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FEBRUARY 29, 2016
Weekly
THE
NEXT
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PRESIDENT IS...
TABLE OF CONTENTS ||| FEBRUARY 29, 2016
VOLUME 74 NUMBER 7
COVER STORY: FRACTURED REPUBLICANS
14 What If
Paul Ryan
Had Run?
16 Delegate
Balance
for GOP
The Republican establishment’s last stand against Donald Trump could come in Cleveland
FOREIGN POLICY
K STREET
DEPARTMENTS
Our Man in Cuba
8
Column
CQ Now
Influencers
Data Bank
State Report
Endpoint
The U.S. chief of mission
in Havana looks ahead
STATE REPORT
Utah Lands Fight
27
Obama’s conservation
legacy is threatened
CORRECTION: A graphic in the Feb. 22 CQ Weekly
should have indicated that drones are prohibited
within 15 miles of Reagan National Airport.
4
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
Hitting the Trail
24
Lobbyists pitch policies,
candidates on the road
7
8
12
23
27
30
Cover and inside cover:
photo illustrations by
Marilyn Gates-Davis.
Page 3: Win McNamee/
Getty Images; This page:
top left, Bill Clark/CQ Roll
Call, top right, Ethan Miller/
Getty Images; bottom:
Al Drago/CQ Roll Call
DAVID ELLIS
CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER
CQ WEEKLY
CQ NEWS
MARCIA MYERS
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6
MELINDA HENNEBERGER
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
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KATE ACKLEY ||| CHECKS AND BALANCE
Wealthy Candidates
Are Still ‘Big Money’
“I’m self-funding my
campaign.”
“I’m not taking special
interest money. ”
“I’m not taking lobbyist
money.”
T
hese Donald Trump
lines are as recognizable as his signature
mop of hair. But the
veneer of escaping all pressure
from special interests is myth,
not reality.
The rare, self-financing candidates who actually win federal office have plenty of other
people’s money mixed into their
coffers — at least by the time
they seek re-election. Trump
already has poured $17.5 million of his money into his White
House bid and collected another
$7.4 million from individuals,
including a bit from K Street lobbyists. Even if he took no outside
money for this race, that doesn’t
ensure the real estate mogul
would overhaul a campaign finance system universally seen
as broken.
Trump’s rhetoric against big
money, corporate cash and lobbyist influence in American politics appeals to voters angry with
Washington and intrigues even
some in the campaign finance
crowd, whose flirtation with his
message seems risky.
How can a (mostly) selffunding billionaire rid the
nation of its worries about too
much big money in politics?
“It’s complicated,” acknowl-
Once elected,
most self-funders
eventually turn to
donors for cash
edges David Donnelly, president
and CEO of campaign finance
group Every Voice, which favors
publicly funded elections. The
group has touted Trump’s surge
as evidence that voters want
candidates who are not beholden to big-money interests.
Even though Trump is big
money himself, Donnelly says
his talk of political fundraising
and its perils helps the campaign
finance cause by raising the issue’s profile. But the billionaire’s
call to temporarily ban Muslims
from entering the country and to
erect a wall on the border with
Mexico go against Every Voice’s
other drive to expand civic participation, Donnelly says.
Rep. John Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat who is pushing
for a campaign finance overhaul, says Trump’s messaging
has some appeal. “Trump says,
‘Elect me, I’m not bought and
sold by anyone,’ ” Sarbanes says.
“But they [his supporters] don’t
think through what’s the implication for giving the power to
Trump.”
Self-funding candidates who
have won election to Congress
have frequently paid themselves
back or gone on to raise money
from outside sources, instead of
revamping the system.
Florida Republican Rep. Curt
Clawson, a retired automotive
manufacturing executive, put
nearly $3 million into his 2014
special election. This cycle,
many of his contributions come
from people who work in law
firms and the real estate and financial sectors, according to the
Center for Responsive Politics.
Rep. John Delaney, a Maryland Democrat who made a
fortune as an entrepreneur in
health care and other businesses, self-funded more than 40
percent of his 2014 campaign,
according to CRP data. So far in
the 2016 cycle, he’s contributed
just 9 percent of his total funding
and received contributions from
donors who work in securities,
real estate and law.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who ran a
plastics manufacturing firm he
founded with his brother-in-law,
provided $9 million for his 2010
effort but has been collecting
outside money while in office.
He said in 2014 that he wouldn’t
self-finance his re-election bid.
“They don’t spend their own
money twice,” quips Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy
21, which advocates for changes
in the campaign finance system.
Even if Trump — or any other
candidate wealthy enough to
bankroll his or her bid — took
no one else’s money, it would
do nothing to quell the outrage
that has so dominated this election cycle. That’s because the
anger is about a system viewed
as rife with inequality in which
only those with mega-bucks can
influence the political system. If
only the 1 percent can afford to
run for office, that’s not reform.
Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch
and a proponent of a campaign
finance law rewrite, says she
supports how vocal Trump
has been about “the problem
of money in politics.” But, she
adds, self-funding represents “a
different kind of bad.”
K Street denizens also see hypocrisy.
“Yes, Trump, you’re a billionaire, but most of us in this
country are not able to run for
office without having some support from some people, and that
doesn’t mean it should be automatically deemed as corrupt,”
says Paul Miller, who once led
the group formerly known as the
American League of Lobbyists.
If Trump were to become
president, Miller expects he’d
follow a similar path as other
outsiders and self-funders: “The
moment they win, they hire
inside Washington for policy
and fundraising work. If Trump
wins, there will be lobbyists.”
Kate Ackley covers lobbying
for CQ Roll Call
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
7
CQNow
Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images
@CQNow
CHARGE
D’AFFAIRES:
DeLaurentis is the
U.S. chief of
mission in Cuba.
Our Man in Havana
Jeffrey DeLaurentis looks to make Cuba ties permanent
8
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
very different this time,” DeLaurentis notes.
The Obama administration is
still bound by the U.S. economic
embargo, which only Congress
can lift — and won’t, at least anytime soon. But with agreements
on travel to and from the island
and more businesses scouting
out opportunities, the administration’s intention is to leave in
place a rapport that will last.
“The objective for us now is to
make enough progress in all the
A LEG UP:
Many in Cuba
embrace U.S.
relations.
Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images
When Barack Obama arrives
in Cuba next month, the first
U.S. president to visit since Calvin Coolidge in 1928, he will try
to cement his administration’s
expanding ties with the communist country.
It’s a mission that U.S. officials on the ground in Havana,
led by Jeffrey DeLaurentis, have
undertaken since 2014, when
Obama moved to restore diplomatic ties after half a century.
DeLaurentis, 61, is a career
Foreign Service officer and runs
the new U.S. embassy in Havana. He says the president’s
March 21-22 visit will send “a
strong signal of a new start between our two countries.”
When Coolidge landed in
Cuba, the president “arrived on
a battleship, so the optics will be
areas we’re working on to make
the whole policy and the change
irreversible,” DeLaurentis says.
Most of the GOP presidential
candidates — especially Sens.
Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco
Rubio of Florida — have blasted
Obama’s thaw with the island
nation. Both Rubio and Cruz
have Cuban heritage. Cruz
called the opening of the U.S.
embassy there “unacceptable.”
By contrast, the Republican
front-runner, Donald Trump,
said he’s fine with the détente.
The top Democratic contender,
former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, has called on Congress
to end the embargo.
Jake Colvin, a vice president
with the National Foreign Trade
Council, a lobbying group, says
DeLaurentis has helped U.S.
companies that are interested
in exploring the Cuban market. “He’s someone who’s wellrespected in Cuba, and we’ve
certainly been impressed with
his efforts,” Colvin says.
DeLaurentis says the Cuban
people have embraced the new
ties with America and enjoy the
attention from high-level officials. DeLaurentis’ background
includes postings in Washington, at the United Nations and in
Colombia and Geneva.
“He’s definitely not a man of
pomp and circumstance,” says
James Williams, president of the
pro-trade business group Engage Cuba. “He’s very grounded, down to earth.”
DeLaurentis says he’s enjoying greater access to Cubans
from all walks of life: “There is
and has been an enormous reservoir of goodwill by the Cuban
people to the American people.”
— Kate Ackley
CQ NOW
Strides for
Bipartisan
Dealmakers
The eternal optimists at the Bipartisan
Policy Center, a Washington think tank, finally have something positive to say about
the health of Congress.
The group, founded in 2007 to encourage
more dealmaking across party lines — just
before the most partisan period in modern
American history began — has insisted for
years that Congress could be both partisan and productive. Last April, the group
launched a study it calls the Healthy Congress Index as a way of gauging how much
Congress is deliberating.
For the first time in a while, things are
looking up, especially in the Senate. In 2015,
the number of days senators that were actively working jumped to 154 from 138 in the
first year of the prior Congress, 2013.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
said his goal was to restore regular order,
allowing committees to consider legislation
and a fair amendment process. The Kentucky Republican made strides toward that
end. The number of Senate votes on amendments rose to 483 from 256 in 2013, while the
number of bills reported by committees increased to 255 from 158 two years before.
It’s led to more efficient lawmaking. Senators also invoked cloture 30 times, compared
with 21 in 2013, and enacted 115 laws, another big increase.
“It shows that it is absolutely possible for
people or parties to have strong views, bring
them to the table and then still get a deal,”
says John C. Fortier, who directs the Bipartisan Policy Center project.
