There seems to be a little bit of confusion about the resolution passed by the CRP Board last Friday relative to GOP voters and the GOP Presidential Primary. So let me try to clarify. Back in the 2000 election cycle, when John McGraw was Chairman of the Party, the party amended its bylaws with a new system of selecting delegates to Republican National Conventions. Up to that point, since 1976, California’s GOP delegates were determined using a "winner-take-all" method where whomever got the most votes statewide was awarded all of the delegates (this was put into place in 1976 to help ensure that then-favorite son Ronald Reagan would carry the entire delegation in his primary bid against President Ford). The new rules for the GOP, which did not go into effect until after the 2000 cycle, are "winner-take-all-by-Congressional District" and they set up a system where three delegates are awarded in each House seat, to the GOP candidate who garners the plurality of the vote in each. A small number of statewide delegate positions are still awarded based on the statewide vote.
This new system was rendered moot in the 2004 cycle because President Bush was unopposed in his primary for re-election, and thus captured all of California’s delegates to the New York RNC Convention. So this is the first Presidential election where this "new" system is in play, and it will be interesting to see how it impacts the way that the Republican candidates campaign across the state. After all, it is now possible to campaign in regions of this state, without having to win the whole things — a prohibitively expense endeavor for most candidates.
The reason I am giving this little history lesson is that when former Republican legislator Ray Haynes authored this rules change many years ago, included in it was the language stating that only the votes of registered Republicans may be used to determine the allocation of delegates.
So if the State GOP’s rules have mandated a GOP-only Republican Primary for all of these years, what material effect did the CRP Board resolution have on this policy? None. We did not change a thing. All that happened was that a majority of the CRP Board at last Friday’s meeting said, in essence, we like the fact that the primary is GOP-only and don’t want that to change.
I authored this resolution because there has been talk in some circles about proposing a change and allowing non-Republicans to play a role in picking our delegates this cycle, which as said in this space yesterday, is a terrible idea (my CRP board colleague, Central Vice Chairman Laura Gadke, points out that in several California Congressional Districts, decline-to-state voters outnumber Republicans, and how absurd would it be for delegates to the Republican National Convention to be chosen, in essence, by non-Republicans?).
So the bottom line, to put to bed any of the inaccurate information swirling around out there, is that the rules of engagement for this upcoming primary have not changed — in 2004, you had to be Republican to vote to nominate President Bush for re-election, and in 2008, you will need to be a Republican to participate in selecting our 2008 nominee.
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