GOP Presidential Candidate Shortcut to Every State’s Ballot Guide

In an un­pre­ced­en­ted ef­fort aimed at lev­el­ing the play­ing field for can­did­ates and erasing the ad­vant­ages held by bet­ter-fun­ded cam­paigns, the Re­pub­lic­an Na­tion­al Lawyers As­so­ci­ation (RNLA) has spent the last nine months build­ing a com­pre­hens­ive data­base of bal­lot-ac­cess guidelines for the 2016 nom­in­at­ing sea­son, and dis­trib­ut­ing the find­ings, free of charge, to each of the GOP pres­id­en­tial cam­paigns.

The re­port, called the Bal­lot Ac­cess Ini­ti­at­ive, is an in­valu­able cheat sheet for cam­paigns, provid­ing them all the in­form­a­tion ne­ces­sary to com­pete in each of the 56 voti­ng jur­is­dic­tions: dead­lines, fil­ing fees, sig­na­ture thresholds, and oth­er fine-print language that has thwarted past cam­paigns. Where­as bal­lot ac­cess has long im­posed a win­now­ing ef­fect on primary fields, the Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates in 2016 will be equipped with an ex­traordin­ary re­source that has po­ten­tial to ex­tend the life of their cam­paigns.

More than 300 pages if prin­ted out, state-by-state, and capped with a me­tic­u­lous, col­or-coded sum­mary spread­sheet, the ini­ti­at­ive rep­res­ents the most sweep­ing bal­lot-ac­cess pro­ject in GOP his­tory, party of­fi­cials said.

The re­port was dis­sem­in­ated on a rolling basis over the last three months to each of the GOP cam­paigns, and has now been dis­trib­uted in its en­tirety, save for some forth­com­ing up­dates to re­flect rule changes be­ing con­sidered in a hand­ful of states. To put a bow on the pro­ject, the RNLA, an or­gan­iz­a­tion of 5,000 prac­ti­cing at­tor­neys na­tion­wide, in­vited the coun­sels from each of the pres­id­en­tial cam­paigns to New York City last month for a brief­ing on the pro­ject. The only ex­cep­tion was Jim Gilmore, which RNLA or­gan­izers at­trib­uted to his late en­trance in­to the race.

Ul­ti­mately, 12 of the 16 in­vited cam­paigns sent a rep­res­ent­at­ive, in most cases the Gen­er­al Coun­sel, to the RNLA sum­mit at the New York Mar­ri­ott Down­town. There, they got con­firm­a­tion of something that seemed too good to be true: An out­side or­gan­iz­a­tion was provid­ing them a road map to ac­com­plish one of the most daunt­ing tasks in Pres­id­en­tial polit­ics, and do­ing so free of charge.

“We’re try­ing to es­tab­lish ourselves as a re­source for Re­pub­lic­ans to spend their hard-earned money on sub­stant­ive is­sues, versus get­ting on the primary bal­lots,” said RNLA Ex­ec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or Mi­chael Thielen, who served as li­ais­on between his or­gan­iz­a­tion and the cam­paigns, and helped brief them in New York.

How much money? Ac­cord­ing to Stefan Passantino, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based at­tor­ney who served as co­chair­man of the Bal­lot Ac­cess Ini­ti­at­ive, the num­ber reaches eas­ily in­to the six fig­ures.

It typ­ic­ally costs “tens of thou­sands of dol­lars in dir­ect re­search costs to the cam­paign,” Passantino said. “When you com­bine that with the ad­di­tion­al costs in­curred in hav­ing to hire pro­fes­sion­al sig­na­ture-gather­ers be­cause of an in­ab­il­ity to fully al­loc­ate vo­lun­teer re­sources at the out­set, the amount un­doubtedly ex­tends to six fig­ures.”

The Bal­lot Ac­cess Ini­ti­at­ive was con­ceived by a Gin­grich vet­er­an. Randy Evans, the RNLA’s Chair­man and a seni­or ad­viser to Gin­grich’s cam­paign, along with Larry Levy, the RNLA’s pres­id­ent, who served as Gen­er­al Coun­sel to Rudy Gi­uliani’s 2008 White House bid.

In Decem­ber of 2014, after the midterm elec­tions had con­cluded and with at­ten­tion
be­gin­ning to shift to the up­com­ing Pres­id­en­tial cam­paign, Evans and Levy com­mis­sioned the pro­ject. They had the bless­ing of the RNLA board, as well as the Re­pub­lic­an Na­tion­al Com­mit­tee, with the un­der­stand­ing that the re­port would be com­pleted by sum­mer’s end and dis­trib­uted to the cam­paigns for free.

Gen­er­os­ity for its own sake may seem rare in polit­ics, but in this case, there’s no catch or caveat. Every­one in­volved with the pro­ject in­sists the goal is simply to level the play­ing field between can­did­ates, and spare the cam­paigns much of the time, en­ergy, and money ex­pen­ded in cycles past.

With all the re­main­ing cam­paigns now pos­sess­ing a how-to guide for get­ting onto every bal­lot, it’s plaus­ible that many second and third tier can­did­ates could qual­i­fy for con­tests they oth­er­wise wouldn’t have, thus pro­long­ing the primary sea­son.

This would seem­ingly coun­ter­act the stated goal of the RNC, which has re­duced the num­ber of de­bates and com­pressed the primary cal­en­dar with the ul­ti­mate goal of short­en­ing the nom­in­at­ing sea­son and pro­du­cing a nom­in­ee early. So why would the RNC green-light a pro­ject that could po­ten­tially achieve the op­pos­ite?

An RNC spokes­per­son stressed that the na­tion­al party played no role in the RNLA ef­fort. But of­fi­cials in both groups con­firmed that the RNC was con­sul­ted at the out­set of the pro­ject, and said there was co­ordin­a­tion throughout. This was at­trib­uted in large part to the over­lap between the two en­tit­ies, start­ing at the top: Evans, the RNLA Pres­id­ent, also serves as the RNC com­mit­tee­man from Geor­gia; and RNC Gen­er­al Coun­sel John Ry­der is vice chair­man of the RNLA’s ex­ec­ut­ive com­mit­tee.

Simply put, RNLA of­fi­cials said they share the RNC’s goal of choos­ing a nom­in­ee quickly, as long as the can­did­ates are al­lowed to com­pete un­der equal cir­cum­stances.

The Bal­lot Ac­cess Ini­ti­at­ive is no guar­an­tee of uni­ver­sal suc­cess. Hav­ing all of the in­form­a­tion is only half the battle; cam­paigns must now ex­ecute on the play­book handed to them by the RNLA. And, oddly, sev­er­al of the cam­paigns didn’t both­er send­ing any­one to New York for last month’s brief­ing. Ab­sent were rep­res­ent­at­ives from the cam­paigns of San­tor­um, Lind­sey Gra­ham, Rick Perry, who has since dropped out of the race, and Don­ald Trump, though RNLA of­fi­cials em­phas­ized that Trump’s cam­paign coun­sel, former Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion Chair­man Don­ald McGahn, has worked closely with them, and that he missed the sum­mit due to a schedul­ing con­flict.

It’s es­pe­cially not­able that San­tor­um, whose bal­lot struggles hindered his anti-Rom­ney surge in 2012, did not send any­one to the RNLA sum­mit. San­tor­um spokes­man Matt Beyn­on said the cam­paign “is well aware of the chal­lenges we faced four years ago” and now has “a cam­paign coun­sel as well as sev­er­al staff mem­bers ded­ic­ated to bal­lot ac­cess.”











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker