In the movie, “Swing Vote,” the presidential election literally comes down to the vote of one American, Kevin Costner’s everyman character, Bud Johnson. It’s the stuff of pure, indulgent political fantasy.
But the crowded and unpredictable Republican 2016 primary does offer the prospect of an extended battle that could become a very personal, one-on-one campaign for individual delegates, GOP insiders say. Party rules bind most delegates to the winners of each state’s nominating contest. But should candidates lose support down the line and suspend their campaigns, the delegates they won immediately become free agents who are permitted to of support the contender of their choice.
Morton Blackwell, a delegate and the Republican National Committeeman from Virginia whose experience dates to 1964 when he was the youngest elected delegate to support eventual Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, said he’s preparing for this scenario. Blackwell, who usually endorses but is still neutral in the 2016 primary, is automatically uncommitted, per Virginia GOP rules.
“Sometimes, folks trying to get someone’s vote try to put you in very uncomfortable position,” Blackwell said Tuesday in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “They get several of your friends and allies into room, and they’ll do what we call ‘hotbox’ you to put pressure on you to vote a certain way.”
The Republicans have not met for a national nominating convention without a presumptive nominee since 1976, when then-former California Gov. Ronald Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford in Kansas City, Mo., before ultimately backing the incumbent. Most GOP primaries since then have been a generally orderly affair without the need for candidates to resort to intense fights for individual delegates, as Hillary Clinton and now-President Barack Obama did in the 2008 Democratic primary.
Blackwell isn’t the only veteran Republican insider who believes that the 2016 primary could unfold differently.
Multiple party operatives said in interviews that it’s legitimately possible that two or more viable candidates could be competing for the nomination in March or April. In a close quarters fight, unbound delegates, including automatic free agents like Blackwell and those newly uncommitted because the winner of a previous primary or caucus lacked support and dropped out, could prove pivotal to the outcome. RNC rules treats a suspension the same as dropping out.
“You could have a situation where you have two or three candidates at the end of March all that have substantial blocs of delegates, but to get to 1,236, they are going to have to pick up some chunk of the uncommitted delegates,” said one veteran GOP operative, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly. “That is a possibility.”
“You have to be prepared to pick up the delegates of any of the contenders who actually win some proportional number in any give state,” said Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party who is supporting Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
It takes approximately 1,236 delegates to secure the GOP presidential nomination at the national convention in Cleveland. Most will be won in the caucuses and traditional primary elections that begin Feb. 1 in Iowa, and end in early June. And in a new rules change presented to reporters last week during a Republican National Committee news conference in Washington, all delegates earned in winner-take-all or proportional contests are bound.
The days of winning the Iowa caucuses, only to wage the real battle for delegates later on at the state GOP convention, are over. Indeed, Iowa’s new state party rules bind its delegates all the way through to the national convention, even if the caucus winner exits the race beforehand. Only states and territories that don’t hold nominee preference contests — Colorado, North Dakota, Wyoming, Guam and American Samoa — require going through the state convention process to win delegates.
These and other rules changes to streamline the nominating process, all spearheaded by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, are among the reasons why the party’s top brass aren’t concerned about the primary becoming a protracted fight for delegates, never mind end up unsettled heading into the mid-July convention. “We’re pretty confident that we’re going to have clear front-runner nominee by the spring,” an RNC official said.
The unusual arc of the GOP primary thus far, with outsider candidates like New York billionaire businessman and reality television star Donald Trump and retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson leading the pack early on, has lent an air of unpredictability to the race.
Add to that the fact that 16 candidates originally filed to run for the Republican nomination — and that most are still in the hunt, and the top contenders aren’t taking any chances.
They’ve spread their wings early, racking up endorsements and grassroots organizational support in several states and territories that vote well after the first four contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The goal is to position themselves to play the long game and prevail in a campaign that depends almost as much on winning the support of individual delegates as GOP voters.
For example, Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, has assembled a team of veteran political operatives who are familiar with each state’s ballot access regulations, aware of their rules for amassing delegates, and resourced enough to follow through on a game plan to scoop up the delegates left behind by candidates who score an early victory or two before being forced to suspend their campaigns.
David Kochel, a senior Bush campaign adviser, said the governor is operating under this assumption and preparing to profit.
“That’s why you want to have a 50 state team with the resources to play all the way through the calendar,” he said. “Add to that the super PAC to provide air cover and we feel good about where we are.”
