#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Presidential Primary Movement (So Far and Yet to Come)

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

Presidential primary maneuvering in 2019 has gotten off to a slow start.

Obviously, the 2017 shift of the California primary weighs heavily on how one views primary movement for the 2020 cycle. And while states have changed the dates of presidential primary elections in years other than the year before the presidential election year -- like California, North Carolina and the District of Columbia have done for 2020 -- that sort of movement is the exception rather than the rule. States tend to act under a couple of primary conditions. First, legislators often wait for a period of time when there is either more urgency to move or more information to better position a contest on the calendar is available. That combination of urgency and information aligns best when newly-elected state legislatures convene after the midterm elections.

In other words, that is right now in the quadrennial cycle.

And yet, things are seemingly off to a slow start. There are at least a couple of reasons for that. For those with memories longer than just the last cycle, recall that 2011 saw a flurry of activity as a host of states with February (or earlier) contests codified in state law had to make changes to comply with new national party rules that no longer allowed February primaries. State legislatures shot out of the gate in early in 2011 and kept a constant stream of legislation going into the summer months.

But not every state played along with the new rules in 2012 and so the Republican Party in particular increased its penalties for violating the timing restrictions placed on states for scheduling their primaries and caucuses. Cleaning up that residual 2012 mess for the 2016 cycle again provided a more narrowly cast urgency to some states to move and comply with the rules.

Before 2015, four states -- Arizona, Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina -- had changed their dates for 2016. Two of those -- Arizona and Florida -- were rules breakers from 2012 and shifted back to compliant dates. Another, North Carolina, had moved to a more provocative, non-compliant position on the calendar. Combined, that alleviated some but not all of the state-level need to move. But by March 8, 2015, there still had been 20 bills introduced in state legislatures across the country, and while no state had officially moved in 2015, Florida was less than two weeks from codifying legislation to further clarify the date of the primary in the Sunshine state.

Early 2019 looks similar to 2015, but without the leftover rules breakers from the previous cycle. Yes, three states moved prior to 2019, two of them shifting a sizable chunk of delegates with them into earlier in March, but thus far just 16 bills have been proposed to change the dates of presidential primary elections in 2019 (and that includes the two 2016 caucus states, Maine and Utah, attempting to create and use presidential primaries for 2020). That is a far cry from the chaos of 2011.

Nevertheless, there are a handful of wildcards out there with the potential to add to the calendar logjam in March 2020. Colorado Democrats may be signaling a Super Tuesday primary, but that date can be officially set for any of the first three Tuesdays in March by the governor and secretary of state any time before September 1 this year. Georgia, too, grants the date-setting discretion to an officer outside of the legislature, the secretary of state. And new Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger (R) has until December 1 at the latest to settle on a date for the primary in the Peach state. Finally, New York remains a question mark. There have been some indications that a March date may be in the offing. However, that likely will not be settled until toward the end of the state legislative session in June if the past two cycles are any indication.

And keep an eye on the remaining Democratic caucus states as well. Those have tended to fall in the earlier part of the calendar in competitive cycles. Those states like Colorado and Georgia above could move into March outside of state legislatures where, so far, more attention has been granted to presidential candidate ballot access (proposed tax return requirements) than to maneuvering on the primary calendar.



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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Announcements: Sherrod Brown takes a surprising pass on a White House run.

2. #MoneyPrimary: Inslee is not shy about accepting super PAC support.

3. #StaffPrimary: This is not about recent hires by any campaign, but instead about the diversity among campaign managers on board with the various Democratic campaigns at this point.

4. #[Non]EndorsementPrimary: Unlike her rivals, Gillibrand is struggling to pull in home-state support. Part of this can be explained away by the fact that the junior New York senator remains in exploratory mode, but only part.  That does tell us something, but we can do better than a simple binary treatment of the aggregation of endorsement data. There are tiers even here. Which candidates have locked down their home state delegations? Which have not? There are degrees there that help us at this early stage to begin to differentiate between candidates. Booker, for instance, fits in the former category while Warren falls into the latter. That, too, tells us something or at the very least gives rise to questions of why the disparity between the two despite being from similarly-sized blue states. Anyway, we can do better than haves and have nots even at this point in time. But Gillibrand is certainly in have not territory here.

5. #EndorsementPrimary: Harris gains the support of three San Francisco area mayors and another from further south in Long Beach. The junior California senator also reeled in the support of DC's attorney general.

6. Travelogue: Sanders hit Iowa before he heads to New Hampshire this weekend. DeBlasio will continue his early state tour in South Carolina. Inslee stopped by the Hawkeye state as well.

7. Moulton is still mulling, now on national security grounds. Of course, this is terrain that Biden has begun to emphasize as well.

8. Hickenlooper states the obvious: finish strong in Iowa or New Hampshire or go home. That is true for him and just about every other Democratic candidate.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Is Bernie Sanders a Democrat Under the 2020 Democratic Rules?

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

The answer is yes.

But since Sanders has now thrown his hat in the 2020 Democratic ring, since the rules have changed a bit since 2016, and since this keeps coming up on the areas of social media still relitigating the 2016 Democratic primary (and with greater frequency on Sander 2020, day one), FHQ will weigh in on the matter.

But FHQ will weigh in with the goal of ultimately posing another, perhaps, more important question.

However, before that, let's first lay out what both the 2020 Democratic Delegate Selection Rules (Rule 13.K.1) and the Call for the 2020 Democratic National Convention (Section VI) say about who the party views as an eligible candidate for its nomination.

Both offer discretion to the DNC chair to determine who is a "bona fide Democrat" and an overlapping definition of what that means. Basically, a Democrat in the eyes of the Democratic National Committee is someone "whose record of public service, accomplishment, public writings and/or public statements affirmatively demonstrates that the candidate is faithful to the interests, welfare, and success of the Democratic Party of the United States."

The Call also adds that a candidate must affirm in writing that they are a member of the Democratic Party (something that does not require registration with the party), will accept the party's nomination, and run and serve as a member of the party.

[The candidate affirmation form can be found in Appendix E of the Call.]

All of this is the same basic framework Sanders and the DNC agreed to during the 2016 cycle. But it has now been formally added to the nomination rules of the party. If Sanders qualified in 2016, then he will qualify for 2020.

