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Since early 2016, a trend has evolved in how the 2020 presidential nomination process will operate. In that time, several formerly caucus states have abandoned the format in favor of a state-funded primary. That has happened in states like Idaho and Nebraska where there was already a primary option included in state law, but also in states like Colorado and Minnesota , where citizen-driven initiative or the legislature, respectively, created the primary option. The latter group used to include the caucus-to-primary shift in Maine . Used to . The 2016 effort to re-establish a presidential primary in the Pine Tree state passed and became law, but most of the provisions in the bill ( then law ) expired on December 1, 2018. The sole surviving component -- the only part that did not expire -- was the study the Maine secretary of state was to have conducted with respect to the funding of the election. And while that report was issued on December 1, 2017, as called for in the statute, que...

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was... Just prior to the holidays the Democratic National Committee released a schedule for upcoming presidential primary debates. The party at that time even included a contingency plan for the very real possibility that a slew of candidates have entered the race, forcing the party to have double-bill debates. Rather than follow the Republican big fish/little fish format from 2016, the DNC will instead randomize the selection of participants in each part of a two-tiered debate kickoff. Outside of those provisions, however, the DNC remained relatively silent on the specifics of an important aspect of the process: how does one qualify? What measures will be utilized to separate participating presidential candidates from those who, well, do not measure up? It was not that the announcement was without specifics, but they lacked definition. There were two main measures laid out and it was stated that the bar ...

Legislators are back at it in Washington state. Since eliminating the presidential primary for the 2012 cycle , there have been ongoing , albeit unsuccessful , attempts made to not only reposition the presidential contest on the primary calendar, but to reconfigure the process in the Evergreen state as well. The sticking point in 2015, as illustrated in the descriptions linked to above as well as in 2017 when similar legislation was introduced, has always been how to balance both the lack of party registration in Washington and the history of a top two primary ballot in the context of a presidential primary. None of the remedies to this point have been sufficient enough to get an omnibus presidential primary bill passed. And that has continued to keep the contest in its relatively late May position, but has also given Democrats continued opportunities to opt for caucuses in lieu of the presidential primary . And now there are competing, partisan bills in the Washington state ...

In what has almost become a custom in the Lone Star state over the last two state legislative sessions, a new bill has been introduced to move the Texas primary from the first Tuesday in March to the fourth Tuesday in January . Unlike the bill recently introduced further west in Oregon , this is not a new potential swipe at New Hampshire and the other carve-out states. In fact, Lyle Larson ( R-122nd, San Antonio ) has made this a habit since 2015. But this is merely the representative's third try at a "why not Texas?" bill; one he called a "flamethrower" intended to send a message in 2017. And the current legislation -- HB 725 -- is likely to continue to get the same sort of reaction. Other members on the committee will like the idea of Texas stealing the spotlight, but elections administrators from the county level will balk as will the two major parties in Texas. The latter continues to take issue with the move because of the implications -- national party p...

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was... As presidential nomination cycles have come and gone over the years, the stories change in terms of how states maneuver within that system and why. That is not to suggest that the collision of states and the decision-making conditions they confront is complete chaos every four years. Rather, the terrain is constantly shifting. That is true for a lot of electoral decisions that state legislatures make, and that includes how states position their delegate selection events -- primaries and caucuses -- on the quadrennial presidential primary calendar. Eight years ago, nearly half the states in the country had newly non-compliant primary dates leftover from a 2008 cycle that saw a slew of states push into February and cluster primarily at the beginning of the month. When the national parties informally coordinated a later start to primary season for 2012, all those February states from 2008 had to make ...

In what may, in part, be the opening salvo in the 2019 legislation affecting the 2020 presidential primary calendar , Oregon has a couple of interesting bills prefiled and ready for when the legislature in the Beaver state convenes later this month . Both bills seek to move the Oregon primary from the third Tuesday in May up to the second Tuesday in March not just in presidential election years but in all even-numbered years. This differs from when Oregon shifted in the past (for 1996 ) or when attempts were made in the recent past to move the primary ( 2007 and  2015 ). In those instances, the presidential primary was split from the May primary for other offices and moved (or proposed to be moved) to March or earlier dates. In 2019, the legislation proposes moving everything up to March, thus saving the expense of funding a new and stand-alone presidential primary. However, both 2019 bills offer a twist on this scheduling. HB 2107 calls for a move the second Tuesday in March, bu...

