Sunday, July 02, 2024

-RCC Opinion

The California Republican Party CRP wants to change the rule governing how national convention delegates are allotted in 2024. Should current national pollings hold, this change will transfer 52 national delegates from Trump to DeSantis. For context, primary voting in Iowa will decide the allocation of a total of 40 National Delegates and New Hampshire 22. This single change would also increase the likelihood of a prolonged primary, perhaps leading to a contested Republican Convention. 

“History has shown that having a single candidate by the time of the convention is a key stepping stone for a party’s victory. Candidates who win their party’s nomination after multiple ballots at a convention rarely go on to win the presidency.” – Lesley Kennedy

According to CRP leaders, they would tell you that this change is to bring California’s primary rules into compliance with RNC requirements. However, It is noteworthy that California’s current method of allocating Republican national delegates by congressional districts (proportional to the number of congressional districts won) may already be compliant with the current RNC requirement of proportionality, and the RNC has never officially stated otherwise during the last 2 presidential elections. Moreover, the authors of this amendment could have easily made this change, without any controversy, back in 2019/2020, during an uncontested presidential primary; or they could have made this change during the CRP Convention of April 2022.

This hurried change now will surely be met with questions about whether the CRP leadership is trying to tip the scale for a candidate they personally favor, or whether they are pressured by major donors to frustrate President Trump’s path to nomination. It also doesn’t help that the CRP has a long history of using procedural gimmicks, like straw candidates, to block the candidates not approved by a small clique calling themselves “the leadership”.

Americans value fair play. Changing the rules of the game after the competition has already begun violates the principles of fairplay. There is no legitimate reason why the CRP must rush through these ill-considered changes at this moment. It will further reinforce the perceptions that a small group of people, not the voting public, control the outcome of our political process.

It would be far better for the California Republican Party to postpone adopting any such changes until after the 2024 election. At that time, a new batch of delegates can calmly and objectively discuss what would constitute a better system for the future, and not be distracted by the momentary gains or losses for this or that candidate.