One member of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee placed some emphasis on the timing of the affirmation; that it is to happen upon the public announcement of candidacy. That is a fair point, but it raises a different question: Have any of the announced candidates followed this newly codified protocol and signed the affirmation form?

The answer is no. Sanders may be under the spotlight, but he is not the only candidate who has to submit the form. And none have done so as of yet because the DNC has yet to distribute the forms to the various announced campaigns. That will happen at a meeting the DNC has set up for next week.

But the initial question should be put to rest. Sanders is a Democrat under the new rules.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. #StaffPrimary: Sanders adds a campaign manager.

2. #MoneyPrimary: The Vermont senator also had a productive first 24 hours on the fundraising front.

3. #EndorsementPrimary: And although the fundraising was a bigger signal, Sanders was able to point to a handful of meaningful endorsements on day one. Patrick Leahy was among them. The senior Vermont senator brings Sanders Senate endorsement total to one, the same number he had in all of the 2016 cycle. [Note: Sanders already had the support of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA).] While that continues the trend of primarily home state support for the announced candidates, it is not the show of force a candidate returning for round two might otherwise want in an attempt at unifying the party behind him.

4. Gov. Baker (R-MA) is not yet ready to line up behind Weld 2020.

5. Delaney keeps plugging away in Iowa, opening a field office in Waterloo.

6. Sure, Biden leads in a South Carolina poll (and one in New Hampshire too), but at what point do we stop saying either 1) this is a reflection of name recognition and/or 2) state polls are largely reflecting national polls at this point? Not yet.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- The Difficulties in Harris Locking Down California

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the days that were...

It is not any secret that the Kamala Harris campaign is making every effort to make the senator's home state of California its strategic centerpiece.

There is no lack of elected Democratic officials in the Golden state, and Harris has rolled out a steady drip, drip, drip of endorsements from statewide office-holders to those in the state legislature. In addition, her campaign is stocked with those seasoned in California politics. And it should be noted that her home state is a known ATM for Democratic presidential nomination fundraising; one where Harris has already shown some promise.

In sum, that is a recipe -- home state with a natural fundraising base and elected officials and campaign staff are eager to get on board -- for an attempt at warding off the competition.

But, of course, that is much easier said than done. While Team Harris is attempting to make California in 2020 to her what Iowa was to Tom Harkin in 1992, that is no small task.

Why?

For starters, Harris is not to California now what Harkin was to Iowa in 1992: an experienced legislator. That has its pros and cons in presidential nomination politics to be sure. More importantly, however, California is not Iowa. There are too many delegates there for other campaigns to leave on the table; to cede outright to Harris. That will draw other campaigns in, but to what extent?

From the perspective of Sean Clegg, a strategist with the Harris campaign, the forecast looks something like this:

"We believe the early primary, early voting, and the cost of communicating will make it virtually impossible for all but the top two or three candidates to play in the state in a meaningful way."

There is a finite amount of money floating around out there, and two to three candidates (including Harris) making a legitimate statewide push in California sounds about right. Others may make a play at some specific congressional district delegates in the state, but that is a tougher move that requires the type of targeting, the know-how of which may be concentrated in only a few campaigns (the most resourced).

But that is the way to "beat" Harris in California: a serious challenger or two and a death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy from others. The goal? To minimize any significant delegate advantage the junior California senator takes from the state.

The last two competitive Democratic presidential nomination cycles have seen candidates establish small but durable delegate advantages early on. Obama in 2008 used a caucus strategy along with a post-Super Tuesday winning streak through the remainder of February to develop a lead in the delegate count that he never relinquished. Similarly, Clinton's strength among African American voters in the 2016 SEC primary states laid the groundwork for a delegate lead that never really contracted between her and Sanders.

If one is in the Harris campaign, then, California is absolutely part of a path of least resistance to a similar delegate advantage (assuming there are also victories -- actual or relative to expectations -- in the early states). But that sort of 80-100 delegate advantage in California alone is unlikely. In the past, it has required the winning candidate to approach or exceed 60 percent of the vote statewide in a contest with a significantly winnowed field. Now, strange things -- atypical to past nomination cycles -- may occur with a less winnowed field and a 15 percent threshold stretched across the allocation of statewide and congressional district delegates.

However, even if the opposition to Harris is able to minimize the delegates she gains from the Golden state any advantage may play into a larger delegate acquisition elsewhere on Super Tuesday. And if other candidates are drawn to spend money to close the gap with Harris in California, then those are resources not being spent elsewhere. It is that zero-sum game that provides Harris with a structural, calendar-based advantage at this point.

But it is an advantage that probably cannot hold up or be fully realized without some success first in February. And that success is built during the invisible primary.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Announcements: Sanders is in, skipping the exploratory phase counter to previous reporting. Weld is exploring on the Republican side. Tammy Baldwin is not running. Merkley signals that perhaps he is inching away from a White House bid.

2. #MoneyPrimary: Sanders has also joined the group of candidates who, after launch, have quickly taken in donations from all 50 states. Bullock's PAC has done some limited spending in the early states. Brown becomes the latest Democrat to shun corporate PAC money. One outside group is working to insure that a black candidate is on the Democratic ticket.

3. #StaffPrimary: Klobuchar adds staff in Iowa. And she is not the only one with a budding team in the Hawkeye state. Iowa is not the only early state where there is a battle for staff. South Carolina is witnessing its own race for campaign talent. Campaigns are looking beyond the first states too. Bringing on staff in California is a signal of the intricacies the Golden state adds to the early half of the 2020 calendar.

4. #EndorsementPrimary: Harris continues to notch notable California endorsements, adding the support of Gov. Newsom, Rep. Lee and activist, Delores Huerta. Delaney continues a small scale build up by adding more county chair endorsements in Iowa. And the chase is on for the endorsements of the newest members of Congress; the newest superdelegates.

5. Travelogue: Candidates spent quite a bit of time in Iowa and New Hampshire over the long the Presidents Day weekend. Among the candidates who have not been to either of the first two states yet, Bennet will make his maiden trip this week to Iowa.  Jim Clyburn's daughter has become a go-to shepherd for candidates trekking to South Carolina.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- The DNC Debate Qualification Rules Are In

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

The Democratic National Committee on Thursday filled in the remaining details about its upcoming initial round of presidential primary debates. Thus far, the party had announced the scheduling of the debates for the rest of 2019 and into 2020, but had remained largely mum on how candidates could qualify for entry other than to generally say entry would happen through polling and "grassroots fundraising".

