Republicans scrap nominating events in 3 states
Trump gets a boost as GOP cancels contests in South Carolina, Nevada and Kansas.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republican leaders in Nevada, South Carolina and Kansas have voted to scrap their presidential nominating contests in 2020, erecting more hurdles for the longshot candidates challenging President Trump.
“What is Donald Trump afraid of?” asked one of those rivals, former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld.
A spokesman for the South Carolina Republican Party, Joe Jackson, confirmed that the party voted Saturday against holding a presidential primary next year. A similar move followed in Nevada, where party spokesman Keith Schipper said, “The vote to opt out of the caucus has passed. We will vote to endorse and bind the delegates to the president at a later date.”
The Kansas GOP tweeted Friday that it will not organize a caucus “because President Trump is an elected incumbent from the Republican Party.” Its state committee planned to approve rules for an “internal party process” for selecting convention delegates, according to Kelly Arnold, the party’s former state chairman, and Helen Van Etten, a member of the Republican National Committee from Topeka.
Challengers to Trump who have emerged include Weld and Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois. Others may join them.
Weld, in a statement, said voting is “the ultimate right of speech in America, and Trump’s machine in South Carolina has just told the people of South Carolina that they don’t need to be heard. Donald Trump wants to be treated as a monarch, but we rejected that idea 200 years ago.”
Walsh told CNN after the South Carolina vote that his campaign would “fight South Carolina and any other state that considers doing this.” He also noted that Trump complained during the 2016 election “about how the Democrats were rigging the system to get Hillary [Clinton] elected. Well, look what he’s doing now. You talk about rigging a system.”
Primary challenges to incumbents are rarely successful, and Trump’s poll numbers among Republican voters have proved resilient. Nonetheless, Trump aides are looking to prevent a repeat of the convention discord that highlighted the electoral weaknesses of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter in their failed reelection campaigns.
Since last year, Trump’s campaign has worked to monitor and, at times, control the process by which delegates to next year’s Republican National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., are selected. His campaign wants the convention to be a four-night infomercial for Trump by sidelining his detractors within the party.
The effort is an acknowledgment that Trump hasn’t completely cemented his grip on the GOP and might not coast to the nomination without some opposition.
To that end, the campaign has worked over the last year to scuttle any attempts at a Trump challenge by party dissidents, mindful that a serious primary opponent could weaken Trump heading into the general election.
In January, the Republican National Committee voted to express its “undivided support” for Trump and his “effective presidency.”
In years past, both Republicans and Democrats have cut state nominating contests when an incumbent president from their party ran for a second term. In 1984, South Carolina GOP leaders opted to call off their primary as President Reagan sought a second term. In 2004, the state’s GOP again canceled the primary, with leaders deciding instead to endorse President George W. Bush’s reelection bid.
The South Carolina Democratic Party didn’t hold presidential primaries in 1996 or in 2012, when Presidents Clinton and Obama were the incumbents.