophole. One other factor we also chatted about that did not make the article was what would happens when candidates who have won some delegates withdraw from the race. What happens to those delegates? Would they become a set of free agent delegates possibly circumventing the prohibition on non-binding caucuses through a side door? The quick answer is yes in theory. However, there is a bit of nuance to this. Here is where that "mostly" from before reenters the discussion.

The interesting thing is that states and Republican state parties have in some cases been reading that change to the binding rules quite literally. That is why Iowa Republicans were concerned about the Ames Straw Poll. There was some worry that that would qualify as the first, statewide vote and thus delegates would have to be bound based on its results. Other comments from people within state parties have seemingly indicated that the thinking is delegates are bound based on the results of the primary or caucuses period. That there are no exceptions even for the delegates bound to candidates no longer in the race in April, much less at the July convention. In other words, if Carly Fiorina were to win delegates in Iowa but withdrew after the SEC primary on March 1, those Iowa delegates would still be bound to her at the national convention. FHQ does not read the RNC rules that way, and I'm willing to bet that Rand Paul and his campaign are not either. That is particularly true if Fiorina in this example were to release her Iowa delegates. They would become free agent delegate slots.

All of this does seem to open the door to some wild possibilities. On the one hand, non-binding caucuses are out, but on the other 2016 offers this supposedly wide open race for the Republican nomination. That means all those candidates could win some delegates and that even if some of those candidates withdraw, their delegates could be meaningful in helping to champion a candidate who does not hold the delegate lead based on the delegates he or she won alone. To make this clearer, Rand Paul, for instance, could wrangle to control those released delegate slots in the same district and state conventions his father's campaign exploited in 2012 to overcome a 2016 deficit in the delegate count to hypothetical leader, Jeb Bush. I mean, come on. This sounds like a dream come true for the three of us rules nerds out there wandering the wilderness, fingers crossed, hoping for just such a scenario.

Yet, here comes FHQ to throw some cold water on that notion. All this does is raise the importance of the delegate rules at both the state and national level. And it is those very rules that are very likely to limit the number of delegates who are free agents in the first place. The total number of delegate slots allocated to one candidate but filled after released in the selection process by a delegate aligned with another candidate is likely to be small. Just how small depends on a couple of factors.

First, it bears repeating that the earliest states -- carve-outs excluded -- have to allocate their delegates to candidates in a proportional manner. That said, part of the proportionality rules allow state parties to set a minimum threshold of the vote that a candidate must receive in order to be allocated any delegates at the congressional district or statewide level. That threshold can be set as high as 20% (Rule 16(c)(3)(i)). 20% is a high bar in a multi-candidate race. That means that losing candidates -- already more likely to withdraw -- are even less likely to win any delegate slots that can be exploited by other surviving candidates down the road in the process.

Secondly, the field is going to winnow the deeper the nomination process gets into the calendar. Those candidates most likely to drop out are the candidates who may be shut out of delegates within the proportionality window (March 1-14; again, the carve-outs are excluded). That means that a significantly winnowed field (two or maybe three viable candidates if history is our guide) and the end of the proportionality window are going to hit nearly simultaneously. And that translates to there likely being many fewer released delegate slots to sweep up from the beginning stages of the race.

There may be some free agent delegates in the 2016 Republican nomination process, but they are likely to be more like John Edwards' delegates in the 2008 Democratic nomination race: free to choose from among the remaining candidates but very unlikely to be decisive. Chaos could happen, but history (with an admittedly small N) and the rules suggest otherwise.

And if chaos does occur, I hope those 2012 Santorum folks now on Rand Paul's 2016 team don't count delegates like this.

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¹ Minnesota Republicans are in pursuit of a waiver from the Republican National Committee to continue the caucuses/convention practice as they have in the past.

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Are Early States Losing Clout?

The usually sensible and always thorough Steve Peoples with the Associated Press missed the mark, FHQ thinks, in his weekend dispatch from New Hampshire.

The premise: Early states may be losing clout in the 2016 Republican presidential nomination process because of the rise of super PACs (and their money) and changes to the Republican calendar/rules.