That changed with today's announcement from the party.

For the most part, the DNC followed its rubric from 2016 with respect to the polling metric. Candidates can still qualify for a spot in the debate by registering at least one percent in at least three polls of which the party approves.

But in another innovation for the 2020 cycle, the DNC also added another marker candidates can hit to gain entry to the first debate(s). Modeled after the federal matching funds system in some ways, the DNC will also allow candidates who demonstrate a fundraising base of 65,000 donors spread across at least 20 states (with a minimum of 200 donors per state) into the debates as well.

That is a new spin on the matching funds system. The focus there has always been on the amount of money raised; at least $100,000 or $5000 in each of at least 20 states. But for debates entry, the metric is slightly different. The DNC is requiring some demonstration of grassroots support via fundraising, and is thus more focused on the breadth of the network of donors rather than the depth of that fundraising (the warchest accrued).

Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, for example, have all touted the fact that they raised money from all 50 states in the immediate wake of their announcements. Each is also above one percent in most polls that have been conducted to this point in the race. And that does raise a question  about where the bar is set for debates entry and whether there might be too many candidates to qualify.

The DNC answered that too.

Neither of the two randomly drawn debate fields for the first and second debate rounds in June and July will have any more than ten candidates on the stage at once. And if too many candidates qualify, the party will accept candidates who have met both qualification standards and use polling to differentiate further if necessary.

Left unanswered by the DNC is whether the qualifications standards will increase after July. The threshold announced will only apply to the first debates. But will the bar be raised when debates resume in September and incrementally go up thereafter? The debates will likely see the 20 slots filled in June and may serve at least some winnowing role as 2019 progresses. But if the threshold to qualify for debates progresses as well, then that winnowing role may be enhanced.



Related: 
On DNC Debate Requirements and Candidate Strategy

What Will a "Grassroots Fundraising" Threshold for Entry to Democratic Primary Debates Look Like?

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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Warren names a campaign manager. #StaffPrimary

2. Bill Weld is going to have something to announce at Politics and Eggs.

3. Although many have been sitting on the sidelines as the race comes a bit more into focus, big Democratic donors have been hearing from Biden. #MoneyPrimary

4. Swalwell appears to finally be on the verge of jumping in.

5. Gillibrand has made some hires, including someone recently on Sherrod Brown's reelection campaign in 2018. #StaffPrimary

6. Martha Coakley is raising money for Harris. As signals go, this is a former Massachusetts attorney general helping someone other than the Massachusetts senator in the race. #MoneyPrimary #EndorsementPrimary?

7. Klobuchar had some success raking in some money after her snowy announcement. The Minnesota senator raised $1 million in the two days after and with all 50 states represented. #MoneyPrimary


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Klobuchar, Minnesota and the Primary Calendar

Thoughts on some aspect of the invisible primary and links to the movements during the days that recently were...

Over the weekend, Amy Klobuchar announced her intentions to make a run at the White House. Some of the reaction has focused on a campaign in its infancy and its early focus on midwestern states. That is a reasonable general election strategy in light of Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin flipping to the red column and the loss of ground the party incurred in Minnesota (while still holding on there at the presidential level).

But as FHQ pointed out, this is not exactly a sound strategy in the presidential nomination process. While Iowa certainly kicks the process off, the midwest is underrepresented early in the 2020 presidential primary calendar. In some ways, this raises the stakes for Klobuchar in Iowa, but that is not anything that is unique to her. Many candidates will run Iowa-or-bust campaigns. But not all candidates will attempt to make a win in Iowa, whether outright or relative to expectations, about their strength in the midwest. Indeed, given the calendar, some candidates may point toward their performance in the Hawkeye state as appealing to a particular constituency within the broader party network that better aligns with the next contest or round of contests.

Yes, FHQ is oversimplifying things here, but with a purpose in mind.

Here is the thing: Klobuchar may get some helpful calendar clarity within a few weeks. Although the next midwest contests after Iowa are technically Michigan and Ohio on March 10, Minnesota may join Super Tuesday on March 1 of this year. Yes, the Land of 10,000 Lakes has made the transition from caucus to primary for the 2020 cycle, but part of that former caucus law carried over one important aspect of the caucus process: the scheduling portion. As under the old caucus system, the parties have the option of selecting and agreeing on an alternative date for the primary. If the two major parties either cannot settle on an alternative or refuse to select an alternative, then the date of the new presidential primary is set for the first Tuesday in March.

That would add Minnesota into the mix on Super Tuesday alongside California, Texas, North Carolina and others, and perhaps provide a midwestern -- and home turf -- contest for Klobuchar (or others) if they are able to survive the first month of contests.

As of now, there is no reporting out of Minnesota about any alternatives being considered, so March 3 is the odds on favorite for a landing spot for the new primary. One way or another, that will get locked in by March 1, 2019


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. In candidacy announcement news, both Warren and Klobuchar have officially thrown their hats in the 2020 ring. Bloomberg follows O'Rourke in setting the end of February as the deadline for a 2020 decision. Sanders, on the other hand, is likely to go the exploratory committee route in February before later launching a full-fledged campaign.

2. Several others are making moves on the periphery of the invisible primary. Moulton is mulling, De Blasio is going to take a trip up north to the Granite state (or not), Holder is set to give a speech in Iowa (and announce by the end of the month), Bennet is running early sate digital ads, Abrams is casting a wide net following her State of the Union response, and Swalwell continues to say a decision on his 2020 plans is close.

3. And then there are folks like Mitch Landrieu who are seemingly passing on a 2020 bid. Joe Kennedy fits that category as well. And both were really only mentioned as possibilities without doing many of the things associated with folks who run or consider running.

4. On the travel front, Klobuchar (see above) is seemingly making the midwest a focus with treks to Iowa and Wisconsin planned on the heels of her announcement. Gillibrand made her maiden voyage as a candidate to the Palmetto state, and Hickenlooper stopped in there as well. Buttigieg and Gabbard have hit Iowa following their announcements and Bullock is heading back that way for the first time since last August.

5. In the #MoneyPrimary, Klobuchar has joined the group of candidates swearing off corporate PAC money for the 2020 cycle. California remains a presidential nomination ATM, and that includes Hollywood. Booker has a super PAC aligned with his run, but does not want it. [The New Jersey senator also has a trip planned to fundraise in the Golden state.] And there is another story about Democratic donors playing the waiting game.