Things were less rosy in the House, according to the group’s data. It only worked
129 days in 2015, the lowest in the first year
of a Congress in quite a while, while closed
rules, in which no amendments are allowed,
were common.
And the dispute over the Supreme Court
vacancy left by Antonin Scalia’s death, combined with the typical election year slowdown, doesn’t bode well for either chamber
in 2016.
— Shawn Zeller
Measures of Progress
first
110th
session 104th
200
Senate
150
111th
112th
113th
114th
Working Days
House
100
50
0
60
Senate Filibuster
50
cloture failed
40
cloture invoked
30
20
10
0
1000
Senate Amendments
800
considered from minority
600
from majority
400
200
0
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
open rule
closed
104th
110th
House Amendments
structured
111th
112th
113th
114th
GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT MONEY FOR MARS
NASA was in the rare spot
of getting nearly $800 million
more from Congress for fiscal
2016 than President Barack
Obama requested.
But if the space agency wants
to retain that goodwill, it’s going
to have to convince lawmakers
that it’s serious about getting an
astronaut on Mars.
“We must ensure that there
is a constancy of purpose in our
planning and a sure-footed road
map in place for the future,” Brian Babin, the Texas Republican
who chairs the House Science,
Space and Technology subcommittee that oversees NASA, said
at a February hearing.
Despite NASA Administrator Charles Bolden’s
10
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
protests to the contrary, Babin
and his colleagues are skeptical that NASA wants to get to
Mars as quickly as they do. And
they’ve criticized the Obama
administration’s insistence that
NASA spend a portion of its
budget studying climate change
on Earth.
The hearing focused on
NASA’s planned “asteroid redirect mission,” which involves
shifting a chunk of an asteroid
into a new orbit and flying
astronauts to it for exploration.
NASA frames the project as an
intermediate step toward sending humans to Mars, but House
Republicans think it’s a fantasy.
“It is puzzling that they
continue to
press ahead with the mission
despite widespread criticism
and doubt over its efficacy,”
Babin said.
The administration’s fiscal
2017 budget proposal, which
came days later, stoked Republicans’ concerns.
The administration wants to
cut the NASA budget by nearly
2 percent, to $19 billion, in fiscal
2017.
Mars funding would absorb a
big portion of the cut. Exploration systems would be slashed
by $820 million from the fiscal
2016 level. Republican Lamar
Smith of Texas, chairman
of the House
Science Committee, was quick
to pounce.
“This imbalanced proposal
continues to tie our astronauts’
feet to the ground and makes a
Mars mission all but impossible,” Smith said in a statement.
But NASA’s chief financial
officer, David Radzanowski, told
reporters in a conference call not
to worry. The proposed funding
level “will continue all the activities that were laid out in our ’16
appropriations,” he says.
— Alisha Green
Randy Leonard/CQ Roll Call Graphic
|||
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
CQ NOW |||
Campaign Game
Already rated on their support for
the environment, gun rights, LGBT
equality and a host of other issues, U.S.
lawmakers can now look forward to
being scored for their positions on religious freedom.
Former Rep. Frank R. Wolf, who
made a name for himself during 17
House terms representing the Loudoun
County, Va., suburbs of Washington as
a strong advocate of human rights, announced the initiative this month with
the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative,
an advocacy group. He hopes it revives
an issue he thinks his colleagues are ignoring.
The scorecard will grade lawmakers
on their sponsorship of and votes for legislation or resolutions that seek to protect the rights of individuals around the
world to practice their faith and beliefs.
The first report card will come out in
July and will grade lawmakers on their
support for measures like Nebraska
GOP Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s resolution
declaring as crimes against humanity
atrocities committed against religious
minorities in the Middle East.
The resolution, introduced last September, has 190 co-sponsors including
129 Republicans, but Wolf says he would
like to see that number go much higher.
“The issue of human rights and religious freedom used to be such a major
issue in the Congress,” he says. Once
a bipartisan concern, he added, “now
the issue has evaporated.”
Though the Wilberforce Initiative
has a strong Christian bent, Wolf says
the scorecard will track lawmaker
support for initiatives that support religious freedom for all faiths, not just
Christians.
— Rachel Oswald
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
A Report Card on
Religious Rights
LOVE FEST:
Cruz at an FRC
event in 2014.
The IRS, under siege for
targeting the tax-exempt
applications of tea party
groups for scrutiny, has given up on its proposed rules
to rein in “social welfare”
groups that are really political groups in disguise.
That’s left the door open
for continued manipulation. Consider the Family Research Council, an
advocacy group for religious
conservatives that the IRS
categorizes as a charity with
an attached social welfare
arm, FRC Action. Both are
tax-exempt.
The group really wants
Ted Cruz, the winner of its
annual straw poll, to win
the Republican presidential
nomination, but it won’t
come right out and say it.
An endorsement would be
a potential no-no to the IRS.
Social welfare groups can
engage in politics, but not as
their primary activity.
So in January the council’s president, Tony Perkins, endorsed Cruz. Since
then his FRC Action Update
newsletter has touted, but
not endorsed, Cruz, with a
disclaimer that Perkins’ en-
IN THE
SPOTLIGHT
REP. CHRISTOPHER
H. SMITH (R-N.J.)
An opponent of abortion
and senior Republican on
the House Foreign Affairs
Committee, Smith is a player in
the debate over how to respond to the Zika
virus, a mosquito-borne disease that causes
birth defects and is spreading in South America. As chairman of the subcommittee that
handles global health, expect him to block
Democrats from trying to provide more aid for
abortion and contraception as part of the U.S.
response.
Getting to Congress: After running an anti-abortion advocacy group, Smith first ran for
Congress in 1978 at age 25 and lost to incum-
dorsement “should not be
construed or interpreted in
any way as the endorsement
of FRC, FRC Action, or any
affiliated entity.”
Most recently, Perkins
quoted in his newsletter
GOP commentator Erick
Erickson’s warning that
evangelical conservatives
need to rally around Cruz to
stop businessman Donald Trump. Each day that
evangelicals continue to
vote for Florida Sen. Marco
Rubio “is a day that Trump
maintains his grip,” Erickson wrote.
That came shortly after
Perkins’ newsletter cheered
Cruz’s win in the Iowa
Republican caucus as an
indication that Iowans saw
“in Ted someone who not
only shares their values, but
also has a record of actually
fighting for them.”
The disclaimer followed.
— Shawn Zeller
bent Democrat Frank Thompson.
He was propelled to victory in 1980
after Thompson was ensnared in the
Abscam sting. Now in his 18th term, he
has earned over 60 percent of the vote
every election since 1982.
His District: New Jersey’s 4th District is
centered in Monmouth County and includes
parts of heavily conservative Ocean County
and Mercer County, where Trenton is located.
The district has part of the large Joint Base
McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, and summer tourism
in shore towns like Belmar and Rumson is a
major sector. Voters in the district supported
Mitt Romney by 9 points in 2012.
CQ Vote Watch: Presidential support, 200916: 28.9 percent (House Republican average:
17.4 percent); party unity, 2009-16: 81.3 percent (House GOP average: 93.5 percent).
— Alex Clearfield
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
11
Influencers
ANDY SLAVITT:
CMS from both sides
Regulator
Makes Nice
Self-described “private sector
guy” Andy Slavitt picked a challenging spot for a foray into government service.
He left a top post at insurance giant UnitedHealth Group
in 2014 to join the Centers for
Medicare and Medicaid Services, recruited to help get the
federal health insurance marketplace on track after a troubled start.
Within six months he was
named interim head of CMS,
the nation’s largest purchaser
of health care with oversight of
more than $1 trillion in annual
spending. He was nominated
last year as administrator and remains on the job in an acting role
awaiting Senate confirmation.
He says he’s tried to improve
the agency’s rapport with the
health care firms it regulates.
12
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
“From my not-so-distant
past, I remember how CMS
often felt opaque to me, and I
probably said more than once
how helpful it would be to know
CMS’s agenda rather than divining them by poring through
an often intricate set of regulations,” he told attendees of an
industry conference last month.
One of Slavitt’s top priorities
is fixing CMS regulations on
electronic health records. They
are supposed to improve the
quality of care by better tracking
of patients’ conditions, but doctors complain that compliance
takes time and disrupts relationships with patients.
Slavitt appealed for help at
last month’s conference: “We
have to get the hearts and minds
of the physicians back because
these are the people that our
Al Drago/CQ Roll Call
HEALTH CARE
beneficiaries and consumers
count on every day,” he said.
Slavitt has extra credibility
with people running health-tech
startups because he’s done that
himself.
“His years of experience give
him a broad and thoughtful
perspective on our challenges
and how to work together to fix
them,” says venture capitalist
John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers, one of Google’s
and Amazon’s early backers.
A former Goldman Sachs
banker and McKinsey & Co.
consultant, Slavitt says he had
focused on financial services before seeing a close friend die of a
brain tumor in his early 30s. That
experience put Slavitt on a path
to found Health Allies, a firm
that negotiates discounts for
medical services. UnitedHealth
bought the company in 2003.
“I was planning on staying
and running this little health
company, but one thing led to
another and I ended up running
a series of businesses” for UnitedHealth, he recalls. “That’s the
perch where I was at when I put
in a call over here to the government and offered to come help
with the turnaround” of the
healthcare.gov site.
