Rand Paul, John Yob seek to circumvent Mich. presidential voting process

With Sen. Rand Paul’s top campaign strategist leading the way, a plan to shun the official 2016 Republican presidential primary in Michigan in favor of a “closed” convention or caucuses is up for approval on Saturday by state GOP officials.

The March 8 primary, open to all registered voters, was created by the GOP-controlled state Legislature and it will include the Democratic Party’s presidential primary. Republican insiders who oppose this process say they fear devious Democratic cross-over voters will cast ballots on the Republican side to skew the results.

But some GOP activists believe that the effort, led by Paul’s national political director, John Yob, is designed to circumvent Michigan’s traditional voting process to the advantage of the Kentucky senator.

Yob

Yob, a nationally-known political operative from Grand Rapids, has become quite adept at kneading the arcane party rules from state to state that ultimately decide who will be seated at the national convention.
The Michigan Republican State Committee, gathering in Boyne Falls this weekend, will vote on a resolution to ignore the open primary. That would lead to second step in which the party leaders would create a nominating process that may rely on a tiny sphere of eligible voters – the 2,000 GOP precinct delegates across the state.
Under the plan, precinct delegates would gather at a convention to make Michigan’s choice for president on the Republican side of the ballot, or they would hold closed caucuses to do the same.

1 million votes in 2012

 

In the last presidential primary, held on Feb. 28, 2012, more than 996,000 Republican votes were cast. Beyond the disenfranchisement of nearly 1 million voters, critics of the proposal point out that senior citizens, active-duty military personnel and college students who normally vote by absentee ballot would not be represented in the nominating process at all.

In his column this week for The (Mount Pleasant) Morning Sun, GOP consultant Dennis Lennox laid out the very real possibility that the extended, provincial  process of selecting Michigan’s national convention delegates could result in the winning candidate coming up short.
“This can happen because the actual delegates to the Republican National Convention are selected well after the primary under a three-stage process involving county-level conventions, congressional district caucuses and ultimately a state convention,” Dillon Breen, Wayne County Republican Committee chairman, told Lennox. “What this means is that someone other than the winner of the primary could emerge around this time next year controlling the delegates despite having lost the actual vote.”

Lennox told Politically Speaking that he understands the concerns about cross-over voting by Democrats in an open primary, but he opposes the proposed solution.

"While pretty much all Michigan Republicans want a more closed process there's just no real mechanism to do this for next year, not least because the rules are in place and the game is already underway,” Lennox said. “The real crisis is going to emerge after the presidential primary, when a well-organized campaign could win the delegates to the national convention even if they lost the primary election vote."

Yob, following his 2012 playbook for presidential contender Rick Santorum, appears ready to focus intently on the machinations involved in that complex post-primary/caucus process of selecting convention delegates. The extent to which Yob is working the system in Michigan is represented by an obscure use of his political action committee to benefit a Macomb County GOP official.

A curious campaign contribution

According to Secretary of State campaign finance records, Yob’s PAC donated $2,500 to Stan Grot’s unsuccessful campaign for state representative last year during the final push before the August primary. Grot is the GOP 10^th Congressional District chairman and the Shelby Township clerk, but he’s had no ties to Yob.
Then something curious happened. On March 23, Yob donated $2,500 to his PAC, Value for Michigan, and later that same day the PAC donated $2,500 to Grot’s campaign committee for clerk. Prior to that donation, Yob’s PAC was tapped out, with just $194 in the bank at the end of the 2014 campaign season. The $2,500 is the only contribution made to the PAC since 2014, the campaign records show.

Grot

At the same time, Grot is not up for re-election for another 18 months. The clerk, in his capacity as a district chair with a seat on the State Committee, emailed two strongly worded letters to GOP committee members – on March 13 and April 7 -- urging them to support Yob’s plan to cast aside the open primary.

Yob could not be reached for comment.

Grot insisted that he was acting on what he believes is best for the party, and Yob did not influence his email letter-writing campaign.

“I’m not necessarily a fan of John Yob,” said Grot, who indicated that he is undecided in his 2016 choice for president. “It just so happened that John Yob and I agree on this issue.”

The GOP State Committee maintains detailed conflict of interest rules designed to block undue influence of committee members, including campaign contributions and cash compensation. But those rules apparently are not enforced. The party’s Policy Committee, which is charged with enforcing the rules, includes several paid political operatives who routinely play a role in election campaigns.

Former Macomb County GOP chairman Rob Montilla, who has tangled with Grot in the past, said a municipal clerk should not attempt to block the path to voting for 1 million people by engaging in “misleading rhetoric.”
“This ploy to change the GOP presidential primary process is about intimidation, control and influence-peddling and is not in the best interests of our state and country,” said Montilla, chair of the Republican Committee of Northern Macomb County.

Supporters of a closed nominating process argue that the precinct delegates elected in the August 2014 primary are grassroots representatives of the party, a cross-section of Republican loyalists statewide, and they would act accordingly when choosing a presidential nominee.

However, most August primary voters ignore the candidates for precinct delegates, which are relegated to the bottom of a lengthy ballot. What’s more, many of these delegates run unopposed and many precincts have no delegate due to a lack of candidates.

Cross-over fears overblown?

 

When they meet Saturday, State Committee members will also have to ponder whether the argument for a closed process no longer holds up.

When the idea was first pushed months ago with Yob leading the way, some Republicans insisted that the $10 million price tag for a state-run primary election was an unnecessary burden on taxpayers. Now that the Michigan Democrats have decided to join in the March 8 election, the $10 million will be spent regardless of what the GOP decides.
Earlier this year, Republican strategists feared that the 2016 Democratic race would be a foregone conclusion, with former secretary of state Hillary Clinton as the presumptive nominee, which would encourage cross-over voting.

But Clinton now faces a surprisingly robust challenge from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has quickly demonstrated an ability to raise large amounts of campaign funds through small donations.

What’s more, with approximately 20 candidates on the GOP side of the ballot and very little incentive for any contenders to drop out, a Democratic scheme to vote in the primary for a weak Republican candidate would likely be split up several ways and have very little impact.  

Perhaps the biggest worry for the State Committee may be that the proposed solution, essentially silencing the voice of much of the GOP electorate in a key state in a key presidential election, is far worse than the potential problem at hand.