6. Harris continues to make moves in the #StaffPrimary. This time adding two more to her Iowa staff and both have experience with either Clinton's or Obama's past campaigns. The California senator has also hired someone with some fundraising chops, tacked on another veteran hand in New Hampshire, and added to her South Carolina operation. Harris is not alone. Warren, too, is assembling a team in the Hawkeye state. Even Hickenlooper has gotten in on the action in Iowa.

7. There still do not appear to be many breaks in the early #EndorsementPrimary trend. Announced candidates so far are getting support from home state elected officials. Klobuchar had a big showing of elected official support at her snowy rollout. Warren picked up the support of Joe Kennedy. Harris continues to rollout home state endorsements. Even Brown, through the Draft Sherrod movement, seemingly has some Ohio-based support. Gillibrand has thus far had no such luck. Not only is Governor Cuomo more focused on Biden's potential candidacy, but Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) appears to be following suit.

8. Meanwhile, the early states have not really heard much from Biden, but folks on Capitol Hill have. Strategists, however, have their doubts about a Biden run.

9. Money is not the only thing the candidates are after from California. Their campaigns are trying to figure how the Golden state fits into their 2020 strategies. That is an important story, but there is much to the consideration about how to tackle California.

10. Yes, the idea has been floated, but according to the South Carolina Republican Party, nothing has been settled with respect to canceling the presidential primary there in 2020. That decision will come later this year at the state convention.

11. Dave Hopkins nudges back on lanes and other schema for assessing the progress of the presidential nomination process.

12. Finally, Iowa Democrats have a draft delegate selection plan, and it looks like New Hampshire is satisfied that virtual caucuses do not equate to a "similar contest". Dave Redlawsk provides a synopsis of the changes and Jonathan Bernstein gives a big picture reaction as well.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Ranked Choice Voting in the New Hampshire Primary?

Thoughts on some aspect of the invisible primary and links to the movements during the days that recently were...

Last week's AP story on the bill that would bring ranked choice voting to the presidential primary in New Hampshire had made its way around enough that by the weekend several folks reached out to ask FHQ how well the plan, if adopted, would jibe with the longstanding proportionality mandate layered into the DNC delegate selection rules.

And my answer at the time was that it depends.

It depends on how the system is set up in the legislation. The classic conception of ranked choice voting is of the system determining one winner. It does this by reallocating votes from the least preferred candidates until one most preferred candidate emerges. This is how the system under its maiden voyage in Maine worked during the 2018 midterm elections.

But the goal is different under the Democratic presidential nomination rules. Reallocating votes until one winner is determined would be a system set up to allocate all of the delegates to the winner in a hypothetical New Hampshire primary run like Maine's elections were last fall. Clearly that would not fly under the provisions of the Democratic proportionality mandate.

And the New Hampshire bill is crafted with this in mind. Instead of reallocating votes until one winner is determined, the proposed New Hampshire system would cut the reallocation off at 15 percent. The votes of candidates with less than 15 percent of the vote -- statewide and in the congressional districts -- would be shifted to candidates above that threshold based on the ranked preferences of voters.

That would not only seemingly be consistent with the DNC rules requiring a proportional allocation of delegates but would allow all voters to weigh in on the ultimate delegate allocation. Under the current system of delegate allocation at the state level, only votes for the candidates above the 15 percent qualifying threshold count toward the allocation of delegates.

It is not clear that this bill will either gain traction in New Hampshire or pass muster with the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee. The idea of ranked choice voting never really came up in any meaningful way during the Unity Reform Commission deliberations on the 2020 rules during 2017 or when the baton was passed to the Rules and Bylaws Committee in 2018. It was, however, raised at the DNC meeting in Chicago in August 2018 that ultimately adopted the 2020 delegate selection rules. The motion to include ranked choice voting at the primary stage and at convention voting was dismissed, but not necessarily because there was no appetite for it. Rather, it late in the game to add something to the rules without the sort of consideration the rules that were changed received over a two year process.

This bill passing and being signed into law would force the RBC to weigh in on the matter, but that remains a ways and many steps in the legislative process in the Granite state away.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Big donors may still largely be on the sidelines, but Harris is finding some fundraising success in her own backyard. Brown is going to have to play catch up in the #MoneyPrimary. And Hickenlooper is going to have to expand his fundraising base beyond Colorado.

2. The #StaffPrimary has picked up steam over the last week. Gillibrand has made some Iowa hires. Harris tapped a couple of big names in Iowa to be a part of her campaign in the Hawkeye state. Inslee's PAC is advertising positions that sound like they may ultimately be a part of a presidential campaign. Brown has a campaign manager-in-waiting. Delaney has added staff in New Hampshire. And Booker has lined up an experienced crew across Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

3. Booker is officially in.

4. Harris' rollout has coincided with a couple of Californians bowing out of the 2020 race. LA mayor, Eric Garcetti, has done more of the typical things that prospective presidential candidates do. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has not other than going to New Hampshire and not quelling the discussions of him running. Both have now ended the discussion, and Harris is the only Golden state candidate still officially running. Swalwell may change that in the near future. #CaliforniaWinnowing

5. The #StaffPrimary is not the only component of the #InvisiblePrimary that is heating up. The first trickle of endorsements in the #EndorsementPrimary are starting to emerge. Harris has claimed a trio of House endorsements from members of the California delegation, most recently from Rep. Katie Hill and Rep. Nanette Barragan. Fresh off of his announcement, Cory Booker picked up a couple of Garden state endorsements from Senator Menendez and Governor Murphy. Meanwhile in Iowa, John Delaney has the support of a handful of rural county party chairs in the Hawkeye state. The early trend is inaction on the part of superdelegates, but the ones who are endorsing early are from the home states of the candidates who have announced. One exception is Harry Reid. His support of Warren is an endorsement without an endorsement. The only way to really test that is if Reid ends up helping some other candidate or candidates. Otherwise, he has endorsed Warren.

6. Is it Iowa or bust for Sherrod Brown?

7. Schultz passed on the Democratic nomination, but is heading to where the 2020 attention is.

8. Moulton remains mum on 2020 in New Hampshire.

9. Draft Beto hits New Hampshire as it awaits an announcement by the end of the month.

10. If the 2020 Democrats are strategically looking beyond the first few states on the primary calendar, it is not showing it in their travel itineraries. Warren is trekking to a series of states that have March 3 or earlier primary dates after her planned February 9 announcement. Gillibrand spent the last weekend in New Hampshire, and Brown was in Iowa. Harris, too, is hitting all four February states. And Booker is initially going to get to three of those four. And overall, candidates, announced or not, are visiting the Hawkeye state, and there is more to come in February.