At the time, Senate Judiciary
Chairman Charles E. Grassley
raised concerns about Slavitt’s
hire, given his ties to UnitedHealth. The company does a lot
of business with CMS and was
one of the contractors involved
in building the federal marketplace.
A spokeswoman for the Iowa
Republican says he is still vetting Slavitt’s nomination, which
remains in limbo. Whatever the
Senate does, Slavitt will likely remain at CMS’s helm through the
end of 2016.
And CMS will be busy during
the remaining months of the
Obama administration. It’s still
completing work on rules implementing the 2010 health
care law while embarking on an
overhaul of the Medicare physician payment system enacted by
Congress last year.
The so-called doc fix law that
upended that system aims to
trigger broad changes in American medical practice by raising
or lowering reimbursements
based on judgments about the
quality of care delivered.
“Everything we are doing in
health care right now is really
at the implementation stage,”
Slavitt says. “That’s where a lot
of the excitement is.”
— Kerry Young
INFLUENCERS |||
CAPITOL HILL
TED SCHROEDER:
Patently experienced
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
Jim Neill
LOBBYING
Keeping
Hope Alive
It might be daunting to start a lobbying
career with a lame-duck administration and
a Congress more focused on re-election
than on legislation, but Ted Schroeder is an
optimist.
“People look at the end of an administration and they see, I think, a challenge in the
public policy arena because there is a sense
that nothing gets done and that the president has used his political capital,” Schroeder says. “But it’s also an opportunity, and I
think that part of the job is to make sure clients — and make sure policymakers — view
this as an opportunity.”
Schroeder is bringing that philosophy and
some Capitol Hill experience to his new position as a counsel in the lobbying firm Alston
& Bird’s legislative and public policy group.
Schroeder, 37, spent the past five years as
chief counsel for Delaware Democratic Sen.
Chris Coons.
He advised Coons on issues related to
patent litigation, and Coons took a stand
against bipartisan legislation in the Senate
that would revamp the rules. The bill has
prompted a lobbying war among competing
industries.
Schroeder also worked closely on a bill by
GOP Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah — Coons
was an original co-sponsor — aimed at preventing the theft of trade secrets. Schroeder
thinks it has a shot at enactment.
His first Capitol Hill job was on the staff
of Coons’ predecessor, Democrat Ted
Kaufman, a longtime aide to Sen. Joseph R.
Biden Jr. who filled out the term after Biden
resigned to become vice president.
Now on the lobbying side, Schroeder says
he’ll use his experience dealing with K Street
as his guide.
“Those advocates who were most successful were the ones who told me what I
asked truthfully the first time I met them,”
he says. Schroeder never trusted again the
lobbyists “who told me everything I wanted
to hear, or everything they’d think I wanted
to hear the first time.”
Early in his career, he worked for a nonprofit that studied other countries’ legal systems.
“We complain a lot, I think, as Americans
about our government and about our courts,
but if you take a step back, take a broader
view, you can see that in many ways we have
a more fair and open system than exists in
many, many other countries,” Schroeder
says.
— Alisha Green
NEW JOB: Director of coalitions and
outreach for Senate Budget Committee
Republicans.
OLD JOB: Stay-at-home dad. Previously
a lobbyist for groups such as the Retail
Industry Leaders Association. Started out
as a scheduler for Michigan GOP Sen.
Spencer Abraham.
ORIGIN STORY:
Neill became interested in politics
watching Watergate unfold as a
7-year-old, then
volunteered for
Abraham’s campaign while in college.
QUOTE OF NOTE: While Neill was an
Abraham aide, the Detroit Red Wings
won the Stanley Cup and Neill got to see
it up close: The cup “was delivered to our
office, and was opened on my desk.”
— Andy Van Wye
LEGAL AFFAIRS
Frank Keating
NEW JOB: Partner at Holland & Knight
focusing on the financial services industry.
OLD JOB: CEO of the American Bankers
Association, GOP governor of Oklahoma,
Housing and Urban Development official
under the first President George Bush.
ORIGIN STORY: Keating grew up in
Oklahoma but
left for a job as an
FBI agent. He returned to join the
district attorney’s
office and then
went into politics,
eventually serving
two terms as governor, ending in 2003.
He then went into lobbying, first for life
insurers and then for bankers.
QUOTE OF NOTE: Keating is fed up
with Washington’s partisan wars: “I say
remember this: If we don’t resolve these
things, we all go down together.”
— Hugh T. Ferguson
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
13
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COVER STORY
What If ...?
T
he Republican Party’s 2016
nominating process has become a graveyard of presidential ambitions for an entire generation of the GOP’s
best and brightest, who failed to impress an
electorate fixated on the stylings of Donald
Trump. Scott Walker is a distant memory.
Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie
may never hold another elective office.
Rand Paul’s libertarian revolution wound
up on the trash heap, next to the candidacies of Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee.
Jeb Bush? He might have ended his family’s
dynasty.
Most of these party stalwarts would have
been better off forgoing a run in the first
place. After all, it’s a decision that’s worked
out well for one prominent Republican leader: Paul D. Ryan.
It gets lost now after all the debates, early
balloting and Trump-authored tweets that
the speaker of the House once seriously considered a run for president. In January of last
year, he quietly announced that he would
not seek the Republican nomination.
The Wisconsin lawmaker would have
been a contender — perhaps even an early
front-runner in a party that usually falls in
line behind the previous presidential ticket’s
No. 2 man — though it’s unlikely he would
14
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
have succeeded where others have failed at
blunting Trump’s momentum.
So today Ryan’s decision looks prescient.
Instead of getting chopped up in his
party’s primary, he became speaker of
the House, hardly a risk-free job — especially with the current tensions roiling
the House GOP — but a potentially
history-making one if a Republican
president in 2017 opens the door to
an era of conservative policymaking.
He didn’t need to run a two-year campaign to get the gig either.
And if Ryan ever wants to run for
president, the 46-year-old has time.
His unblemished record in 2016 puts
him in a stronger position than someone like Walker, whose dismal performance in this race probably rules out
another bid.
“I’ll guarantee you there’s not
a day right now where Paul Ryan
is saying, ‘Wow, what a mistake
I made not running,” says John
Brabender, a senior strategist for
Santorum. “I imagine what he’s
thinking is, ‘Gosh, with all this craziness, who knows how I would
have finished.’ ”
Elected Republican lawmakers, leading party strategists and
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
By ALEX ROARTY
Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
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GOP officials interviewed by CQ for this story were in agreement: A Ryan run would not
have prevented the Trump phenomenon.
Still, as Trump wins pile up and the establishment belatedly rallies behind Florida
Sen. Marco Rubio, it’s fun to speculate: How
might Ryan have changed the race? And
would he have stood a better chance than
Rubio of rallying the moderate and establishment wings of the party?
The case for Ryan practically writes itself.
His bold budget proposals made him an intellectual leader within the GOP and gave
him near-implacable bona fides with fiscal
conservatives.
Far from an awkward policy wonk, the
telegenic Gen-Xer also rates as one of his
party’s best spokesmen. His rhetoric doesn’t
soar like Rubio’s, but he carries a plainspoken manner that can win over American
Enterprise Institute scholars and Wisconsin
soccer moms alike.
And it’s not as if Republican bigwigs would
see a run for president as a big stretch: His
tour as 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s
running mate exposed Ryan to the national
spotlight and, by most accounts, he acquitted himself well.
“The operating mantra on the Republican
side for the last several decades has always
been, we go to the next person in line,” says
Keith Apell, a GOP strategist who worked for
Carly Fiorina’s super PAC. “Had Paul Ryan
run this time around, I think he would have
benefited a great deal from that mindset.”
The mechanics of Ryan’s operation would
FAMILY FIRST: Romney running mate Ryan
campaigns in 2012 with his three children —
Sam, Charlie and Liza — his wife, Janna, and
his mother, Betty Douglas, at right.
have been formidable. Republicans popular
with the party’s business-set always have an
advantage with fundraising; in Ryan’s case,
few of his rivals would command the same
respect from CEOs. A who’s who of the party’s top political minds would have lined up
for jobs in the campaign.
And the current House speaker wouldn’t
have started a campaign from scratch. According to top operatives within Romney’s
campaign, much of the vaunted Romney
network, including the man himself, would
have backed Ryan.
Strategists say the most consequential
part of a Ryan run would have been the effect on money. The $100 million that flooded into a super PAC supporting Bush would
have been at least cut in half, they say, in
large part because the Romney network
COVER STORY
would have mobilized on Ryan’s behalf.
“Mitt would have thrown his support completely behind Paul and would have actively
engaged and worked his finance network,”
says Katie Gage, who was Romney’s deputy
campaign manager. “So you wouldn’t have
had this massive herd go for Jeb.”
At some point in trying to imagine this
scenario, informed speculation gives way to
guesswork. It’s impossible to know how the
rest of the field would have reacted to his entrance in the presidential race.
Ryan’s Wisconsin ally, Walker, in all likelihood would have stayed put in Madison. What
Bush, Rubio, Christie, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz,
Ohio Gov. John Kasich and others would have
done is murkier. Perhaps some of them, sensing that the establishment lane had become
too crowded, would have opted out.
This is where reality starts to butt in, and
is why, in the final assessment, Ryan’s decision not to run was the right choice for a riskaverse politician. Ryan might be smart, but
so is Kasich. Ryan might have had money,
but so did Bush. He might have had an impeccable conservative record backed by the
talent to articulate it, but so did Rubio.
