As in horseshoes and hand grenades, being close now counts in the Republican presidential nominating process.
That means Indiana voters might have a say in the GOP’s choice to face President Obama in the November election.
A rules change by the national Republican Party ends the winner-take-all provision for early presidential primary elections. Instead, most convention delegates in primaries conducted before April 1 will be allocated to candidates more in proportion to the popular vote, as Democrats have done for decades.
Nearly 30 states and U.S. territories will have their presidential primaries by the end of March. With a revolving door of front-running GOP candidates last year and three bunched on top after Tuesday’s Iowa caucuses, Indiana could be a player by the time its May 8 primary arrives, party officials say.
“The way the race has gone, the way it’s defied conventional wisdom already, the way the rules are written, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen this year,” Pete Seat, communications director for the Indiana Republican Party, said about prospects for Indiana’s presidential primary to hold sway.
Steve Shine, chairman of the Allen County GOP, said the new rules and the current lack of a dominating candidate “bode well for Indiana to have a repeat performance of the energy and excitement that was here in the 2008 presidential campaign, only this time that excitement will be on the Republican side rather than the Democratic side.”
Repeat of ’08?
In 2008, John McCain, a senator from Arizona, clinched the GOP nomination two months before Hoosiers voted. But Hillary Rodham Clinton had kept her Democratic nomination hopes alive with victories in Texas and Pennsylvania, and she and Obama duked it out in Indiana. They visited the state often for campaign rallies, spent nearly $9 million on advertising and attracted more than 1.26 million voters to the polls on May 6, triple the Republican turnout in a GOP stronghold.
Clinton edged Obama, and their delegate counts were close: 38 for her, 34 for him. Their fight continued until Obama secured the nomination June 3, going over the 2,118 delegates he needed to win. Even then, Clinton had compiled 47 percent of the delegate tally.
Michael Wolf, a political scientist at IPFW, doubts this year’s Republican race can match the Democrats’ 2008 competition.
“The Republican rules, while they have changed to be more proportional, still leaves the definition of that proportionality to the states,” he said. “Many of the states in the upcoming contests are still largely less proportional than with the Democratic rules.”
Of Indiana’s 46 Republican delegates, for example, 27 will be allocated according to candidates based on the popular vote. Of the state’s 117 Democratic delegates, 107 will be pledged to candidates according to the primary-election results (Obama is unopposed).
Wolf noted that Florida will keep its winner-take-all provision despite voting Jan. 31. The national GOP halved the state’s number of delegates as punishment for leapfrogging ahead in the schedule. Four other states suffered the same penalty.
“It’s such a big state to win, the candidates and the state don’t mind,” Wolf said about Florida, which keeps 50 delegates. “They want to play a role quicker.”
An ideological divide between the Republican Party and its relatively new, ultraconservative wing “might keep this thing moving forward” with multiple candidates and close contests, Wolf said about the primary season. But he predicted some candidates will run out of money and fold their campaigns before Indiana’s primary.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., quit the day after she received only 5 percent of the vote in Iowa.
“The reality of being able to keep up momentum will get to people sooner,” Wolf said. “There will be a wish by (Republican voters) to have somebody go up against Barack Obama.”
Late in the game
Most presidential nominations in both parties have been sewn up well ahead of the Indiana primaries, which, according to state law, are conducted the first Tuesday after the first Monday of May.
Before the Obama-Clinton battle in 2008, the last time Hoosier voters really mattered was when Ronald Reagan ran against President Gerald Ford in the 1976 GOP primaries (Indiana favored Reagan). Neither won a majority of nationwide delegates before the national convention, where Ford captured the nomination.
A tendency for more states to move their primaries earlier would seem to make Indiana voters even less relevant. This year, 39 states and territories will have primaries and caucuses before Indiana does.
And there’s the matter of Super Tuesday.
Ten states that have primaries March 6, including Ohio, could combine to launch a candidate to a commanding lead. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is thought the most likely.
“If Iowa is any indication of how close it’s going to be, that’s simply not going to happen,” Shine said.
And Seat agreed.
“The rules do incentivize candidates to stick around because they are going to be racking up delegates in each state if they do well enough,” the state GOP spokesman said.
And so Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and ex-Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman should be able to remain in the race through the Jan. 21 primary in South Carolina.
Even as poorly performing candidates eventually drop out, their backers won’t necessarily get behind presumptive front-runner Romney. Most election analysts believe former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who finished a whisker behind Romney in the Iowa caucuses, likely added to his base of social conservatives when Bachmann left the race.
“A consolidation scenario makes the likelihood that this drags out a little longer even better,” Seat said.
Wolf said one candidate will stay in the field regardless of where he’s running.
“Ron Paul is just going to keep going. He’s got a lot of juice” among libertarians and young voters, Wolf said. “There’s an energy for Paul that’s not matched for other candidates.”
A candidate needs at least 1,144 delegates, or one more than half of the 2,286 total, to take the nomination. By the time of Indiana’s primary, votes representing more than 1,600 delegates will have been cast.
Huntsman, Perry and Romney campaigned briefly in Indianapolis last year at the invitation of the state party leadership. They and Gingrich, Paul and Santorum have standing invitations to visit and receive advice on qualifying for the May 8 ballot, Seat said.
“If it does play out the way we kind of perceive it playing out, I think in the next couple of months you may see increased attention and visits, I hope,” Seat said.
Shine said: “If there is not a defining primary before Indiana, that will mean that Indiana will be a late-season battleground state for Republicans, and that’s great. That energizes the Republican Party. That brings the political discussion … to the front door of Indiana voters.”
If the Republican presidential nomination is still up for grabs in May, at the same time that Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., is trying to fend off a primary-election challenge by state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, “we won’t have seen anything like it,” Wolf said. “Republicans won’t sleep for a week afterward.”