11. Is Bill Weld going to challenge President Trump in the Republican primaries?

12. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign is looking to clamp down on the Republican nomination process in 2020 to ward off challengers.

13. Amy Klobuchar is going to Iowa and is maybe up to something else this coming weekend.

14. Finally, Biden is seemingly in campaign-in-waiting mode.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Howard Schultz, 2020 and Democratic Party Rules Changes

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the days that recently were...

A significant amount of chatter coming into the week on the heels of his 60 Minutes interview Sunday night was devoted to Howard Schultz potentially running for president. Not as a Democrat but as a centrist independent. And yes, that triggered a number of takes on the success of third party presidential bids and the potential impact of a center-left candidate on the 2020 general election race.

But rather than look forward and think about what may be (when there remains a great deal of uncertainty about whether a Schultz bid actually takes off in some meaningful way), let us look back and ask why or how it came to this. That, in and of itself, is a significant invisible primary story.

FHQ really is not compelled to think that Schultz started out here, thinking about an independent bid all along. Perhaps he did. However, it is more likely that he saw, felt or heard some hostility to a possible 2020 bid for the Democratic nomination. Sure, Schultz has added Bill Burton, formerly from the Obama orbit, to his team. But for every Burton addition that may signal some formal linkage to the party network, there are other signals -- potentially many other signals -- that that linkage was strained at best. There have not been any Schultz trips to typical early state haunts that mark the movements of the prospective candidates. There has not been any reporting of Schultz sending out feelers to the early states or actors within the broader Democratic Party network. And if there were it is entirely possible Schultz was rebuffed, signaling, if not hostility, then indifference to a run.

Those are all valuable signals, ones Schultz may have gotten.

But maybe the better signal came from the Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee this past summer. The rules adopted for the 2020 process last August included a formal codification of the basic agreement Bernie Sanders had with the DNC for the 2016 cycle: an affirmation that he [Sanders] would behave as a Democrat. That is the truncated version of that rule (Rule 13.K.1). And while much of the initial reaction to the Rules and Bylaws Committee deliberations about the change was about the potentially injurious effect it would have on Sanders for 2020, the true intent was less about Sanders and more about President Trump, or a Trump-like candidate on the Democratic side. What the party sought to avoid was either a Trump-like nominee or a sore loser who, having not secured the nomination, would support someone other than the Democratic nominee. This change was aimed at possible Bloomberg or Schultz candidacies.

No, FHQ is not suggesting that this change was precisely what drove Schultz to possibly launching an independent bid for president, but rather that it demonstrated some tension toward a run for the Democratic nomination, tension that has only heighten in the backlash to Schultz floating the idea. That hostility was there before.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. There has been an uptick in Iowa hires. Booker, Gillibrand and Harris have all added folks in the Hawkeye state.

2. The Post and Courier has a nice list of influential South Carolinians whose endorsements may matter in the Democratic nomination race.

3. The endorsement primary is underway. Harris pulled in a superdelegate endorsement from Rep. Ted Lieu and Delaney has added the support of a cadre of rural Iowa Democratic county chairs.

4. Meanwhile, other superdelegates are sitting on the sidelines and may remain there. Sen. Shaheen and the former Democratic presidents are waiting it out.

5. And they are not the only ones playing the waiting game. Big donors are continuing to be less than active so far.

6. Clinton has not closed the door on a 2020 run. Yes, that may be true, but it is also true that several of her former staffers from 2016 have already begun to populate the staffs of other campaigns for 2020.

7. Hickenlooper nixes a joint ticket with Kasich in Iowa.

8. And finally, Jeff Flake formally passes on a challenge to Trump for the Republican nomination.


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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Anxious in Iowa and New Hampshire?

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

If it is the year before a presidential election, then it is time once again for folks to wonder aloud about the role of Iowa and New Hampshire in the presidential nomination process.

No, this is not the strain that asks, and often too late, why are Iowa and New Hampshire first on the presidential primary calendar. The national party rules are set there and there are no direct threats to any of the four carve-out states at this time. Sure there are those who have raised the early voting window in California (and others who have urged caution there), but no state as of early 2019 is plotting to schedule a primary or caucus right on top of one or both of the two earliest states in the queue.

No, this is not about that.

Instead, it is another variant of the quadrennial strain of the Iowa and New Hampshire discussion, the one where some will wonder aloud whether this is the cycle that some candidate or group of candidates strategically looks beyond those states to other potentially more fertile electoral opportunities.

The New York Times' Jonathan Martin set off such a thread yesterday with this tweet:

The other big q looming over ‘20, that @LeahDaughtry gets at: will some (or 1) of candidates have a lighter footprint in heavily-white Iowa/NH, go harder Nev/SC before Super Tues? @KamalaHarris coming first to SC to speak to her fellow @akasorority1908 is no scheduling quirk

— Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) January 22, 2019

That, in turn, prompted New York Magazine's Gabriel Debenedetti cite worries in the Granite state...

there's real sensitivity to this already in NH, at least. The grumbling class operatives there are already lifting eyebrows at even the idea that there *might* be a perception that NH is at all sail-thru-able. https://t.co/NPkyV0ALV2

— Gabriel Debenedetti (@gdebenedetti) January 22, 2019

And The Guardian's Ben Jacobs to echo the same observation from the Hawkeye state.

Can confirm similar attitudes in Iowa https://t.co/9v5pkQilfo

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) January 22, 2019

And FHQ is not here to dispute any of those observations. But I would say that none of that anxiety is particularly abnormal in either Iowa and New Hampshire. In fact, one could even argue that it is somewhat natural reaction for Democrats and Democratic activists in those states on the heels of a contest in 2016 that had a limited field and to be followed by a cycle that is shaping up to have no lack of candidates (in 2019 anyway). In other words, it has been since 2008 there has been as wide open a field of candidates on the Democratic side.

Expectations, then, are fairly high for visits and lots of them.

