Republican delegates at a contested convention may end up imposing a running mate on the candidate they choose as their presidential nominee.
That means Sen. Ted Cruz could be nominated to head the ticket but be forced to accept businessman Donald Trump or Gov. John Kasich as his vice president. Equally, it could mean different versions of that odd-couple ticket — Trump-Cruz, or Kasich-Trump — leaving bitter rivals to do emergency repairs to their relationships after 2016’s especially divisive primary.
With only three months until the Republican convention in Cleveland, candidates who are devoting every ounce of effort to winning for themselves, have scant time to vet their veeps. If they arrive at the convention with a veep pick but without have clinched the nomination themselves, delegates could punish them for their presumption and give the nod to a rival.
Picking a running mate early could, anyway, repel voters in the heat of competitive primaries that are far from over.
But waiting until the nomination is secured means the choice will be made on the fly — whether by the nominee or convention delegates. Candidates may have to pick a tactical running mate just to win a majority of delegates and clinch the nomination. But delegates might equally use the open process to counter a nominee they don’t like by saddling him with a running mate of their choosing.
It’s a recipe for mayhem.
“Could the convention nominate somebody not to the liking of the candidate? And, the answer is, usually the candidate controls the convention so you don’t have to worry about that,” Ben Ginsberg, a veteran Republican elections lawyer, told the Washington Examiner.
“But here, things could be a little nuts,” Ginsberg emphasized. “Traditionally, the rules wouldn’t prevent delegates from nominating a candidate for vice president who the nominee doesn’t pick.”
This convention rules committee could bring some order to this process. The panel is to be comprised of 112 delegates and meet the week before the convention begins on July 18. It could approve a rules package that limits the power of the delegates as it relates to nominating a vice presidential candidate. But there’s no recent precedent for this situation — or for attempting to address it.
Under current rules and those passed for the 2012 convention in Tampa, Fla., nothing prevents a state delegation from placing more than one candidate for vice president into nomination. Delegates with competing loyalties or political agendas could conspire to nominate running mates specifically to counter rival candidates and upend their chances of cobbling together a 1,237 majority.
For example, should Trump be positioned to win, opponents of the New York billionaire could nominate a candidate for vice president that comes from the GOP’s so-called establishment wing. They might do this as a means to retain influence over the party if Trump is the nominee — or just meddle with his candidacy. Trump loyalists could do the same to Cruz, should the Texas senator be on the verge of winning.
Delegates and Republican National Committee rules experts say there is no roadmap for navigating a fight over vice president.
“In this current environment, where there is this tug-of-war over candidates’ ability to unify forces within the electorate in order to beat Hillary Clinton, the vice-presidential choice could be the deciding factor in the fight to sway delegates,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who advised 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
Trump leads the hunt for delegates, with 743. Cruz is his closest competitor and the most likely nominee if it’s not Trump; he had 517 delegates as of Friday but was poised to win dozens more in Colorado over the weekend. Kasich, Ohio’s governor and therefore the host governor at the convention, trailed with 143. It takes 1,237 delegates (50 percent, plus one) to secure the nomination.
In 2012, Romney began his search for a running mate search in early May, nearly four full months before he and his pick would be officially nominated. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, now the House Speaker, was unveiled as Romney’s vice presidential choice in mid-August, and spent the next two weeks on the road campaigning ahead of his nomination acceptance speech.
Current calculations for delegate accumulation in the Republicans’ 2016 primary project that it’s unlikely the party ends up with a presumptive nominee before the final primaries occur on June 7 — if at all. That leaves just six weeks until the start of the Cleveland convention. The GOP moved up their convention this cycle to allow their nominee earlier access to general election campaign funds.
“All the candidates should be vetting potential VPs starting about 8 weeks before the convention,” a Republican operative who is advising one of the candidates said on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly. This strategist cautioned: “It needs to be a private process.”
And, that’s part of the problem. Vetting multiple potential running mates properly isn’t something that can be kept under wraps.
Cruz, Kasich and Trump have to weigh the risk of picking a partner for the ticket that hasn’t been thoroughly scrubbed, versus the danger of doing the job right — if they have the resources to do so — and angering voters who interpret the move as prematurely measuring the drapes. Regardless, they could be forced, at the convention, to pick an individual not on their shortlist, out of political necessity or because of a vote by the delegates.
In interviews, experienced Republican operatives say the candidates really don’t have any choice other than to develop a list of possible running mates and proceed with comprehensive vetting. These operatives concede the awkwardness of doing so amid the remaining primaries and caucuses — especially for someone like Kasich, winner of exactly one primary (Ohio’s) and trailing far behind in delegates.
Of course, there’s also the question of whether potential vice presidential candidates are going to be willing to give a candidate, or more than one candidate, access to intensely personal information, like several years of tax returns, not even knowing if that individual is going to be the nominee. That could argue for selecting someone who ran for the GOP nomination this year, as there was at least some level of public vetting.
“I’d say you have to proceed to vet candidates with assumption you are going to win. I don’t see any other way around it,” said veteran Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, a senior Romney advisor in 2012. “I’d go in with my first couple of choices fully vetted with the appreciation that a deal may mandate otherwise.”
In 1976, the last time the GOP convention was contested, Ronald Reagan tried to snatch the nomination from President Gerald Ford by announcing his running mate ahead of time. Reagan, a conservative, picked centrist Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker in a bid to attract more delegates; the plan ultimately failed.
But this time around, there’s no incumbent president to strong-arm the process, as Ford did 40 years ago. Brad Todd, the Republican message guru who ran a super PAC that supported Bobby Jindal’s presidential bid, said the path different candidates take should be dictated by their needs at the convention.
Trump, he said, could benefit from mimicking Reagan’s move in 1976, and declaring his running mate well ahead of Cleveland. Cruz, who is likely to be in second place at the outset of the first ballot on the convention floor, might need to make a splash to ensure he can overtake the front-runner.
“The smart path for Trump is to pick his VP now. His brand is the guy who does not play political games and he needs to reassure wary conservatives that he will not govern as a squish,” Todd said. “For Cruz, who will need a lot more gained delegates in Cleveland than Trump, there’s an argument to pick Marco [Rubio] or Kasich as a bombshell on the eve of the convention.”