They all had talent, but, with the exception of Rubio, the race still chewed them up
and spit them out. Even with his many advantages, there’s no guarantee Ryan’s fate
would have been different.
And that doesn’t even take into consideration Ryan’s liabilities, which are more numerous than is apparent at first glance.
He’s been in Congress nearly 20 years
at a time when voters want outsiders; he’s
soft-spoken when the electorate is drawn to
bombast; his recent penchant for compromise on Capitol Hill fits poorly with a base
that prefers shutdowns to deals. Ryan is a
strong candidate, but he has flaws.
“We’d have had 18 candidates instead of
“I’ll guarantee you there’s not a
day right now where Paul Ryan
is saying, ‘Wow, what a mistake I
made not running.”
— John Brabender, a senior strategist for Rick Santorum
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
15
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COVER STORY
17,” says Henry Barbour, a member of the
Republican National Committee from
Mississippi, when asked how Ryan would
have changed the race. “Otherwise, I
don’t think it would have been a lot different.” Barbour last week endorsed Rubio.
Ryan also would have been unlikely
to solve the party’s biggest primary problem: Trump. The GOP front-runner has
built a broad-based coalition of Republicans, with support concentrated among
blue-collar voters. Other candidates’ attempts to win them over have failed thus
far, despite Trump’s many gaffes and his
history of supporting positions normally
held by Democrats.
How Ryan might have found success
where others haven’t is unclear, even to
his friends. “Donald Trump, let’s face
it, has defied political gravity,” says Rep.
Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican
from Pennsylvania who is backing Kasich. “I don’t know that Paul could have
changed the Trump effect in this race. I
don’t know that anybody could.”
A failed attempt to take down Trump
would be a poor launchpad for a future
White House run. Which is why, as much
as Ryan fans can build a case that he could
have been closing in on the presidency
now, the safe move was staying on the
sidelines.
Ryan has said publicly and privately
that he harbors no plans to run for the
White House. The last speaker to become
president, James K. Polk, served more
than 150 years ago. Of course, Ryan said
he had no intention of becoming speaker of the House before being drafted last
year. The same Republicans who think it
was smart of him to sit out this year are
doubly sure a future bid isn’t such a bad
idea.
“Paul Ryan is the kind of Republican
we can be successful with in the future,”
Barbour says. “He’s serious about policy
ideas, and he’s able to articulate their impact.”
Of course, a future GOP primary might
feature a similar dynamic to the crazy nature of the current contest.
Asked whether Ryan should run for
president in the future, Barbour paused.
“He’d be crazy to, or he might be brilliant
to,” he says. “I don’t know which.”
16
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
Delegate
Balance
The Republican establishment’s last stand
against Donald Trump could come in a colossal
clash at the convention this summer
T
By SHAWN ZELLER
he chances that the Republicans will arrive
at their convention in
Cleveland this July without a nominee remain
small. After all, it’s been
40 years since a GOP candidate failed to
win enough delegates to guarantee victory
on the first ballot, and it’s been 68 since a
Republican convention actually took more
than one ballot to settle on a nominee. That
year, 1948, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey won it in the third round of voting.
Still, the chances are, undeniably, getting
bigger. Republican respondents to CQ Roll
Call’s monthly congressional staff survey
were split nearly evenly, with 47 percent
saying a contested convention was likely,
while 51 percent still don’t see it happening.
If no one is running away with the race
in a month’s time, and three or four candidates remain in the competition, this could
get interesting.
The powers-that-be already are preparing. In January, Republican National Committee officials, who will oversee the logistics and rules governing the convention
voting, began their planning. Last week, at
a meeting with donors in New York City,
an adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio described the campaign’s plan to win a convention fight, according to a CNN report.
And earlier this month, Rubio told report-
ers it was a potential path to victory. “I don’t
think it necessarily is negative,” he said.
“We’re prepared for it.”
Butishe?Acontestedconventionwouldbe
chaos. There’s no template for candidates to
follow, no guideposts to help them decide
whether to continue their quest or capitulate. It would turn the party’s quadrennial
celebration, which in modern times has
become little more than a scripted advertisement for the nominee, into an unpredictable prize fight laying bare the party’s
internal divisions. It would pose serious
political risks for the Republicans in a year
when they believe they are well-situated
to win the presidency. Indeed, the vaunted
convention bounce could become the convention flop.
The RNC can ponder the rules governing
how long delegates are bound to candidates
all it wants, but a contested convention is
likely to devolve into backroom negotiating
among the candidates that won’t play well
on national television, or with the legions
of disgruntled voters who’ve turned out
for businessman Donald Trump and Texas
Sen. Ted Cruz. They already think the game
is rigged.
The party bosses who once maneuvered
the levers behind the scenes no longer exist.
A party leader, like RNC Chairman Reince
Priebus or House Speaker Paul D. Ryan of
Wisconsin, could inject himself into the dis-
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COVER STORY
Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
cussion, but most likely only as a facilitator.
The candidates would be left flying by the
seat of their pants.
Lawsuits are likely. Steve Gunderson, a
former congressman from Wisconsin, recalls his first GOP convention, the 1976 duel
between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan:
“There was an intense battle by all sides to
bind their delegates legally so they’d have
the maximum political advantage on the
convention floor. Don’t underestimate the
magnitude of that effort.” Even so, Ford outmaneuvered Reagan and won the nomination on the first ballot.
Bending the Rules
A week before the convention this July,
the RNC’s Rules Committee will meet. Obscure party functionaries could become,
for a moment, crucial power players. They
could adopt rules to bind delegates to their
candidates’ wishes beyond the first ballot or
lower the threshold for nomination in order
to pave a way to victory for a candidate who
is well behind in the delegate count.
It might not go over well with Republican
voters, prompting them to stay home in November, if the trailing candidates conspire
to knock out the leader or if one candidate
promises another a Cabinet position — even
the vice presidency — in exchange for withdrawing. But that’s possible. Pretty much
anything, apart from slipping someone a
bag of cash, is fair game at a contested convention. The candidates are already wooing
the party activists and functionaries who
will serve as delegates in case their votes are
needed.
For a party trying to coalesce after the
ouster of House Speaker John A. Boehner
of Ohio last fall, it would send another clear
message to the public that Republicans aren’t united and would give the Democratic
nominee plenty to criticize.
Still, some Republicans on Capitol Hill
view the contested convention as the last
firewall against a victory by Trump, whose
nomination they believe would lead to certain defeat in November.
“I’m on record saying I don’t think Trump
will be our nominee,” says Sen. Jeff Flake
of Arizona. “I don’t think he should be our
nominee.”
But if a backroom deal were to deny
Trump the nomination while he led the delegate count, akin to the one that elevated John
Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson in 1824,
things could get dangerous.
Worst-case scenario: The GOP could
crack up entirely.
“If you have a candidate at 45 percent
and a candidate at 30 and another at 25, you
couldn’t have the 30 and 25 gang up without
total rebellion,” says Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and presidential candidate who defeated the eventual nominee,
Mitt Romney, in the GOP primary in South
Carolina four years ago.
But at the Washington Press Club FounCQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
17
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COVER STORY
Conventional Warfare
From party bosses making deals in
smoke-filled rooms to polished, made-fortelevision coronations of a supposed heir to
the White House, America’s major political
conventions have come a long way out of
the shadows of the 19th and 20th centuries.
For more than a century after Democrats
held their first convention in 1832 and Republicans adopted the process in 1856, multiple ballots to select a nominee were not
unusual. The first brokered convention —
one that goes beyond one ballot — came in
1844, when Democrats needed nine rounds
of voting to select the former governor of
Tennessee, James K. Polk, as their nominee.
Half of the next 32 Democratic conventions after 1844 went beyond one ballot,
and Republicans had 10 brokered conventions until they changed their nominating
procedures in the 1970s. Many others were
contested, meaning there was a nomination
fight right up until the balloting began.
“Brokered conventions were not at all
uncommon in the 19th century as these party bosses, city bosses and state bosses came
together and hashed out who would be their
best candidate,” says Calvin Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist
Brokered
Deals
Democrats have had more
multi-ballot conventions than
Republicans, but there is plenty
of history to go around.
46TH BALLOT: Wilson greets supporters
after his acceptance speech in 1912.
University who has studied the period.
From the start, in fact, Democrats had
made brokered conventions unavoidable in
many years with rules that required a twothirds majority of delegates for nomination.
Party leaders didn’t change their minds on
that until the 1936 convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt for a second term.
Delegates to the 1912 Democratic convention needed 46 ballots to nominate
New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson for the
presidency. Eight years later, Democrats
churned through 43 ballots before settling
on Ohio Gov. James M. Cox, who lost the
1920 general election to another Ohioan,
Republican Sen. Warren G. Harding.
The longest and arguably worst convention on record was the Democrats’ infamous 1924 “Klanbake” in New York City,
which dragged on for 23 days of strife over
religion, Ku Klux Klan marches and fights
over Prohibition. It took 103 ballots for the
exhausted delegates to nominate former
congressman and diplomat John W. Davis
of West Virginia for president.
Republicans also had their share of
knock-down, drag-out battles. In 1880, with
14 candidates vying for the nomination, including Ulysses S. Grant — out of the White
House for three years and seeking a third
term — it took delegates 36 ballots to settle
on dark horse James A. Garfield, who was
subsequently elected, inaugurated and shot
by a disgruntled office-seeker in July 1881.