And those visits are likely to come, but in combinations that may differ from the expectations. Look, candidates are not going to skip Iowa or New Hampshire. They may adopt a strategy similar to Mitt Romney's in 2012 and emphasize one over the other -- New Hampshire over Iowa in Romney's case -- but they are not going to skip either one entirely to focus on some state deeper into the calendar. That has very simply been too big a strategic risk in the post-reform era. Players just do not successfully skip steps in a sequential game. It runs the risk of empowering other opposing players; not all of them, but some of them.

And that brings this back to Leah Daughtry's point in that Martin tweet above, the part about a "lighter footprint" in Iowa and New Hampshire to focus elsewhere. While the perception may exist in each of those states that they may be missing out in some way, there is not a lot of evidence to back it up at this point. Yes, a lot of candidates are heading to South Carolina, but they are heading to Iowa and New Hampshire in droves as well.

Among the announced candidates alone, their early itineraries included the earliest two states. Warren spent her first weekend post-rollout in Iowa and then spent the next two in New Hampshire. Castro hit Iowa and Nevada before his announcement and New Hampshire after it. Gillibrand did Colbert, ventured back to New York and then headed to the Hawkeye state. And Harris may be going to South Carolina first and then California, but ends up in Iowa.

Perhaps a "lighter footprint" strategy will develop in some campaign or campaigns as 2019 progresses, but the early signs are not exactly pointing in that direction. Iowa and New Hampshire remain winnowing contests for the candidate who are further down the list and opportunities for those most viable candidates. The strategies of that latter group will reflect that, and that will become clearer the closer 2020 gets.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. South Bend mayor, Pete Buttigieg, is exploring a run.

2. Warren stops by Puerto Rico, which allocates delegates next year too.

3. New California governor, Gavin Newsom, has been testing digital messages outside of the Golden state in presidential general election battlegrounds.

4. The Harris campaign adding a number of former Clinton operatives is a noteworthy series of hires.

5. Klobuchar is reaching out to folks in New Hampshire to set up a potential visit.

6. Speaking of the Granite state, California congressman, Adam Schiff, has plans to head north.

7. Sherrod Brown is paying New Hampshire a visit as well, and his PAC has hired a former Sanders staffer.

8. One name to potentially strike -- perhaps in pencil -- from the list of those running for 2020 is Connecticut senator, Chris Murphy. He does not sound as if he is going to mount a bid.

9. Having stumped in Iowa already, Kirstin Gillibrand is taking the tour to South Carolina in the coming days.

10. Finally, Hickenlooper will rejoin the traveling party and trek back to Iowa.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- The Devil's in the Details of Any Iowa Caucus Rules Changes

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

Rules matter.

That is not anything that should come as revelatory from this site. The national parties have set their rules for the 2020 process and now the cycle has entered a phase where states are considering whether and how to adapt to those rules and their changes.

Iowa, in particular, is at a bit of a crossroads. On the one hand, the DNC instituted a bevy of new encouragements for caucus states in the 2020 cycle in an effort to broaden participation. But the state party in the Hawkeye state is also trying to remedy those problems that it diagnosed coming out of the 2016 cycle. And most of those had to do with the crush of participants that did or tried to caucus three years ago.

It is a bit of a double whammy, then, to have to show signs of broadening participation for the next cycle and simultaneously troubleshoot around even more potential participation the next time around.

One of the potential work-arounds proposed has been tele-caucusing, something Iowa Democrats tried on a more limited scale in 2016 among military personnel stationed abroad or outside of the state. But the party also planned for satellite caucuses as well as a means of accommodating those with conflicts with the exact timing of the caucuses.

But both of those efforts were targeted pretty narrowly and had only a small impact on the overall delegate allocation. The military tele-caucuses only affected the allocation of two state convention delegates while the satellite caucuses allocated three state convention delegates. Those were state convention delegates that had some say among the nearly 1300 state convention delegates in the ultimate allocation of the 15 statewide delegates (at-large and PLEO).

The questions that arise from that are fairly obvious:
1. Will the tele-caucuses be scaled up to affect the allocation of delegates at the county or state level in some way? If the expectation is that turnout will rise significantly over this ease of participation, then that has to be reflected in the impact it has on delegate allocation in some way.

2. Can the tele-caucuses be scaled up from the trial run in 2016? Yes, there was a trial run, but opening it up more would mean the logistics increase by an order of magnitude.

The first of those has a rules-based answer whose blank has not yet been filled by the Iowa Democratic Party. But the second is more of a leap of faith, or perhaps a trial by fire that can have rules crafted to address the front side, but reveal shortcomings under scrutiny on the back end.

First thing's first, however: let's see what Iowa Democrat specifically devise and then attempt to divine the potential impact.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Harris got a lot of bucks for the bang out of her presidential rollout.

2. Inslee was allowed into New Hampshire after all, and his timetable for a decision has shrunk.

3. Draft Beto has stretched into the Granite state now.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- How the 2020 Endorsement Primary Will Be Different

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the days that recently were...

It is not going too far out on a limb to say that any one aspect of a presidential nomination cycle is or will be different than it was in previous cycles. That is and has been the nature of the process in the post-reform era. Rules change. Candidates change. Conditions change.

2020, then, is not exactly like 2016 in the same way that 2016 was not a carbon copy, at least on the Democratic side, of 2008.

One area where 2020 will differ from 2016 is in how candidates running for 2020 accrue endorsements along the way. Much has been made of the rules changes the Democratic National Committee made with respect to superdelegates. That group of unplugged delegates was not eliminated, but their collective voting power at the national convention was curbed to some degree. However, left untouched by the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee was the ability of individual superdelegates to endorse candidates vying for the 2020 nomination.

In that way, superdelegates could play much the same role in 2020 that they have in previous cycles.

But the conditions of 2020 may augur against that. For one thing, there are far more candidates who are seemingly running this time around than four years ago. And there is also no clear frontrunner at this point in 2020 as there was in 2016. The clarity of Clinton's status was buttressed by the endorsements she had. At a similar point in 2015, the former secretary of state had 62 high profile endorsements. And that was before she had announced her bid.

No one candidate for 2020, announced or not, has anything approaching that level of institutional support. Joe Biden's name has been invoked by California senior senator, Diane Feinstein, and New York governor, Andrew Cuomo. And while that may be significant given that folks from those two states -- Harris from the Golden state and Gillibrand from the Empire state -- are running, the total falls far short of Clinton's from four years ago (if one can even consider those full-throated endorsements for Biden at all).