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was... The National Conference of State Legislatures has  this calendar  as well, but in alphabetical order. FHQ is more concerned with sequence. Which state legislatures convene first, when do their sessions end and how does this impact the scheduling of presidential primaries? [ More below the calendar. ] 2019 State Legislative Session Calendar (sequential) Date (Convene) States Date (Adjourn) January 1, 2019 Pennsylvania Rhode Island year-round 2 mid July January 2 Maine Massachusetts New Hampshire Washington, DC June 19 year-round 2 late June year-round 2 January 3 Indiana North Dakota 1 April 29 April 26 January 4 Colorado May 3 January 7 California Idaho Montana Ohio Wisconsin September 13 early April May 1 year-round 2 year-round 2 January 8 Delaware Kentucky Minnesota Mississippi South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Wyoming 1 June 30 March 29 May 20 April 7 May 9 March 29 late April...

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was... As 2018 came to a close a second wave of folks seemed to be getting in their two cents about the impact of the three month shift of the California presidential primary on the 2020 calendar . 1 And it is not a move that is without import. While California pairing with Texas (among others) on Super Tuesday is a new wrinkle for 2020, frontloaded primary calendars with California on the heels of the earliest states are not. California was part of the logjam on the first Tuesday in March in 2000 , and similarly just a month behind Iowa kicking things off on the 2008 calendar . Of course, the dynamics of each of those races were different. Each cycle is always different in some way from its predecessors. 2 The 2000 cycle saw fields of candidates on both sides that were comparatively small. And in 2008, California was early on a de facto national primary date, but other states -- Florida and Mic...

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was... Recently, the Democratic National Committee announced a series of basically monthly primary debates  that will start in June 2019 and run into primary season in 2020. Although the qualifications for participation were left undetermined for the time being, the announcement was not without some important rules-related revelations. Most inventive among them was the plan to deal with an expected slew of candidates, a number likely to extend beyond what one debate stage could accommodate. Rather than repeat the Republican undercard/main event debate method from 2016, the DNC demonstrated it had learned some lessons and opted instead to randomize the participants across a doubleheader in each of at least the first two planned debates. And the announcement has prompted another attempt at examining the importance primary debates on the candidates' fortunes. But as news of the DNC debates consideration...

As we head into 2019 and the heart of the invisible primary, FHQ is beginning a series to catalog some of the maneuvering going on among and between the various campaigns and candidates as they move from the nascent to the real. We have been doing this for some time on Twitter, but in an effort to protect against some of the activities disappearing into the ether, we'll archive them here.  Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it. -- While the Republican National Committee had an opportunity in 2017 and stretching into the first three-quarters of 2018 to make changes to aspects of the presidential nomination process for 2020, the party largely left well enough alone. And that is in keeping with how parties have approached process questions when they occupy the White House. Candidates who have won not only nominations, but the presidency tend to like the process that got them there. As such, the parties under th...

Rule 40 is back. Remember all that chatter from last cycle about a potentially crowded field of candidates vying for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and the possibility that the ensuing chaos would lead to a scenario where multiple (or no) candidates would control a majority of delegates from eight states and have all/none of their names placed in nomination at the convention, leading to even more chaos? It is fine if you do not. But FHQ does. Vividly. It was all the rage from 2014 into 2016, peaking in April   of that year and gathering steam again in the lead up to the July convention . Now, however, the 2016 chaos narrative is being replaced by a 2020 threat narrative , all with Rule 40 as the predicate. The short version of the threat narrative is this: The current RNC rules for the 2020 nomination process set a low bar for a potential challenger to President Trump. At Trump's  own nominating convention in 2016, delegates adopted a revision to Rule 40 for ...