He died two months later.
The first major change in the presidential nominating system since the advent
of party conventions took hold in the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, when
party primaries were invented and spread
through the states as a way for candidates
to demonstrate their wares and for voters to
register their preferences.
1856 Lincoln’s Party Starts Without Him
1872 Missing a Wing
1880 Another Split
In their first convention since organizing as an
anti-slavery party in 1854, Republicans
nominate war hero and Sen. John C.
Frémont. Abraham Lincoln loses bid
to become Frémont’s running mate
to former Sen. William L. Dayton.
President Ulysses S. Grant is
nominated for a second time
without opposition, thanks to
his Republican opponents
having left to form their own
“Liberal Republican Party.”
Grant, out of office since 1877, seeks
the nomination as leader of the party’s
“Stalwart” faction against a pair of
moderate “Half-Breeds.” Another
moderate, Rep. James A. Garfield,
wins on the 36th ballot despite never
declaring his candidacy.
1832 Democrats Set the Stage
1844 First Dark Horse
1852 49 Ballots Later ...
1856 A President Denied
At the behest of President Andrew
Jackson, a two-thirds majority rule is
adopted to show the party’s support
for his pick, Martin Van Buren, to
replace John C. Calhoun as vice
president. Though waived in the next
two conventions, the rule would remain
in place until 1936.
After a term in the White House
that ended in 1841, Van Buren is
the favorite but can’t get to twothirds and goes back and forth
with Lewis Cass in early balloting.
James K. Polk of Tennessee
emerges as a compromise and
wins on the ninth ballot.
A four-way deadlock between
Cass, two Cabinet secretaries
and a young Stephen A.
Douglas goes 34 ballots
before former Sen. Franklin
Pierce’s name is submitted.
Pierce wins on the 49th ballot.
President Pierce entered the convention
seeking renomination, but facing
challenges from James Buchanan Jr. and
Douglas. After 16 ballots with each of the
three failing to hit the total, Douglas
withdrew. Buchanan secured the
nomination on the 17th vote, denying
Pierce a shot at a second term.
Ryan Kelly/CQ Roll Call Graphic
18
Library of Congress
Both parties have engaged in fierce fights over presidential nominees
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
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AP
partly to show party bosses that
a Roman Catholic could win in
a primarily Protestant state like
West Virginia.
The last brokered conventions took place just after World
War II. In 1948 it took Republicans three ballots to nominate New York Gov. Thomas
E. Dewey, who had dominated
the primaries but was opposed
by conservatives and moderates in his party. Dewey nearly
defeated President Harry S.
Truman that year.
Four years later in 1952, after
Truman decided not to run, Sen.
Estes Kefauver of Tennessee
was the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nomination, but he was unable to marshal
a majority of the delegates at the Chicago
convention. The party bosses and delegates
turned instead to Illinois Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson, who had formally welcomed them
with a speech laced with warm humor.
“The old system was really a semipublic
system,” Kamarck says. “It was really hard
to see even who was getting nominated. You
had to be sort of an insider-insider.”
In the campaign for the 1964 Republican
nomination, for instance, New York’s Nelson Rockefeller concentrated on winning
primaries to show his strength, while Arizona conservative Barry Goldwater and his
team worked quietly behind the scenes to
BOSSES’ PICK: Stevenson was a surprise
winner at the 1956 convention in Chicago.
But primaries were just a first stage of a
process that was still largely controlled by
party bosses, explains Elaine C. Kamarck,
a resident scholar at the Brookings Institution, in her book, “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.”
“The second, and more important, stage
of the old-fashioned nomination system,”
she writes, “involved intense negotiation
between the serious national candidates
and powerful party leaders.”
In 1960, for instance, Massachusetts
Sen. John F. Kennedy entered Democratic
primaries in Wisconsin and West Virginia
1912 A Clash of Presidents
1920 The Smoke-Filled Room
Former President Theodore Roosevelt dominated
the primaries against his successor,
incumbent William H. Taft. But
Taft’s control over the party
machinery allows him to quash
Roosevelt, who goes on to lead
the progressive “Bull Moose”
Party.
There is no clear favorite among 11 candidates, and three —
Illinois Gov. Frank Lowden, Major Gen. Leonard Wood and
California Sen. Hiram Johnson — rise to the top tier after
four ballots. Party leaders huddle overnight to cut a deal
for Ohio Sen. Warren G. Harding, and during the second
day of voting the compromise candidate wins the
nomination on the 10th ballot.
1912 Friends Like These ...
1920 Close Enough
1924 Infight Club: Democrats Split
Six vie for the bid, led by House
Speaker Champ Clark and Gov.
Woodrow Wilson. With Clark
ahead after 10 votes, party
elder William Jennings Bryan
learns Clark had cut a deal
with Tammany Hall and
switches to Wilson, who
wins 36 ballots later.
After 44 ballots Ohio
Gov. James M. Cox falls
30 votes short, but
delegates unanimously
approve a motion
declaring him the
nominee.
The longest convention in U.S. history is a
prolonged brawl. Urbanites led by New York
Gov. Alfred E. Smith oppose Prohibition and
the Ku Klux Klan. Rural delegates led by former
Treasury Sec. William Gibbs McAdoo support
both. After nine days and a record 103 ballots,
the party nominates former House member
and ambassador John W. Davis.
COVER STORY
take over the party’s machinery.
“Basically, the reporters were writing
these big, breathless stories about Nelson
Rockefeller winning primaries, and Barry
Goldwater had locked up the delegates for a
first-ballot nomination,” Kamarck says. “It’s
astonishing when you think about it. That
was because the system was still not very
transparent.”
The reign of party bosses, though, effectively ended after the 1968 Democratic convention and the bitter battles on the streets
of Chicago over the Vietnam War. Retiring
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s hand-picked
successor, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, won easily on the first ballot, but only
after fending off attempts by more than a
dozen state delegations to replace Humphrey backers with anti-war delegates.
In the aftermath, the party assembled a
commission led by Sen. George McGovern
of South Dakota and Minneapolis Mayor
Donald Fraser to reform the nomination
process and make it more democratic.
From then on, with the exception of a
limited number of “superdelegates” for party leaders, the driving force for nominees
would be primaries and caucuses.
Despite the changed landscape, every
four years someone has raised the possibility of a brokered convention that might put
new life in today’s dry political assemblies.
When former California Gov. Ronald
Reagan tangled with President Gerald R.
Ford in the 1976 GOP primaries, some commentators predicted a brokered convention,
but Ford eked out a first-ballot victory. Four
years later, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M.
Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter but fell short on the first ballot.
“It requires a very special set of circumstances to arrive at a brokered convention,”
says Southern Methodist’s Jillson. “Multiple
candidates, the proportional distribution of
many or most delegates across the candidates and a division within the electorate.”
Republicans this year might be at a place
where they want to intervene, he says, “but
none of them have any experience in doing
it. None of them have thought of themselves
as party bosses in a very long time, and so
they look ineffectual.”
—Mike Christensen
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
19
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COVER STORY
dation dinner on Feb. 25, South Carolina
GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham sounded like
he’d be willing to do just that in order to stop
Trump. “My party has gone batshit crazy,”
he said. The Republican Party needs “to
raise its game” to stop the divisive front-runner, he added.
If they do, it could lead Trump to pursue
a third-party bid. In December, before he
won New Hampshire, South Carolina and
Nevada, Trump reneged on his pledge not to
mount one. “And if I don’t get treated fairly,
I would certainly consider that,” he told Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan, hosts of ABC’s
“Live with Kelly and Michael.”
If the story coming out of the convention
is that the establishment stole it, it won’t
play well with the party’s restive tea party
wing. They could stay home if they thought
the fix was in. “If they choose someone the
establishment wants, it would hurt the Republican Party in November,” says North
Carolina Rep. Walter B. Jones, a contrarian
politician from the state’s coast who is facing a well-financed primary challenge from
a former aide to President George W. Bush
for the second election in a row.
Jones is worried that big money will carry
the day, both in his election and at a contested convention: “The American people and
the people of my district don’t have the same
influence as the people with the money.”
The Game Has Changed
An open primary race, in which no incumbent is running, always draws more interest. Add to that the lack of any clear establishment favorite — hasn’t the GOP usually
nominated the next man in line? — and the
restiveness within the party unleashed by
the tea party movement and it’s no surprise
that 2016 is a competitive year. That became
all but guaranteed when Ryan, the party’s
2012 vice presidential nominee, decided to
sit it out.
The Republican National Committee
was hoping to avoid this and two years ago
changed the rules governing the presidential
primaries in hopes of getting a nominee earlier, and giving him or her more time to take
on the Democrats’ expected victor, Hillary
Clinton.
In 2014 the RNC decreed, with limited exceptions, that no primary could be held within 45 days of the convention, but it allowed
20
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
Ethan Miller/Getty Images
states to award all their delegates to the winner starting in mid-March. The old rules limited winner-take-all primaries to those held
after April 1.
One RNC member, Morton Blackwell,
objected, arguing that the process would
winnow the candidates too quickly. In actuality, the RNC didn’t go far enough.
It both overestimated the ability of any
one candidate to pull away and underestimated the influence of super PACs, the unlimited funding vehicles that are bolstering
flagging campaigns. When it was harder
to raise money, it was harder to stay in the
race. Now all a candidate needs, at least for
a while, is a wealthy backer willing to fund a
super PAC. The Supreme Court authorized
those in a 2010 decision, but this is the first
presidential election in which they are playing a dominant role.