I don't know that FHQ can quite accept that. I can see the point. It makes sense, but I don't know that it is true. But the social scientist in me has a problem with the basic premise. The social scientist in me sees a research question and understandably asks for what data there is. What can we observe?

First the premise. The whole argument here is that 2016 will feature a compressed calendar (with a lot of primaries and caucuses in March) and a new avenue through which campaigns and their allies can receive and spend money that was not fully available four years ago at this time (super PACs). That apparently equals candidates, their campaigns and their allies looking beyond the very earliest states to spend their time and money.

Maybe.

But if we're talking about an influx of new resources through new channels, it seems that we would also be talking about a bigger pie. Does a bigger pie -- a larger pot of resources -- mean that Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina are losing something, clout or otherwise?¹ It could also mean that other states are gaining something due to the new conditions in the 2016 cycle. If we're talking about an increase in the pot relative to 2012, then it is not really the same zero-sum game anymore. Just because March contest states are gaining doesn't mean that the carve-out states are losing. The two are not mutually exclusive in a changed environment.

Yet, I get it. A lot of Peoples' story is futurecasting. It is speculating on what will or may happen in 2016. But that is not a testable premise really. Sure, we can guess. We can speculate. But if we look at candidate behavior now or what they have been up to since January 1 through now, it still looks an awful lot like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina followed by everyone else when we look at candidate visits. The carve-outs lead the pack among the prospective (or announced) Republicans. Behind them are the other typical haunts for Republican presidential candidates: California, Texas, Florida, New York and Washington, DC. No, not all of those are red states or early states, but they are all stops that frequently pop up on the itinerary of anyone on the fundraising circuit.

One more thing and I'll let this one rest. It should not come as a surprise that campaign aides and veteran political operatives are cautioning us of the impending chaotic slugfest to come in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination. Those are precisely the folks who stand to gain the most from the race stretching out well into March if not beyond. And even if that does not happen, they can at least bide their time nurturing the illusion that this will go on and on and on...

As FHQ mentioned late in the 2012 Republican race, these things are over sooner rather than later. There is a point when even individuals who can afford to keep a candidate afloat decide that the effort is futile, that pouring more money into a cause that cannot win but might breed more chaos heading into a national convention is just not worth it.

Will we hit that point during or after Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina? I don't know. But I do know that, despite how things look now, those contests will winnow the field of Republicans vying for the party's presidential nomination. That's what the carve-outs are: winnowing contests. They will still be that in 2016 when all this talk of lost clout will be just that.

Talk.

[NOTE: Peoples' story also mentions that June 3 is the last date on which primaries and caucuses can be held in the Republican presidential nomination process. I don't know the origin of that information, but the RNC rules -- Rule 16(c)(1) -- specify that that cutoff is the second Saturday in June. That would be Saturday, June 11, 2016.]

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¹ Poor Nevada is just a redheaded stepchild in all of this from the looks of it. There are, I guess, consequences on the Republican side for reluctantly adding the Silver state caucuses (because the DNC already had), and then the state Republican Party having issues in their first two attempts at caucuses in the spotlight in 2008 and 2012.

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Utah Republicans Leaning Toward 2016 Caucuses Over Primary

The Utah state legislature convened this past week, and with that opened the small window in which legislators have to act on decisions regarding the Beehive state position on the 2016 presidential primary calendar. Yes, there are probably other, maybe even more pressing, matters they will deal with. However, where the primary calendar is concerned, Utah is one of those states that could serve as a problem to orderliness with which the calendar finalizes over the course of this year.

Elections law in Utah provides legislators with a number of options with regard to the presidential primary. If they collectively choose to appropriate funds for it, the state could hold what the law calls a Western States Presidential Primary.¹ That contest is scheduled for the first Tuesday in February, a date non-compliant with national party rules. Legislators could opt to either fund the contest as is for February, provide the funds but change to a compliant date, or not fund the contest at all. If no appropriations are forthcoming, the state parties can utilize the regular fourth Tuesday in June primary for other offices.²

That the state parties have some recourse in all of this is an important factor to consider here. No party in Utah or elsewhere is forced into using a state-funded primary. Most do because the alternative is putting up party money to pay for party-run primaries or caucuses. Those are resources state parties tend to either not have or want to use elsewhere. There are, however, occasional trade-offs that parties may consider. Often state parties opt for caucuses in lieu of a primary because the state party has less control over the primary electorate than a caucus electorate. Stated slightly differently, state law calls for an open or closed primary when the state party would prefer the opposite: to either contract or expand the electorate (see Meinke, et al. 2006).