Again, however, with a larger field of candidates and no clear frontrunner, some of that is to be expected. But there may also be other forces at work here that are worthy of further consideration.

One that has been mentioned in light of the 2016 controversy over superdelegates and resulting rules changes that stemmed from that is that some elected officials in the position to endorse may opt to wait as others have in the past until after their constituents have voted (or all of the voting is complete). In some way, superdelegate decision making on the endorsement question is like that of the calculus that big money donors are facing now: wait for the dust to settle a bit and then weigh in.

Yet, the extent to which superdelegates may be frozen out of making an endorsement goes beyond that which donors are encountering. Some may be waiting on a signal rather than more actively/forcefully giving one; a reverse of the causal relationship noted in Cohen, et al. in The Party Decides.

Another aspect of this that I have not seen picked up on to this point is the reduced potential for high profile endorsements this cycle as (unfairly?) compared to the far less wide open 2016 cycle. And what I mean by that is there are already a fair number of superdelegates who are vying for the Democratic nomination in 2020. On a basic level, then, there are just fewer superdelegates to provide endorsements. Elizabeth Warren is not going to endorse Cory Booker anymore than Kamala Harris is going to throw her support behind Jay Inslee.

...at this time.

This, too, to some hypothetical extent has a freezing effect on other high profile would-be endorsers. Why support someone now only to see them withdraw from the race in the coming months? Why endorse a colleague/ally now over another colleague/ally?

In other words, there is a timing element to layer into this decision-making framework. The confluence of everything above may -- may -- give less incentive to early endorsements, but really increase the likelihood (and impact?) of later endorsements once the field has winnowed some and some of these superdelegates are culled from the pack.

In the meantime, there may be other endorsements to fill the void: state legislators. They may not meaningful on an individual endorsement basis, but in the aggregate may give us an idea of which candidates have some institutional support on the state level. And that may, in turn, influence where some of the heavier endorsement hitters wind up in the end.

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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Add Kamala Harris to the list. The California senator is officially in and not just exploratory committee in -- like Castro, Gillibrand or Warren -- but in in.

2. Brown's PAC continues to add staff in Iowa.

3. Recent speeches are giving the potential Larry Hogan challenge of the president for the Republican nomination some steam.

4. If his was a run *for* 2020, it was a very half-hearted run from Bob Casey that is now over. It never really got beyond the "I won't close the door on it"/"I'm thinking about it" stage.

5. Booker gets encouragement to run while in Louisiana and Georgia on his trips through the states on the way to South Carolina on the MLK holiday.

6. New Hampshire got a visit from Warren for the second consecutive weekend, and South Carolina will see her there this week.

7. Howard Schultz and his advisers floating the idea of an independent bid seemingly indicates an awful lot about how things are going for him in the Democratic invisible primary.

8. There were no endorsements, but one would rather have potentially influential Iowa Democrats at a  speech during a first trip to the Hawkeye state than not. Gillibrand had the state party chair and 2018 Democratic for secretary of state stop in.

9. Both Gillibrand and Harris are touting widely distributed fundraising successes following their presidential announcements.

10. Swalwell's Palmetto pitstop over the weekend gave a bit more of a glimpse into his thinking on a run.

11. Finally, Elaine Kamarck has a solid piece on the 2020 rules and the Democratic nomination. The only omission is some of the superdelegates/endorsements-related implications which were more controversial in 2016 and were not affected, at least not directly, by the changes for 2020.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- What Will a "Grassroots Fundraising" Threshold for Entry to Democratic Primary Debates Look Like?

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

Just prior to the holidays the Democratic National Committee released a schedule for upcoming presidential primary debates. The party at that time even included a contingency plan for the very real possibility that a slew of candidates have entered the race, forcing the party to have double-bill debates. Rather than follow the Republican big fish/little fish format from 2016, the DNC will instead randomize the selection of participants in each part of a two-tiered debate kickoff.

Outside of those provisions, however, the DNC remained relatively silent on the specifics of an important aspect of the process: how does one qualify? What measures will be utilized to separate participating presidential candidates from those who, well, do not measure up?

It was not that the announcement was without specifics, but they lacked definition. There were two main measures laid out and it was stated that the bar for entry would be kept low for the first debate (and likely rise over time).

Polling was listed as one component, but one that is not without drawbacks given a large field of candidates and the lack of, at this point in time anyway, a clear (and clearly separated) frontrunner. Any resulting polling-based threshold can end up rather arbitrary in such a scenario. What is to say that there is a true difference in sentiment for and between candidates sitting at or just above five percent in polls and those just below that level in the hypothetical situation where the cutoff is set at five percent? Well, not that much in many cases.

It is partly for that reason that the DNC has signaled that it will lean on other metrics as well to determine who gets in and who is left out of the initial two part debates. The other component is some demonstration of "grassroots fundraising". Outside of personal funds and money from PACs, super PACs and/or other groups, how much can/should a campaign pull in and how widespread should those donations be (in terms of from where they are coming)?

That remains an open question before the DNC at this point. But it is not coming into that discussion blindly. This same basic concept has been used elsewhere in the presidential nomination process.

Although it is more than a little outdated, other than for campaigns desperate for a cash infusion to stay alive, the federal matching funds system that in a bygone era helped fund presidential nomination campaigns sets a few markers that may serve as a baseline for the DNC as it continues its deliberations about debates qualifications.

The matching funds system continues to set a minimum of $100,000 raised across at least 20 states (at least $5000 in each) as the threshold for access to federal funding. No, serious candidates do not ultimately end up opting into that system anymore. They can far out-raise not only the threshold but their share and the match combined.

But that reality is beside the point in this setting. Candidates are not attempting to qualify for funding. Instead, they are attempting to do what the matching funds system was originally set up to accomplish: force the candidates and their campaigns to demonstrate wide enough support. Polling and widespread fundraising can build a more robust picture of that support than any one metric alone can.

Yet, that does leave one question unsettled; one with which the DNC will have to wrestle before it finalizes the rules likely in March. If the matching funds system is a starting point, then is the threshold it sets too low, too high, or just right for debate entry? And does the party use any of the information out there about the fundraising being done by candidates officially in or exploring a run up to that point? It is hard to imagine that data not making its way into and potentially influencing those discussions. And that may impact those who are already in versus those who are not at that point.

