Florida Republican Party Thinking of Keeping Presidential Candidates off Primary Ballot Unless they Participate in Fund-raising Event

Posted on by September 17, 2015
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The Florida Republican Party will hold a fund-raising event November 13-14. Tickets are $200 without the dinner, and $300 with the dinner. To attract an audience, the party’s presidential candidates are invited to speak. The Florida Republican Executive Board is thinking over a proposal to bar any presidential candidate who fails to appear from the March 2016 primary ballot.

Florida and Georgia are the only states in which the election law gives the party complete control over which presidential candidates are listed on party ballots. In each state, the Republican state chair, the leader of the Republican Party in the State Senate, and the leader of the Republicans in the State House have complete control over who qualifies for the ballot. Neither state allows write-ins in primaries.

See this story. The decision will be final in ten days. Republican Party leaders seem to have no concept that keeping candidates off the ballot is an assault on voters who wish to vote for those candidates. It is plausible that if this plan is adopted, and one of the recognized Republican presidential candidates is excluded, that candidate and voters could sue.

CNN Republican Presidential Debate Shows Multi-Candidate Debates Can Work

Posted on by September 17, 2015
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The CNN Republican presidential debate of September 16 was supposed to be two hours long. But once it got started, it was so useful in portraying the views of the eleven candidates that CNN decided to extend it to three hours. It was closer to being a true debate than the August FOX debate had been. It is now as clear as anything that a debate with a large number of candidates can be successful. After tonight, there simply is no coherent argument for general election debates that only include the two major party nominees.

As mentioned here before, in all U.S. history, there has never been a presidential election in which more than seven candidates had enough presidential elector candidates to theoretically win the election.

UPDATE: the debate was watched by 23,000,000 viewers. See this story. That is the most-watched CNN program ever. Thanks to PoliticalWire for that link.

Great Falls Tribune Carries Op-Ed in Defense of Republican Party’s Desire for a Closed Primary

Posted on by September 16, 2015
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J. C. Kantorowicz, a Montana Republican Party official, has this op-ed in the Great Falls Tribune, in defense of the party’s action in trying to get a closed primary for itself for public office. This op-ed is different from other recent Republican opinion pieces in Montana. It mentions the interesting incident when a former Green, Bob Kelleher, captured the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2008.

North Carolina Legislature Appoints Conference Committee for Primary Date Bill

Posted on by September 16, 2015
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The North Carolina legislature has appointed a conference committee to work on HB 373, the bill on primary dates. The current law says the presidential primary is in February and the primary for other office is in May. The legislature almost certainly will set a later date for the presidential primary, because the February date violates national party rules. The most difficult aspect of the bill to predict is whether the legislature will move the non-presidential primary from May to March.

The conference committee members can be seen using this link. There are nine Republicans and two Democrats on the committee. Senator Bob Rucho is on the committee. He had been the original champion of holding the presidential primary in February, a few years ago.

Brennan Center for Justice Issues Pro-Political Party Analysis

Posted on by September 16, 2015
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The Brennan Center for Justice, formed by former law clerks to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, has issued a policy statement that argues that political parties are valuable and to some extent have been over-regulated, especially in campaign finance law. Here is the link to a description of the paper. This is an important development. In the past the Brennan Center has been aligned with groups which fiercely favor restricting limits on donations to political parties, and also fiercely favor restricting political parties from spending money on their own candidates.

Congress has attached an amendment to the cromnibus spending bill that would ease restrictions on party assistance to their own candidates.