This is the position Utah is in to some extent. The parties have the ability to close the primary to just partisans according to the law, but only in a presidential primary. In a regular primary, independents can choose which party's primary in which to participate. There is a conflict between what the law and some in the Republican-controlled state government want and what the consensus within the leadership of the state party desire. Much of this dates back to the quirky caucus/convention system that helped Tea Party-aligned Mike Lee defeat sitting Senator Robert Bennett in the 2010 Republican Senate nomination race in Utah. All told there are factions in the Utah Republican Party that want different things out of the nomination process.

Even though the presidential nomination portion of this is not really wrapped up in the fallout from the 2010 caucuses/convention process, the Utah Republican Party has signaled that it will select and allocate delegates to the 2016 national convention through a caucuses/convention process, opting out of the state-funded presidential primary. The state party can exercise more control over who participates as well as when the precinct caucuses will initiate the process. The latter point makes the state legislative calculus on funding and timing the presidential primary mostly moot.

That does not mean that there will not be changes made to the primary system in the state legislature. In fact, at the same time that Utah Republican Party chairman, James Evans was saying the party would use a caucuses/convention system, Representative Jon Cox (R-Ephraim) was talking about those primary changes. Cox was the legislator who, in 2014, authored and shepherded through the state House a measure to shift the presidential primary voting online and to move that primary ahead of Iowa on the calendar. The bill died in the state Senate, but the idea did not die. Well, the provocative Iowa-challenging part seems to have seen its day pass, but the online voting aspect did not. Cox has a bill in the hopper already concerning online voting and that could serve as a vehicle for changing the non-compliant February date of the presidential primary in Utah (or another bill could be introduced to that effect).

What remains to be seen is whether those changes if passed and signed into law would entice the Utah Republican Party back into the state-funded presidential primary option. The party has not necessarily raised concerns over the date of the primary or online voting (though it seems open to including the latter in its caucuses process). The issue over who can participate remains, not in the presidential nomination process, but in the nomination processes for other offices. The presidential nomination portion is only affected to the extent it occurs simultaneous with other nominations processes.

For the 2016 presidential primary calendar, though, news of potential Utah caucuses adds another variable to the mix, but greatly lowers the odds of Utah being a calendar troublemaker this time around. State parties tend to be more protective of their delegations and most play by the rules as such.

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¹ The law was originally passed in the late 1990s with a regional primary in mind, but the law has never really been exercised as intended. The thought was that other states -- Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, etc. -- would hold concurrent contests with Utah in much the same way that southern states are planning on a Deep South/SEC primary for 2016. As it happened, Utah ended up going it mostly alone in subsequent cycles. And that is fine under the law. There is no guidance with respect to how many other or what other western states must participate in the Western States Presidential Primary for Utah to be able to participate.

² Utah Republicans used the June primary in 2012. However, given changes to the RNC delegate selection rules accommodating an earlier national convention, the primary's fourth Tuesday in June date would not be compliant with the rules either. That makes the June primary a less attractive option for the state parties.


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Has the RNC Set a Later Starting Date for the First Primaries and Caucuses?

Dan Balz and Philip Rucker had a really nice piece up yesterday on the soon-to-be-revealed RNC rules for 2016 Republican presidential debates. FHQ weighed in on this a year and a half ago and will look at the specifics when they are released later.

But there was one -- probably throw-away -- sentence toward the end of the article that was just plain wrong and bears some isolated consideration:

"The RNC has also set a later starting date for the first caucuses and primaries."

Now, the point was to say that the debate rules in combination with the calendar rules were intended to affect the nomination process and produce a nominee who could win in the general election. Point taken, but the RNC, when it finalized its rules last August, did not include any new provision in terms of the start of primary season.

