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All states need primaries to short-circuit shenanigans

Voters enter and exit Crystal Spring Elementary School during the primary election on Tuesday, March. 1, 2016 in Roanoke, Va., Voters from Vermont to Colorado, Alaska to American Samoa and a host of states in between were heading to polling places and caucus sites on the busiest day of the 2016 primaries.
Voters enter and exit Crystal Spring Elementary School during the primary election on Tuesday, March. 1, 2016 in Roanoke, Va., Voters from Vermont to Colorado, Alaska to American Samoa and a host of states in between were heading to polling places and caucus sites on the busiest day of the 2016 primaries. ERICA YOON The Roanoke Times

On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced that he was running for president as a Republican.

On Aug. 21, 2015, a 24-member Republican committee in Colorado decided that there would be no presidential primary in 2016 for fear it would be won by a side-stream candidate, as happened in 2012. Instead, delegates would be selected at local caucuses. Ted Cruz walked away with these delegates. Now the Colorado Republican Party is planning to reinstate the presidential primary.

This reminds me of what happened when I lived in Maryland.

In 1966, George P. Mahoney won the Democrat nomination for governor. Mahoney was an outspoken segregationist. The Democrat Party was severely split and the election for governor was won by the Republican candidate, Spiro Agnew.

The Maryland Democrat Party was greatly embarrassed, and feared that Mahoney might win the 1968 presidential primary. So the Democrat-controlled state legislature moved the primary to after the nominating convention.

The result was convention delegates were selected by party officials.

I was a member of a small group of Marylanders who struggled to restore the presidential primary. But nothing was done.

When time for the convention came, Richard Nixon led the Republican contest with 656 delegates, but needed 667 to win. Ronald Reagan had only 182 delegates. Agnew led the Maryland delegation and when the role call came to him, he announced, "Maryland votes for Nixon." This put Nixon over the top. When Nixon announced his choice for vice president, it was Spiro Agnew.

Thus the tinkering paid off for Nixon and Agnew, who went on to win the general election, but it did nothing for the Democrats. Soon after that, the state legislature restored the presidential primary.

Let us hope that in the future all states will have a Presidential Preference Primary with delegates bound by the results (as required by the RNC).

Ken Geisinger

Bradenton

This story was originally published April 22, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "All states need primaries to short-circuit shenanigans ."

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