There are some loopholes in the rules that
could help a candidate rack up delegates in
early March. Several states holding primaries then will award all of their delegates if a
candidate wins a majority. But with so many
candidates still in the race, that will be tough.
So the system encourages also-rans to hang
around until the winner-take-all states that
come later.
To win on the first ballot a candidate
needs 1,237 delegates, a majority of the 2,472
available, going into the convention. The
process has just begun. Trump leads the field
with 82 delegates, followed by Cruz with 17
and Rubio 16.
Of the 11 states voting and assigning delegates on Super Tuesday, March 1, eight will
offer candidates a chance to win all the delegates at stake if they reach thresholds ranging from 50 percent of the vote in Texas to 85
percent in Minnesota.
This Is Huge
A quarter of all the delegates are up for
grabs on Super Tuesday and if a candidate
runs away with it he could put some distance
between himself and the field.
But no one reached the 50 percent threshold in any of the first four states to vote: Iowa,
New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. And despite Trump’s strength, polls also
show a sizable — albeit shrinking — number
of Republicans who say they’ll never vote for
him.
Earlier this month, for instance, the NBCWall Street Journal poll found that 42 percent of Republican primary voters said they
couldn’t see themselves backing Trump. So
it’s likely the delegates will be divvied up
until the true winner-take-all states that will
hold primaries after March 14.
RNC officials believe that those will serve
as a tremendous winnowing force. Though
super PACs are helping, candidates will need
their own kitties to keep going, and those
will dry up if they’re not winning. It will be
a harsh ecosystem for also-rans deluding
themselves about their chances.
So the case against a contested convention rests on the theory that more candidates
|||
COVER STORY
Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
Ohio offers 63 to its victor.
At the same time, it seems likely that
Cruz and Trump will continue to battle in
the South, preventing the other from breaking away, while another candidate, Rubio or
Kasich, will prevail in the Midwest, the West
Coast and Northeast. Or perhaps both of the
so-called establishment candidates will win
enough delegates in March to stay in the race.
GANG OF THREE
Trump, left, remains the GOP front-runner, while Cruz and Rubio are fighting for second.
away moderate Republicans, maybe Trump
or Cruz locks up the nomination quickly.
On the other hand, as the voting continues, Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich can
look forward to chances to get back in it.
Florida on March 15 will award 96 delegates
to the statewide winner. That same day,
will drop out and that one of those remaining
will gain momentum and begin to sweep up
state after state.
Former New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg, who says he’s contemplating an
independent bid, is a wild card. If he jumps
in early as a third-party candidate, drawing
Closing Stages
By March 22, nearly two-thirds of the delegates will have been awarded, leaving little time for momentum to take hold in the
remaining states. And only a few of them
— Delaware, Montana, Nebraska and New
Jersey — have actually chosen to go winnertake-all. Others will voluntarily award delegates proportionally. Several will offer a
swath of delegates to the statewide winner,
but most of their delegates will go to the
winners in each congressional district. That
could effectively mean winner-take-all, but
it also might not. California, the biggest prize
on June 7, for instance, will award 10 delegates to the statewide winner and 159 to the
Super Tuesday ...
Eleven states will vote in the Republican primary contest Tuesday, with 595 delegates up for grabs between them. Candidates will then focus on the
month of March, which will end with the majority of states having elected their delegates.
Contests by State in 2016
WA
MT
MN
ID
VT
Already voted
NH
MI
WI
SD
NY
WY
NV
PA
IA
NE
IL
UT
CO
CA
AZ
KS
OK
NM
MO
TX
OH
IN
WV
KY
SC
AR
AL
GA
Sooner contest
CT
NJ
DE
MD
DC
LA
HI
Feb. 1
... and the Path that Follows
How many primaries and caucuses did it take for past
GOP hopefuls to clinch the nomination?
FL
AK
Later
MA
RI
VA
NC
TN
MS
2,400
2,200
1,600
1,200
800
400
0
GOP contest on Super Tuesday
ME
ND
OR
66% of states’ contests will have taken place in 2016
Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole
and George W. Bush had won at that point
Super Tuesday:
March 1, 2016
Feb. 12
Feb. 27
86% of contests in 2016
Mitt Romney had won
78% of contests in 2016
John McCain had won
delegates accumulated in 2016
March 13
March 28
April 12
April 27
May 12
May 27
June 11
June 28
Source: Republican National Committee
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
21
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COVER STORY
Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images
winners of its congressional districts.
“If you still have four candidates after the
end of March, then it’s likely there could be a
contested convention,” says one former RNC
official who asked to speak anonymously.
If that becomes a fait accompli, the remaining candidates will still have four long
months to work out a deal to avert a contested convention. Those negotiations would
hinge, presumably, on the willingness of one
candidate to offer the vice presidency to one
of the others. That could avert a dreaded
floor fight, but it would be a deal unprecedented in modern times and subject to similar political risks.
MIRACLE SEEKERS
Republicans, of course, don’t have superdelegates, the party dignitaries who get votes
at the Democratic National Convention. But
Republican National Committee leaders —
three from each state, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories — get a vote, and
some states don’t bind them to vote for the
candidate who won their primary or caucus.
That’s 168 crucial votes.
“You can’t believe how complicated the
rules are, and each state is different,” says
G. Terry Madonna, a political scientist at
Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “You need a Washington lawyer to understand them.”
If it gets to that, Madonna expects lawsuits to fly over which delegates are bound to
which candidates and for how many ballots
at the convention. “If they don’t have a majority, there will be confusion about which
delegates are free and which are not,” he
says.
Another point of confusion: Delegates
could even opt to draft a candidate. The current rules, adopted by the RNC four years
ago in order to block former Texas Rep. Ron
Paul from making a scene at Mitt Romney’s
convention, say the nominee must have won
a majority in eight states, leading some to
believe it wouldn’t be allowed.
But that’s a placeholder, according to the
former RNC official, and could be revised by
the convention’s Rules Committee or by the
delegates themselves. Indeed, if it remains a
multi-horse race, they may have to.
So, as unlikely as it might seem, it is possible that delegates could seek a savior — Ryan
comes to mind — to run in November.
22
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Swing Votes
“You can just see the consternation of the
candidates who ran for two years losing out to
someone who did nothing,” says Madonna.
Ryan joked about the possibility at last
week’s Washington Press Club Foundation
dinner: “This is a very dire moment and if
there’s a way I can be a unifying figure,” he
said, “then I am ready to lead.” To laughs, he
added, “If nominated, I will serve as the next
author of Politico Playbook.”
Republican lawmakers and party leaders
are mostly hoping it doesn’t come to that.
Many admit it would be harmful, not only for
the nominee’s chances in November but for
Republicans’ hopes of retaining Senate control. But a surprising number contend that
an orderly brokered process, if that’s possible, could work to the GOP’s advantage.
“It could make sense of the whole thing,”
says Rep. Peter T. King, a moderate Republican who’s in his 12th term representing New
York’s Long Island coast. “A brokered convention may not be a bad idea, but I wouldn’t
want to do it just for the sake of blocking
somebody.”
A brokered convention, in contrast to one
that’s merely contested, goes beyond the
first ballot.
King says it would be impossible to deny
the nomination to a candidate sitting just below 50 percent. But his point is that Repub-
Carson, left, is barely alive going into Super
Tuesday, but Kasich, above, hopes Ohio will
give him a boost in the home stretch.
lican conventioneers wouldn’t be blocking
anyone if they cast aside Trump or Cruz for
a third candidate with as many delegates as
them. Rather, they’d be settling on the most
electable candidate. More than voters, convention delegates are party activists attuned
to the need to make political calculations.
“When you get to a national convention,
the No. 1 commitment by most people there
is to win in November,” says Gunderson.
“These are people who really want their party nominee to become the next president.
And winning, more than ideological purity,
will drive decision-making.”
The Long View
To be sure, the world may look different in
July than it does in February. “The benefit is
you are able to get the most current analysis of
where the Democrats will be and you’re able
to position yourself most effectively to compete with the Democrats,” says Gunderson.
Some even contend that a fight on the
floor of Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena
could heighten public interest in the event,
coverage of which the major broadcast networks have dramatically scaled back over
the past 20 years. If it puts the convention
back on the air, Republicans will have free
publicity for their campaign message and for
their candidate.
“Do I fear it? No, I don’t fear it,” says Robert L. Livingston, a former GOP congressman from Louisiana. “The American people
will find it fascinating, and as they follow it
they will become educated.”
CQ Data Bank
Where They Stand
Donald Trump has a substantial delegate lead going into Super Tuesday, but he’s lagging behind in other
metrics that traditionally hint at campaigns’ strengths. The business-mogul-turned-politician is defying
Washington’s conventional wisdom with little cash and, of course, few congressional supporters.
Fundraising Momentum
Average monthly
campaign
contributions,
2015 Q4
BERNARD SANDERS
Jan. 2016
contributions
71
$14.7M
3
delegates*
cash on hand
congressional
endorsements
*Democratic delegate totals include
pledged superdelegates as reported by
the Associated Press
HILLARY CLINTON
$22M
Sanders
$20
$18
505 $32.9M 194
delegates*
cash on hand
$16
congressional
endorsements
TED CRUZ
$14
17
Clinton
$13.6M 23
delegates
cash on hand
$12
congressional
endorsements
MARCO RUBIO
$10
$8
16
$5.1M
54
delegates
cash on hand
congressional
endorsements
BEN CARSON
Cruz
4
$4.1M
1
delegates
cash on hand
congressional
endorsement
6
$1.5M
7
delegates
cash on hand
congressional
endorsements
$6
Rubio
$4
JOHN KASICH
Carson
DONALD TRUMP
$2
Kasich
82
$1.6M
2
Trump
delegates
cash on hand
congressional
endorsements
$0
Source: Roll Call Endorsement Tracker, Federal Election Commission, delegate counts from the AP
'HOHJDWHVDQGHQGRUVHPHQWVFXUUHQWDVRI)HE&DVKRQKDQGDVUHSRUWHGLQ-DQXDU\)(&¿OLQJV
CQ Roll Call Graphic/Sean McMinn
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
23
|||
LOBBYING
K STREET
ON THE ROAD
Campaign
Trail Mix
Lobbyists pitch policies and candidates on the hustings
By KATE ACKLEY
J
First in an
occasional series
looking at lobbying
efforts on the
campaign trail
during the 2016
elections.
24
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
ennifer Lukawski, a lobbyist with
BGR Government Affairs, booked
herself a five-day jaunt to Florida
beginning March 7. But don’t get too
jealous: This is not a sitting-on-thebeach vacation.
Lukawski plans to leave behind her clients
— and two kids — to volunteer for Sen. Marco
Rubio’s presidential campaign ahead of Florida’s March 15 primary.
“I’ll be making calls, knocking on doors
and helping at events if they need it,” says
Lukawski, who has helped raise more than
$70,000 for Rubio.
In an election dominated by disdain for
Washington insiders, Rubio recently picked
up more endorsements from members of
Congress and K Street denizens as Republicans look for a viable alternative to Donald
Trump.
K Street types may be best known for their
fundraising prowess, policy expertise and
help in wooing lawmakers to endorse presidential candidates. But there’s no adrenaline
rush that compares to the grunt work of the
campaign trail, especially in this contentious
election. Getting away from Washington
also gives lobbyists new connections forged
in the trenches with campaign staff, other
volunteers and perhaps even the candidates
themselves.
While Lukawski and other lobbyists temporarily hit the campaign trail, special interest groups that routinely lobby Congress for
their causes have purely professional reasons
for heading out of town. They are setting up
in battleground states with the goal of influencing the policy positions that candidates
take along the trail.
Either way you look at it, K Street is on
the road at a pivotal time. In March, voters
in three dozen states and U.S. territories will
participate in primaries and caucuses, where
the candidates stand to gain the bulk of the
delegates needed to win their party’s nomination.
When Lukawski is in Florida, she may
bump into folks from AARP, the lobbying
group for Americans who are 50 years and
older. AARP doesn’t endorse candidates or
donate political money. Instead, the group
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
LOBBYING |||
CLINTON BACKER:
Raben’s West relishes
the excitement.
will mobilize its volunteers and staff in Florida, where retirees abound, and other battlegrounds to urge candidates to commit to
overhauling Social Security.
“We want to have this conversation between voters and candidates so that the next
president and Congress will take action to
update Social Security for current and future
generations,” says Nancy LeaMond, AARP’s
executive vice president and chief advocacy
and engagement officer. “That’s why we’re
focusing on presidential primaries.”
LeaMond says AARP plans to modify the
model it already used in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada for the
larger states with upcoming presidential
contests, including Florida and Virginia. The
group will run ads, host events and mobilize
its 38 million members.
AARP members and supporters, clad in
red shirts, are “bird-dogging candidates at
hundreds of events in the states,” LeaMond
adds. “They’re saying to the candidates,
‘This is a test of presidential leadership.
What’s your plan?’ ”
Erika West, a director with the lobbying
firm Raben Group, has her own plan: to campaign for Hillary Clinton.
She already logged a week in South Carolina, knocking on doors and helping get out
the vote.
“It isn’t glamorous, but it’s fun,” West
says. “When you’re on a mission, you get to
share in that excitement. It feels like a big
moment.”
Clinton has received the most campaign
donations from registered federal lobbyists,
according to a CQ analysis of K Street disclosures filed with Congress. The former secretary of State was followed by Republican
Jeb Bush, whose departure from the race has
fueled a scramble for his K Street supporters
— many of whom have gone to Rubio, who
had been lobbyists’ third choice.
Fresh Faces
West says that voters in South Carolina
and other states, instead of being turned off
by a D.C. policy insider showing up at their
door, find it intriguing that someone would
schlep all the way to them to make the pitch
for a candidate.
“I think it’s exciting that I’m not a neighbor,” says West, who is originally from Detroit and is a former political director for the
abortion rights organization NARAL ProChoice America.
Bob Rusbuldt, who runs the Independent
Insurance Agents and Brokers of America,
is getting the opportunity to push for Ohio
Gov. John Kasich’s candidacy among his
neighbors in northern Virginia as well as to
strangers. He took vacation time from his association to help Team Kasich in South Carolina and New Hampshire before concentrating on his own backyard. Virginia is one
of 13 states holding primaries or caucuses on
March 1, Super Tuesday.
Though he volunteered for Kasich in
Charleston, S.C., Rusbuldt says that he’s now
focused on trying to woo lobbyists and lawmakers who had backed Bush to sign on with
his candidate. Rusbuldt co-chairs the Kasich
campaign’s steering committee along with
Ohio Republican Rep. Pat Tiberi. Other lobbyists on Kasich’s team include former GOP
Reps. Bob Walker of Pennsylvania, Tom Davis of Virginia and Tom Loeffler of Texas.
In New Hampshire, where Kasich came
in second to Trump, Rusbuldt says he and
Davis, now director of federal government
affairs for Deloitte, went knocking on doors
together.
“This is blocking and tackling, Politics
101,” Rusbuldt says. “To some people, that
didn’t make any difference, but to others,
they said, ‘Wow, a former member from Virginia would take time out of his schedule to
come talk to me.’ ”
The insurance group chief says his professional network extends across the states,
but his 250,000 insurance agents and their
employees draw their own conclusions on
whom to support for president.
Just like lawmakers on Capitol Hill, there
is a separation between campaigning and official business.
Lobbyists who volunteer on campaigns
must use their personal leave or vacation
time, campaign finance lawyers say. When
these individuals volunteer for personal political activity, their employer can’t compensate for it, according to federal election law.
“That salary would amount to a prohibited corporate contribution,” says William
“This is blocking and
tackling, Politics 101.”
— Bob Rusbuldt
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
25
LOBBYING
|||
Al Drago/CQ Roll Call
ROAD WARRIOR:
BGR’s Lukawski
stumps for Rubio.
26
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
nation caucus.
Several candidates attended the Iowa
confab, including Texas Republican Sen.
Ted Cruz. FreedomWorks expects candidates to show up in Cincinnati, says the organization’s spokesman Jason Pye.
Pye says the Ohio rally will highlight the
group’s support of a tax overhaul and regulatory relief for businesses. But perhaps no
issue will be as critical as FreedomWorks’
call to delay a Supreme Court nominee until 2017, something the GOP candidates say
they favor too.
“Our members are very passionate about
it,” Pye says of the Supreme Court debate.
The campaign trail gets crowded and cluttered with everyone trying to pitch competing issues. Passion is one way to get attention. So is a blimp.
The environmental group Greenpeace
attracted eyes when it flew its self-described
Greenpeace
Minor, a partner with DLA Piper.
Campaigns can reimburse the lobbyist
volunteers for their travel expenses, or volunteers may pay for their own transportation
costs, so long as it is under $1,000 per election. Anything more than that would be considered an in-kind donation. Food and lodging aren’t subject to such caps, Minor says.
“Everybody tries to do this on weekends,
evenings, lunch hours, you take vacation
time, sick days, whatever it takes,” Rusbuldt
says. “My wife would rather I take vacation
days sitting on the beach in Florida. But
when you believe in somebody, you’re going to make whatever sacrifices you need to
make it happen.”
The lobbying organizations and industry
groups that are setting up along the campaign trail to press their policy items are not
bound by such campaign finance restrictions. These advocates still may draw their
paychecks as they coordinate volunteers and
energize grass-roots activists to call attention to their favorite policy debates, as AARP
is doing with its Social Security push.
FreedomWorks, a conservative interest
group that has made the debate over the
Supreme Court vacancy a top priority, has
a major event planned in Ohio on March 12,
ahead of the state’s March 15 primary. The
tea party ally held a similar rally with 2,000
supporters in Iowa ahead of that first-in-the-
AIR CAMPAIGN: Greenpeace is reaching
out to Clinton in a unique way.
“airship” over Las Vegas before the Nevada
Democratic caucus on Feb. 20, urging Clinton to “Say No” to donations from fossil fuel
interests — a pledge already made by Sen.
Bernard Sanders of Vermont, her primary
opponent for the Democratic nomination.
Greenpeace’s Molly Dorozenski says her
group still is assessing how it will next use
the blimp. A strategy is in the works for Colorado, where Democrats will caucus on Super
Tuesday, as well as Florida. Greenpeace’s
goal, she says, is to get Clinton on the record
while still locked in the primary contest with
Sanders. Greenpeace volunteers also are
staking out Clinton at fundraisers.