The intention of the rules in 2016  (see Rule 16.c.1), as was the case in 2012, was to have the carve-out states go in February and every other state follow in March or later. Of course, mentioning the intention of a rule more than hints at the coordination game political parties play in the effort to nominate a presidential candidate. The national parties create the rules to govern the nomination process and the states decide how to fit into those guidelines with their portion of the process or whether ignore/flout those guidelines.

What the RNC did do was twofold:
1. First, the RNC made the carve-out states more mobile in 2016 than they were in 2012. The 2012 rules confined Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina to February. The four could not earlier than the first Tuesday in February without also risking penalty from the national party. In 2016, that point is not fixed to a particular date on the calendar. Instead, the carve-out states can go as early as a month before the next earliest contest (without penalty). If North Carolina, for instance, holds a January 1 primary, then the four carve-outs could go as early as December 1, 2015.¹ This provides additional protection to those four states and essentially ensures that they will not be penalized.

2. Speaking of penalties, to prevent the carve-outs from being forced into dates earlier than early February, the RNC also added a more severe penalty for non-carve-out states. The super penalty -- via the new Bennett rule (see rule 17.a) -- would reduce a state delegation to just 9 or 12 delegates, depending on the size of the delegation.²

So it is all ideally sequential.
1. Non-carve-out states, warded off by the super penalty, stay out of February.
2. The carve-outs then have February to themselves.
3. The start of primary season is in February and not right after New Year's.

But it is all ideally sequential. If states opt to break the timing rules or cannot find a path to compliance (North Carolina?), then it all breaks down. The RNC, then, has not set a later start to primary season. It has set rules that they hope will facilitate such a start, but it will be up to the states to decide if they want to play along with that.

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¹ No, this not likely.

² States with delegations of 30 or more would be reduced to 12 delegates while those with 29 or fewer delegates would see them cut to just nine.

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Kentucky Republicans Eye 2016 Caucuses OR How Kentucky Republicans Already Have Caucuses

It has been over a week since Manu Raju reported that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has had preliminary discussions with the Republican Party of Kentucky (RPK) about the possibility of the state party switching from a primary to caucuses as a means of allocating delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention. Such a move would help a now-latent Paul presidential campaign circumvent state law barring him from appearing twice on the May 2016 Bluegrass state primary ballot (once for renomination to run for his US Senate seat and also for the presidential preference vote).

The basics of this story are simple enough:

• Democrats retain control of the Kentucky State House in the 2014 midterms.
• The majority Democrats also signal that they would block attempts to change the law, allowing Senator Paul to run simultaneously for both a senate and presidential nomination.
• Paul and Kentucky Republicans consider a shift to caucuses to accommodate the senator and to avoid Paul breaking the law.

Outside of that outline, though, some of the commentary on this has been a bit off.

First of all, this is something of a no-brainer reaction from Kentucky Republicans and Senator Paul. The barrier separating a law change -- a Democratic majority in the Kentucky State House -- survived  the midterm elections. It is not as if states and state parties have not done things to benefit their favorite son presidential candidates during the nomination phase of the campaign in the past. Typically, that has resulted in calendar maneuvering at the state legislative level. In 2011, Utah Republicans considered moving the primary in the Beehive state to an earlier date to help Mitt Romney. In 2005, Governor Mike Huckabee signed into law a bill moving the Arkansas presidential primary from May to February for a 2008 cycle that saw Huckabee run for run for the Republican nomination. Similarly, Illinois legislators pushed through a bill in 2007 moving the Prairie state primary up a month to February to boost Senator Barack Obama's chances in the Democratic nomination race. In 1988, the entire South (a group that included Kentucky) shifted their nominating contests up in the hopes of building momentum behind a southern Democratic nominee (who could win the White House).¹ There are plenty of other examples, but this type of supposed machinations from the states is not new or all that controversial.

