Reflections On Michigan
Martin Plissner, former Executive Political Director for CBS News, is now a special contributor to CBSNews.com.
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CBS News' in-house novelist wrote a wonderful yarn recently about how the Republican Party's Rules Committee could end up picking this year's presidential nominee because of the screwy California primary rules. Turns out that CBS News Correspondent Eric Engberg isn't alone in his vision. He shares it with at least one member of the Rules Committee itself.
But what got this man's attention was not California, but Michigan, where two-thirds of the self-declared Republicans who went to the polls voted for one man and another fellow got 90 percent of the delegates.
You heard right. The Michigan primary was open to Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Exit polls show that the self-described Republicans went for Bush over McCain by 66 percent to 29 percent. McCain, of course, won the total vote, but by a slim margin. Still, McCain will get 52 of the 58 delegates chosen.
That's the stuff of which credentials challenges are made.
In the memorable seating scraps of the past (Republican 1912 and 1952, Democrats 1932 and 1972) the challengers told horror tales of caucuses held in the dead of night without public notice, polling places in which their supporters' names had mysteriously disappeared from the rolls, things like that. The most likely horror tales presented this year would probably deal with something entirely unknown to TR, FDR and Ike: exit polls.
The first cut at deciding any credentials dispute goes to a credentials committee (first of the national committee, then of the convention). Ordinarily they are settled more or less on the merits with little fuss. But that is when the nomination is already decided and who is seated doesn't matter.
When who wins the challenge does matter, the merits go out the window. That's where the Rules Committee comes in. Which contested delegates can vote on which challenges? Getting the right answer to that question gave the Republicans Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and the Democrats George McGovern in 1972. (You win some, you lose some.)
The first crack this year at answering that question would come this May at a meeting of the Republican National Committee's Rules Committee. They may find themselves digging out the musty old files on credentials challenges.
The Rules Committee member I spoke to (a Bush supporter - surprise, surprise) did not, incidentally, see any violation of existing party rules in what took place in Michigan. Nor in the weird California system. But all concede, as in so many areas of a presidential contest, the merits seldom have much to do with the outcome.
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Should the Republicacontest indeed go beyond the thirteen primaries and caucuses of Mega Tuesday, we could easily see a return to the horse and buggy, or at least the Model T era of political campaigning. Why? Money, or the lack it, to be precise.
Last week, Bush for President, Inc., which aims to strip the fat away from a bloated bureaucracy in Washington, revealed that its own lean and mean management team had somehow squandered $50 million of a $70 million nest egg getting ready for (not to mention losing) the very first primary. Left with $20 million for the 41 primaries remaining, BFP Inc will almost certainly have spent half of that on the handful of contests in February (it spent $12 million in January). On March 7, California, New York, Ohio and ten other states could readily consume most of what's left in the tills.
But at that point, less than half the delegates to the Republican convention will have been chosen. Twenty-five more primaries, strewn over three months, will remain. Unless Bush has won a huge majority of those already elected, he faces a long and bitter struggle with little money in the bank.
Donors of that first $70 million already down the drain are apt to be tough sells on providing more. A large proportion, in any event, gave the legal limit the last time. Fresh money will have to come mainly from people who didn't come across when the governor looked invincible.
John McCain, on the other hand, should he do reasonably well on Mega Tuesday, could very likely at that point raise a good deal. His Internet and direct mail donors, for whose earlier gifts he could show results, should be readily tappable for more. And virtually all of that would be matched by federal funds.
That, for McCain, would be the good news.
The bad news is that, in taking matching funds, McCain bound himself to spend no more than $40 million through the Republican Convention in August. Remember that Bush opted out of matching funds.
At the time McCain won New Hampshire, he'd already spent $21 million. Under campaign finance laws whose strict observance is a central tenet of McCain's campaign, that leaves $19 million he could spend on all the rest of the primary and convention season. In January, when McCain faced only one primary, he spent seven million. This month, with huge costs in South Carolina and Michigan, he is surely spending more. And on March 7 he faces those 13 primaries in all parts of the country - where he absolutely must achieve major victories in order to stay viable.
By the close of business on March 7, both Republicans could easily be running just about on empty. When that happens, campaigns are not only obliged to forego big-ticket expenditures (television ads, tracking polls, mass-marketing boiler rooms). Day to day bills for the lifeblood of any campaign (telephones, faxes, office-rent, hotel rooms, up-front money for airfare and chartered buses) become constant emergencies setting off a scramble to coe up with cash.
This, ironically enough, was a fate that Republicans had once gleefully foreseen for the Democrats. When Bill Bradley last fall appeared to have emerged as a fully competitive rival to Al Gore, Republicans envisioned a lengthy, mean and ugly scrap this spring from which the Democrat who finally emerged would do so badly tarnished and financially broke. Bush, on the other hand, having with solid party backing swiftly disposed of his under-funded rivals, would have most of his huge initial war chest intact for a general election campaign starting in March.
That scenario may yet play out - but with a small difference. It is the Democrat who may well be on easy street in early March, with a full head of steam towards November, while two penniless Republicans stagger on through one nasty primary after another.
Barring an extraordinary reversal of all current evidence, by the close of business on March 7, Al Gore should have the same lock on the Democratic nomination that was widely expected not very long ago for Bush on the Republican.
Gore would not, to be sure, have the gazillions of dollars of hard money Bush was expected to have. But he would have something almost as good. At the first of the year, the Republican and Democratic parties had each raised roughly $50 millionin soft money. Once the Democratic National Committee can credibly declare Gore (as it can't wait to do) the de facto nominee, it can spend that money freely to salute the vice president's vision for America.
Republicans, on the other hand, can't put their soft money behind Bush or McCain (if he'll take it) until they finish beating up on one another - using whatever nickels and dimes they can find to keep the landlord, phone and electric companies, car rental agencies and budget airlines from shutting down the store.
For this rosy outcome, should it come to pass, Al Gore will have many folks to thank. Not the least will be Trent Lott and Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican masterminds who blocked a ban on soft money and made sure the Vice President would have that 50 million dollar jackpot at his disposal.
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After a weekend of indoctrination by the finest minds in television commentary on how Ronald Reagan expanded the GOP by incorporating the Reagan Democrats of Michigan, I checked out a funny recollection I had about where those Reagan Democrats were when Reagan himself needed them. Turns out the Gipper ran in two contested primaries in Michigan. Lost both of them, to Jerry Ford (a local favorite to be sure) in 1976, Poppy Bush in 1980 - by landslides both times.