That may be problematic for a party coming off a cycle when accusations that it played favorites in 2016 continue to bubble up, not to mention the pressure it may continue to put on candidates to expedite announcement decisions.



Related: On DNC Debate Requirements and Candidate Strategy


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Gillibrand officially joins the fray.

2. Pete Buttigieg gets a lengthy profile in WaPo.

3. Sanders continues to staff up.

4. Expectations are already being set for Warren in New Hampshire.

5. Brown now has carve-out state trips planned, but any official announcement will have to wait.

6. Once openly talked about as potential presidential candidates in 2020, Stacy Abrams and Andrew Gillum are now being discussed as sought after endorsements and signal-givers for those candidates who have or will throw their hats in the ring.

7. Add Seth Moulton to the list of folks heading to New Hampshire.

8. Booker's travels take him to Louisiana, a state with a primary the weekend just after Super Tuesday.

9. Klobuchar's potential bid gets a thumbs up from her family.

10. Nate Silver has a coalition-building theory about the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

11. Kevin Collins responds with an alternative hypothesis centered on invisible primary resource acquisition.

12. A component of those resources is the team campaigns, nascent or otherwise, put together. There is only so much seasoned staff to go around in a large field, and potential staff are biding their time.


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.

#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- The 2018 Elections and The 2020 Presidential Primary Calendar

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the movements during the day that was...

As presidential nomination cycles have come and gone over the years, the stories change in terms of how states maneuver within that system and why. That is not to suggest that the collision of states and the decision-making conditions they confront is complete chaos every four years. Rather, the terrain is constantly shifting. That is true for a lot of electoral decisions that state legislatures make, and that includes how states position their delegate selection events -- primaries and caucuses -- on the quadrennial presidential primary calendar.

Eight years ago, nearly half the states in the country had newly non-compliant primary dates leftover from a 2008 cycle that saw a slew of states push into February and cluster primarily at the beginning of the month. When the national parties informally coordinated a later start to primary season for 2012, all those February states from 2008 had to make changes to state law.

And the result was at least somewhat predictable. State governments that were under unified Republican control shifted back their dates much less than did the handful of states that were controlled by Democrats after the 2010 midterm elections. Whereas Democratic-controlled states pushed back to traditional positions (California and New Jersey back to June) or positions later on the calendar (the northeastern/mid-Atlantic regional primary in late April), most Republican-controlled states ended up somewhere in March.

At least part of the motivation, then, was partisan. Decision makers in Republican state governments were preparing for an active nomination race and attempted to schedule their primaries for advantageous -- for voters and for drawing candidate attention -- spots on the calendar. Democratic decision makers had no such similar calculus. With no real competition for the Democratic nomination, decision makers in Democratic-controlled states could afford to shift back further in 2012 to take advantage of a new series of delegate bonuses the DNC built into their delegate selection rules for that cycle.

However, when the calendar flipped over four more times, the decision-making matrix at the state level was different for 2016. Both parties had varying levels of competitive races looming and again, acted in at least somewhat predictable ways. Republican-controlled states, already largely in early positions, saw minimal movement.

But Democratic side of the ledger was different. First even in 2014, before the 2015-16 legislatures had been elected, Democrats had a clear frontrunner for 2016 in Hillary Clinton. Second, after the 2014 midterms, there were only a handful of states with unified Democratic control. That is a recipe for little movement, and, in fact, none of those seven Democratic states made any changes for the 2016 cycle.

So as the process heads into 2019, what does the balance of power look like in states across the country for 2020?

For starters, the number of Republican-controlled states is similar to 2015. While there were 23 states with unified Republican control in 2015, there are 22 in 2019. However, there are more Democratic-controlled states now than four years ago and the gains came not from Republican states, but from those with control divided in some way, whether inter-branch or intra-branch.

Not only has the map of partisan control changed, but so too have the conditions under which these decisions are made. Like 2011 or 2015 for Republicans, Democratic decision makers in 2019 seemingly have a wide open and competitive nomination race on the horizon. Those actors, like Republicans in the recent past, have incentives to potentially shift around the dates on which their presidential primaries are held.

That incentive was great enough that California moved from June to March for 2020 back in 2017, an atypical time in the cycle to make such a move.

And that incentive could be enough to motivate the cluster of Democratic-controlled states in the northeast to coordinate an earlier cluster of contests; the inverse of 2011. There is already some evidence that a western regional primary could form in a position just a week after Super Tuesday.

On the Republican side the motivation is different, and not exactly like what Democrats faced in 2011. Yes, defending the president is chief among the concerns of Republicans like the Democrats of eight years ago. However, the defense is potentially different. Democrats, with no real threat of a challenge to President Obama, made moves potentially with the general election in mind; to attempt to influence who emerged as Obama's opponent.

Republican legislators may act, but with the nomination phase in mind; to ward off a challenge to the president. This may happen, as was the case eight years ago on the Democratic side, at the behest of national Republican actors, but it will take place at the state level.

Does that mean Republican-controlled states unilaterally pull back and set later dates? That would be an historical anomaly. States have not typically done that except in situations where it has meant consolidating separated primaries in order to reduce costs; save a line on the state budget. But in more polarized times, both nationally and increasingly in state legislatures, the rules may be different.

It is early in the 2019 state legislative sessions, but it is there that these calendar decisions will be made, and begin to provide a picture of what the 2020 presidential primary calendar will eventually look like.


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Elsewhere in the invisible primary...

1. Gillibrand end last week with a flurry of activity, whether it was lining up potential campaign headquarters, planning trips to Iowa, staffing up, or privately signaling her intentions.

2. She's not the only one headed to Iowa. Brown is going to visit the Hawkeye state too.

3. Swalwell is taking a late January trip to New Hampshire.

4. Inslee is taking flak back home from Republicans and from some New Hampshire Democrats.

5. In West Virginia, announced Democratic presidential candidate, Richard Ojeda, is resigning his state Senate seat to run for president.

6. Meanwhile, Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is in.

7. So is Julian Castro.

8. And DeBlasio isn't closing any 2020 doors, but, boy, is the clock ticking and the alarm may have already sounded for statements about door-closing/considerations being either serious or taken seriously.

9. Warren continues to add staff. This time some New Hampshire staff additions were announced while Warren was visiting the Granite state.

10. If Biden's walking, he's running [for 2020].


Has FHQ missed something you feel should be included? Drop us a line or a comment and we'll make room for it.