It also is not the sort of move that would potentially draw legal challenge from Kentucky Democrats (as Raju mentioned in passing in his Politico piece). FHQ is still trying to figure that one out. Challenge what? The shift to caucuses? Paul's name being on a caucuses ballot (president) and a primary ballot (senate)? The former is not something that would last long in the courts. State parties have the freedom of association rights to select the mode of delegate allocation (primary or caucus) and who can participate (open, closed or some hybrid primary type). More often than not the courts side with the parties. Idaho Republicans, for instance, abandon the traditionally late presidential primary in the Gem state for early March caucuses for the 2012 cycle. Nebraska Democrats took a similar path four years earlier. Kentucky Democrats could challenge Paul appearing on two ballots, but would find that a likely uphill climb because 1) there is not typically a ballot at caucus sites and 2) the language of the Kentucky law is a bit quirky naming only voting machines and absentee ballots  (Again, neither of those would be involved in caucus proceedings.).

Counter to what Jazz Shaw had to say at HotAir about the potential move in Kentucky, Kentucky Republicans would not have to reinvent the wheel in shifting from its business-as-usual primary to caucuses as a means of allocating delegates. Kentucky Republicans have used the primary as means of allocating delegate slots to presidential candidates. Yet, they -- the RPK -- also have had a caucuses system in place for the purposes of selecting delegates to fill those allocated slots. Rule 5.03 of the Rules of the Republican Party of Kentucky lay out the rules regarding the timing of those first determining events (precinct caucuses). They are to occur between March 1 and March 31 of a presidential election year. The only thing Kentucky Republicans would be likely to do is to clean up some of the language to have the precinct caucuses all coinciding on the same date, say, March 1. Making the switch would not be difficult for the party, but participation would certainly go down relative to a primary.

One final thing FHQ has not seen mentioned in association with this story is the fact that there have been concerted efforts on the part of (Ron) Paul supporters across the country over the last few years to take over control of state parties and/or to change the nomination processes in those states to caucuses. The elder Paul did quite well in 2012 caucuses/conventions. Hypothetically, such a move would potentially help Rand Paul too, though one would imagine him likely being quite successful no matter what type of contest his home state decided to adopt.

This one will be an interesting one to watch develop from an institutional standpoint. The question is, does the RPK opt to shift and move to an earlier date where there may be other regional partners on the same date or try for an earlier calendar position where they may not get lost in the shuffle because of contest crowding and other candidates avoiding a likely Paul win for other states on the same date? The benefits are not as clear on that front as they are for Senator Paul avoiding breaking current Kentucky state law.

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¹ Kentucky Democrats had actually moved up in 1984, abandoning the May primary for set of March caucuses. In 1988, the state government moved the primary up to an earlier March date (only to move it back for 1992).


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Iowa 2016, Today

With the 2014 Iowa caucuses set to convene tomorrow, the caucuses two years hence are on the minds of some out there.

Jennifer Jacobs at the Des Moines Register has a rundown on a few things that are on the line in those caucuses tomorrow. Two of them -- points one and four -- have a bearing on the 2016 presidential nominations.

1. The GOP fight over who’s in charge
The central battlefield will be the party leadership elections.
Current party leaders, who view themselves as hard-line conservatives with a liberty movement orientation, try to frame this battle as an ouster attempt by more middle-of-the-road politicos favored by establishment Republicans, including Branstad.
But the coalition of Republicans who want to push aside those leaders represents a broad cross-section of activists, including Christian conservatives, fiscally minded business Republicans and longtime party stalwarts. They say the context has little to do with deep divisions in the party. Instead, it’s about the desire to have a competent, well-oiled party machine that’s laser-focused on wiping out Democrats.

-- 

4. The movement to kill the GOP’s Iowa Straw Poll
The leadership group elected at Tuesday night’s caucuses will decide the fate of this widely criticized summertime Republican Party fundraiser.
Some say the straw poll represents an albatross around the presidential caucuses, which take place five months later. Dave Levinthal, senior political reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, said the straw poll is viewed as a silly sideshow.
“The straw poll did itself few favors in the efficacy department when the gold, silver and bronze went to Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Tim Pawlenty,” Levinthal said. Two of the three were out of the race by early January.
One 2012 straw poll write-in candidate, Rick Perry, beat eventual nominee Mitt Romney. The eventual nominee in 2008, John McCain, placed 10th.
“Middle school student council races are often more deliberative,” Levinthal said.

