Colorado GOP chairman Steve House (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)
The Denver Post
Colorado
will not vote for a Republican candidate for president at its 2016 caucus after
party leaders approved a little-noticed shift that may diminish the state's
clout in the most open nomination contest in the modern era.
The GOP
executive committee has voted to cancel the traditional presidential preference
poll after the national party changed its rules to require a
state's delegates to support the candidate who wins the caucus vote.
The
move makes Colorado the only state so far to forfeit a role in the early
nomination process, according to political experts, but other caucus states are
still considering how to adapt to the new rule.
"It
takes Colorado completely off the map" in the primary season, said Ryan
Call, a former state GOP chairman.
Republicans
still will hold precinct caucus meetings in early 2016 to begin the process of
selecting delegates for the national convention — but the 37 delegates are not
pledged to any specific candidate.
For
Republicans, no declared winner means the caucus will lack much of its hype.
The presidential campaigns still may try to win delegate slots for their
supporters, but experts say the move makes it less likely that candidates will
visit Colorado to court voters.
The
Colorado system often favors anti-establishment candidates who draw a dedicated
following among activists. So the party's move may hurt GOP contenders such as Donald
Trump, who would have received a boost if he won the state.
State
Republican Party Chairman Steve House said the party's 24-member executive
committee made the unanimous decision Friday — six members were absent — to
skip the preference poll.
The
move, he said, would give Colorado delegates the freedom to support any
candidate eligible at the Cleveland convention in July. Republican National
Committee officials confirmed that the change complies with party rules.
"If
we do a binding presidential preference poll, we would then pledge our
delegates ... and the candidates we bind them to may not be in the race by the
time we get to the convention," House said in an interview Tuesday.
But the
freedom also opened the door for political mischief, as Colorado saw in 2012
when Ron Paul supporters managed to win a
significant portion of the delegate slots.The RNC tightened the rules in 2012
to eliminate nonbinding straw polls and help prevent similar stunts in the
future, forcing Colorado Republicans to re-evaluate their process. An effort earlier this year to switch to a
presidential primary system failed amid party infighting.
"It's
an odd scenario," said Josh Putnam, a political science lecturer at the
University of Georgia who runs a popular blog on the presidential
nominating process. "It's not to say the campaigns won't be there. ... But
you won't have a good reflection of support at the caucuses, much less Colorado
Republicans as a whole."
With
the change, the only way Colorado Republican delegates would remain relevant is
the remote chance that no candidate emerges as a clear winner in the primary
contest. In this case, the state's unbound delegates would receive significant
attention and may hold the key to victory in a floor fight.
"If
there's the potential for a brokered convention in any way, the unaffiliated
delegates become extremely important," said Joy Hoffman, the Arapahoe
County GOP chairwoman who attended the party meeting. "If there is someone
who becomes a front-runner, ... then nobody's important. So I think the view
became that if we were not bound, it's not the worse thing that could
happen." This story was first published on Tuesday,
Aug. 25, 2015 at 2:06 p.m John Frank:
303-954-2409, jfrank@denverpost.com or twitter.com/By JohnFrank
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