Reid Wilson at the Washington Post builds a richer story behind Jacobs' point about the fight for control of the leadership apparatus within the Republican Party of Iowa.

Both pieces are well worth a read.

--
One quibble with Wilson's discussion of the delegate selection process the Republican Party of Iowa will use in 2016. The characterization of the process from Wilson (emphasis FHQ's):

Expanding turnout at precinct caucuses is important to Branstad and to presidential candidates who will run in two years, because the caucus process extends long beyond January. Delegates selected on caucus night head to county conventions, then district conventions, the state convention and, finally, in a presidential year, the Republican National Convention, where they cast votes for a presidential candidate of their choosing.

Now, in the past, this sequence of events has been the standard operating procedure within the RPI caucuses/convention system: precinct caucuses, county conventions, district conventions, state convention, followed by the national convention. Delegates are chosen at each level to move on to the next successive step. But the wheels come off -- at least relative to how things will be in 2016 -- once that final sentence gets to that last clause.

The sequence of events will likely be the same, but due to a change in the delegate selection rules now in place for Republican nomination process (via the Republican National Committee), the Republican delegates from Iowa will not be able to "vote for a presidential candidate of their choosing," as Wilson indicates. The change -- the addition for 2016, really -- in question is to Rule 16.a.1-2:

(a) Binding and Allocation.(1) Any statewide presidential preference vote that permits a choice among candidates for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in a primary, caucuses, or a state convention must be used to allocate and bind the state’s delegation to the national convention in either a proportional or winner-take-all manner, except for delegates and alternate delegates who appear on a ballot in a statewide election and are elected directly by primary voters. 

(2) The Secretary of the Convention shall faithfully announce and record each delegate’s vote in accordance with the delegate’s obligation under these rules, state law or state party rule. If any delegate bound by these rules, state party rule or state law to vote for a presidential candidate at the national convention demonstrates support under Rule 40 for any person other than the candidate to whom her or she is bound, such support shall not be recognized. Except as provided for by state law or state party rule, no presidential candidate shall have the power to remove a delegate.

Most of this language was added in Tampa at the 2012 Republican National Convention, but some of it was modified at the Spring 2013 RNC meeting in Los Angeles. The bulk of the changes were added to tamp down on the shenanigans some within the RNC saw coming from the Ron Paul backers in 2012. Essentially, delegates are now bound -- something that was a point of contention in Tampa and at the LA meeting in 2013 -- based on any statewide election. Presumably, this would include precinct caucuses in Iowa and other states that formerly used and/or allowed for unbound delegates to go to the national convention. Part two of the rule takes matters a step further by preventing would-be rogue delegates from attempting to cast a convention vote for a candidate other than the one to whom they are bound. The delegate votes are announced and recorded in accordance with how the delegates were bound based on the statewide step -- precinct caucuses -- of the process.

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One thing is for sure: The RPI leadership that emerges from the 2014 caucuses will have some effect on the the rules that the party adopts for the delegate selection process in 2016. Stated differently, said leadership will shape the state party reaction to the RNC rules.

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Unclear What Shape Final RNC Super Penalty May Take

With the 2014 RNC Winter Meeting looming toward the end of the month, and some consideration, if not vote, on a new set of rules proposals likely to occur, it appears as if the intricacies have not been fully settled on. There is no doubt in FHQ's mind that whatever rules the RNC subcommittee comes up with in regard to the 2016 Republican presidential nomination debates will grab all or most of the headlines. But there will be other rules or rules changes that come out of the RNC meeting that will warrant some discussion as well.

One of those rules is the new super penalty the RNC passed in Tampa in August 2012. Recall that the Republican National Convention implemented for 2016 a stricter penalty (Rule 17) for states willing to violate the timing rules (Rule 16) by scheduling their delegate selection events earlier than the first Tuesday in March. Instead of stripping a state of half its delegation as was the case in 2012 and before, the RNC would reduce a rogue state delegation to just nine delegates (plus the three party/automatic delegates). The intent is to shrink the potential power of any rogue state down to something smaller than what any of the four carve-out states -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- would have to offer in terms of their individual number of delegates. That, in turn, keeps the candidates away and focused on the carve-outs.

…theoretically.

However, as FHQ noted once that super penalty came to light in January 2013, there was a loophole for a select few small states. The more draconian penalty would actually have been severe for big states, but less than the 50% penalty those same states would have been subject to in 2012 and before. The new proposals includes a provision to correct that discrepancy.

But it isn't clear what exactly this fix is.

As was originally reported by Peter Hamby last month, the RNC subcommittee remedy was to penalize rogue states by knocking them down to nine delegates (plus the three party/automatic delegates) or one third of their originally apportioned delegates, whichever is number is smaller. That one third provision was the remedy to the original super penalty intended to target those smaller loophole states.

Yet, in Saturday's New Hampshire Union Leader, Garry Rayno describes a slightly different penalty for those very same smaller states. Instead of being left with one third of their delegates, smaller rogue states with fewer than 30 apportioned delegates (originally, pre-penalty) would be stripped of all but six delegates (presumably plus the three party/automatic delegates). That is not a huge difference, but that is a different penalty than the one Hamby detailed in December.

Let's look a state or two under both plans (Hamby and Rayno descriptions) and the original super penalty. In 2012, there were 17 states and five territories with 30 or fewer delegates. Given that 30 delegate threshold in Rayno's description there are two groups of states to examine. States in the 25-30 delegate range and those with 24 or fewer delegates in their delegations.

• State in the 25-30 delegate range: Wyoming (28 delegates in 2012)

Let's assume that Wyoming opts to hold (what will now have to be binding) precinct caucuses in February 2016. That would run afoul of the new RNC rules.

Original super penalty reduction: 9 delegates (plus the three party/automatic delegates); 12 total. That is a 57% reduction.

Hamby super penalty reduction: 9 delegates or one third of original delegation (9.33 delegates), whichever is smaller. Most of the rounding rules for 2016 indicate that fractions would be rounded down. That would leave Wyoming with 9 delegates (plus the three party/automatic delegates); 12 total. That's a 57% reduction.

Rayno super penalty reduction: 6 delegates (presumably plus the three party/automatic delegates); 9 total. That's a 68% reduction.

• State with 24 or fewer delegates: Maine (24 delegates in 2012)

Let's assume that Maine opts to hold (what will now have to be binding) precinct caucuses in February 2016. That would run afoul of the new RNC rules. 

Original super penalty reduction: 9 delegates (plus the three party/automatic delegates); 12 total. That is a 50% reduction.

Hamby super penalty reduction: 9 delegates or one third of original delegation (8 delegates), whichever is smaller. That would leave Maine with 8 delegates (plus the three party/automatic delegates); 11 total. That's a 54% reduction.

Rayno super penalty reduction: 6 delegates (presumably plus the three party/automatic delegates); 9 total. That is a 62% reduction.

• State with 24 or fewer delegates: Delaware (17 delegates in 2012)  -- Smallest state/non-territory delegation

Let's assume that Delaware opts to hold a primary in February 2016. That would run afoul of the new RNC rules.

Original super penalty reduction: 9 delegates (plus the three party/automatic delegates) [NOTE: less than 50% reduction]; 12 total. That is just a 29% reduction.

Hamby super penalty reduction: 9 delegates or one third of original delegation (5.67 delegates), whichever is smaller. Most of the rounding rules for 2016 indicate that fractions would be rounded down. That would leave Delaware with 5 delegates (plus the three party/automatic delegates); 8 total. That is a 53% reduction.

Rayno super penalty reduction: 6 delegates (presumably plus the three party/automatic delegates); 9 total. That is a 47% reduction. 

In all cases, the penalty decreases as the size of a state's delegation decreases. But the proposal Hamby described sees a very slight decrease as a delegation gets smaller as compared to the original conception of the super penalty or the version Rayno reported.  Understandably, the corrections are more severe than the original, but the Rayno version reduces a delegation more than the one Hamby described in December. For all states (not including those territories with just 9 delegates) with fewer than 30 delegates, the Hamby-described penalty is roughly 55% of the delegation (with a range of 53-57%). On the other hand the Rayno version is more severe on the "bigger" small delegation states. The reductions on states with fewer than 30 delegates range anywhere from 47-68%. 

Now, these are very subtle differences. A handful of delegates here and there makes a difference in terms of what the weight of the ultimate penalty is on an individual state. None of these states were chosen at random either. All three have at various points in the post-reform era tested the resolve of the national parties by moving in on the turf of the carve-out states (generally New Hampshire). The RNC, then, would have some incentive to close any loophole that might entice any or all of those states to jump up the calendar into, say, February.

But how to do that is the question. Pick your poison. 

The main remaining question is whether this will be enough of a deterrent to prevent states, small and big alike, from encroaching on the turf of the carve-out states. That is a question that will have to wait until 2015 for an answer. In the meantime, the RNC will have to settle on what its small state super penalty will be. 

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Christie's Primary Map May Be the Same as Romney's, But the Order of the Primaries Won't Be.

Dave Catanese over at The Run 2016 has this to say:

With the first four states likely to keep their pecking order, Christie’s team may just adopt the same mindset.  Must wins in New Hampshire and Nevada, with Iowa and South Carolina as only icing. 

… 

The main difference would be Florida, a primary that could be rendered mostly meaningless if one of its homestate contenders jumps into the race. If say, Sen. Marco Rubio is a candidate, then South Carolina may become demonstrably more vital to Christie.

FHQ does not disagree here on the basic campaign strategic point. On the surface, Christie's strategy would theoretically be the same as Romney's. Win in New Hampshire and Nevada, take what you can get in Iowa and South Carolina and win Florida. FHQ has hinted at as much stretching back into primary season 2012.

And Mr. Catanese is absolutely correct that a home state candidate from the Sunshine state -- whether Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush -- upsets the calculus some for the latent presidential campaign of the New Jersey governor.

But here's the thing: We don't know if that is going to be the order of those contests. FHQ is reasonably confident that the four carve-out states will retain their positions with perhaps minimal pressure from any rogue states. FHQ is also fairly confident that Florida will not be one of those states pushing the carve-outs in 2016. However, given the new law scheduling the Florida presidential primary, Florida is also not likely to hold down the fifth position on the calendar as it did in 2012. Right now that distinction belongs to Arizona and Michigan.¹

The situation in Florida -- the scheduling of the primary -- is conditional. The Sunshine state will conduct a presidential primary election on the first date in which there are no penalties assessed by the national parties. Many are interpreting that as the first Tuesday in March (March 1, 2016). But that misses one other highly relevant point. Florida avoids the timing penalty by holding a March primary, but there is also the matter of the proportionality window in the Republican rules.

Recall that Florida has stuck with a true winner-take-all allocation of its delegates. If the Republican Party of Florida continues with that practice in 2016, the new law would push the presidential primary in the Sunshine state back to the third Tuesday in March according to the proposed penalty structure likely to emerge from the RNC rules subcommittee reexamining the rules. Now, Florida Republicans could merely take the 50% delegate reduction associated with a violation of the proportionality requirement and go on March 1, but that is not what the law says. If Florida Republicans value the presidential primary as a means of allocating delegates, they would have to utilize the state-funded option that is administered by the (secretary of) state and follows the law.

…on March 15, 2016 along with the Illinois primary.

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Arizona and Michigan now occupy the fifth position on the 2016 presidential primary calendar and are the biggest threats to the carve-out states. Florida will play a role, but it will likely be on or two weeks after Super Tuesday. That's different from Romney's map. Like Romney, Christie would like to and likely have to do well in Arizona and Michigan as springboards into Super Tuesday the next week. Christie would also need to employ a similar Super Tuesday strategy to the former Massachusetts governor: rack up wins and delegates outside the South while peeling off as many as possible delegates in the South.

That's what makes the method of allocation Texas Republicans adopt for 2016 so important. Remember "proportionality" on the Republican side isn't mathematical proportionality. There are a number of ways to get there.

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¹ And that assumes Colorado, Minnesota and Utah do not opt into early February dates for their respective caucuses, caucuses and primary. It also assumes that Missouri either moves its primary back or once again adopts caucuses as a means of allocating delegates. North Carolina is newly rogue as well. …but for how long?

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