The National Association of Manufacturers, whose member companies employ
more than 12 million people who make
things in America, is doing what it can to get
out the vote. NAM promotes what it believes
is a pro-growth agenda that candidates
should embrace, including comprehensive
tax and immigration overhauls, says the organization’s Ned Monroe.
“About a week prior to every election, we
notify all our member employers in those
states about how to find their polling place,
how to vote, where to find absentee ballot
information,” he says. NAM is featuring an
“Election Center” tab on its website, with a
candidate comparison guide for voters in the
works.
“This is a presidential election year, so
there’s a lot more interest in where the candidates stand on issues,” Monroe says. “What
is important is to inform voters so they can
make better decisions on which candidates
to support.”
Lukawski — whose clients include NAM,
Toyota Motor North America Inc., Cox Enterprises and the Consumer Technology Association — made up her mind about Rubio
when he visited the BGR offices during his
2010 Senate race.
“I’ve been supporting him ever since,” she
says. “This is the first candidate I’ve helped
at the presidential level.”
Heading out on the campaign trail isn’t an
easy decision, she adds, with not only client
work but also children who are ages 9 and 10.
When she left for New Hampshire, she says
she encountered “a lot of tears from my kids
about why do you have to be up there.”
This time, Lukawski scheduled her Florida trip around their sporting events.
CQ State Report
As President Barack Obama
considers expanding on his already record-breaking use of the
Antiquities Act to protect federal
lands as national monuments,
pushback is coming from states
like Utah, where the latest battle
is unfolding.
Since his election, Obama has
designated or enlarged 22 national monuments, setting aside
4 million acres of land and adding 261.3 million acres of water
and reefs in the Pacific Ocean
near Hawaii for preservation under the Antiquities Act. The vast
acreage being preserved in the
Pacific puts Obama at the top of
the list of presidents in terms of
conservation, and he is pushing
to do more.
But those efforts could be
stalled by a fight over a request
from Native American tribes and
environmental groups to designate 1.9 million acres of federal
land in southern Utah as the
Bears Ears National Monument.
The lands on sweeping plateaus
east of the Colorado River are
filled with ancient artifacts, burial grounds and sites considered
sacred by the Navajos and other
tribes, and they include scenic
areas managed by three federal
agencies, including the National
Park Service.
Under the Antiquities Act,
the president has the power to
authorize the preservation of
federal land that holds historic,
scientific and or archeological
interest. Once designated, the
Fight over Utah monument proposal
threatens Obama’s preservation push
George Frey/AFP/Getty Images
Lands Battle
Is Escalating
PRESERVED FOREVER: A visitor enjoys a scenic waterfall at the
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
land would be off limits to new
development such as gas and oil
exploration and grazing allotments, although existing leases
would continue.
“Obama has an incredible
opportunity before him with
the Utah proposal,” says Sharon
Buccino, director for the Natural
Resources Defense Council’s
Land and Wildlife program. The
decision has the ability to “make
or break” Obama’s conservationist legacy, Buccino says,
mainly because it would protect
so many acres.
Republicans in the Utah congressional delegation, led by
Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason
Chaffetz, firmly oppose the
Bears Ears proposal, still under
Interior Department review.
“We believe the wisest landuse decisions are made with
community involvement and
local support,” the lawmakers wrote in a Feb. 12 letter to
Obama. “Use of the Antiquities
Act within [Utah] will be met
with fierce local opposition and
will further polarize federal
land-use discussions for years, if
not decades.”
Bishop and Chaffetz are proposing legislation they say would
be an alternative to a monument
designation, with some of the
federal lands set aside for conservation, some for recreation
and others for economic development, according to their discussion draft.
Much of the distrust of the
national monument designation
process in Utah stems from 20
years ago when the Clinton administration set aside 2 million
acres as the Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monument
despite state and local opposition. Since then opposition has
been building to the federal government’s land policy decisions,
which affect about two-thirds of
Utah’s land area.
In 2012, Republican Gov. Gary
Herbert signed legislation that
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
27
|||
CQ STATE REPORT
Presidential Monuments
Thanks to the designation of a vast section of the Pacific Ocean, Barack Obama leads all presidents
in the amount of federal acreage set aside for preservation under the Antiquities Act.
Barack Obama
261M acres marine
20 established
George W. Bush
Jimmy Carter
56M acres land
15
19
Other presidents
88
4M acres land
219M acres marine
6
Bill Clinton
Monument established by another president
Area established/enlarged
5.7M acres land, 30K acres marine
9.2M acres
Established by Obama
Source: Department of Interior
would require the United States
to transfer all federal lands to
the state for management, excluding five national parks and
33 designated wilderness areas.
The law set a 2014 deadline for
the transfer, and the state has
already begun to look into legal
action to enforce it.
“Gov. Herbert believes that
the state of Utah has three paths
forward on this issue: negotiation, legislation, and litigation,”
the governor’s spokesman, Jon
Cox, said in an email.
“He would prefer a legislative
resolution to the many public
lands issues Utah faces, but unfortunately that isn’t always possible,” Cox said. “The state of
Utah is actively pursuing several
of these cases in court right now
and reserves the right to pursue
additional legal recourse in the
future.”
Since the beginning of last
year, 14 states, mainly in the
West, have either passed or in28
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Randy Leonard/CQ Roll Call Graphic
CONSERVATION KING: Obama signs five more national monuments
into law in 2013 as Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. cheers him on.
troduced legislation to support
the transfer of federal land to the
states for management, according to a January analysis by the
National Conference of State
Legislatures.
“The biggest benefit the states
are exploring is the economic
benefit from land transfer, and
whether administration costs
make it worthwhile,” says NCSL
policy specialist Mindy Bridges.
“Another trend within the legislation is it would be more geared
toward Bureau of Land Management land, specifically not
including congressionally delegated land,” like national parks
and wilderness preserves.
The Public Lands Council, which represents ranchers
and businesses that depend on
federal land, has no problem
with federal protection of tribal
lands, says the group’s executive
director, Ethan Lane. But when
it ties together millions of acres
to protect the same site, it effectively shuts down economic development on lands peripheral
to the monuments, he says.
“If you protect millions of
acres of land, what does that
do to the communities and local business that depend on the
federal land? It kills them,” Lane
says.
As for the Bears Ears proposal, the Interior Department says
there would be an extensive
public comment period before
any decision is made, a spokeswoman said.
— Jeremy Dillon
CQ STATE REPORT |||
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
Resistance Grows
to ‘Converting’ Gays
Senators Give
Pot a High Five
Vermont has taken a
step toward becoming
the first state to legalize
recreational marijuana
through the legislative
process. On Feb. 25, the
state Senate voted 17-12
for a legalization bill.
The bill now moves to
the House, where its outcome is less clear. Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin
has said he would sign
the bill into law.
The measure would
allow possession of up to
an ounce of marijuana for
adults 21 and over, and
would allow retail sale of
the drug. A tax of 25 percent would be charged
on sales. It would not
allow for home-growing
or edibles.
Four states — Alaska,
Colorado, Oregon and
Washington — have legalized cannabis, but all of
those have come via ballot initiative. A half-dozen
other states could have
legalization laws before
voters this November.
— Jonathan Miller
Momentum is building in the
states against so-called “gay
conversion therapy,” with New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo joining the chorus this month in an
executive order banning what
he called “a hateful and fundamentally flawed practice.”
“New York has been at the
forefront of acceptance and
equality for the LGBT community for decades — and today we
are continuing that legacy and
leading by example,” the Democratic governor said in a statement accompanying the order,
which prohibits both the therapy and its coverage by private
insurers or the state’s Medicaid
program. “We will not allow the
misguided and the intolerant to
punish LGBT young people for
simply being who they are.”
Conversion therapy, which
aims to “cure” non-heterosexual
orientations, has been linked to
depression, substance abuse and
suicide attempts, according to a
report last fall from the federal
Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration.
A number of professional
counseling associations, including the American Psychological
Association, the National Association of Social Workers and
the American School Counselor
Association warn their members against such therapies.
“Sexual orientation conversion therapies assume that homosexual orientation is both
pathological and freely chosen,” the social workers’ group
says in a policy statement. “No
data demonstrate that reparative or conversion therapies are
effective, and in fact they may
be harmful.”
In the last two years California, the District of Columbia,
Illinois, New Jersey and Oregon
have banned the treatment. And
13 states are considering legislation banning conversion therapy for minors, according to CQ
StateTrack data.
More education about the
effects of conversion therapy
has made its prohibition a bipartisan issue, according to
Sarah Warbelow, legal director
for Human Rights Campaign,
an LGBT rights group. She says
that patients who have publicly
talked about their therapy experiences and the public’s shifting
attitudes about the LGBT community have also helped.
“When parents were subjecting children to conversion therapy they were doing it because
they loved their kids, and it may
sound perverse but they just
didn’t know it was a problem,”
Warbelow says. “They thought
they were doing the right thing
and getting their kids therapy,
not knowing this was fraudulent
practice.”
Defenders of the practice say
government should not interfere with how therapists treat
their patients.
Mathew Staver, chairman of
the Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit
that provides legal help for people who believe they’ve been
denied their religious freedom,
says people who are unhappy
about being attracted to members of the same sex “have the
right to seek the counseling that
would reach their objective.”
“It’s problematic that the
government would come and
put a cookie-cutter template
on all counseling situations and
supersede the judgment of a licensed mental health counselor
and the self determination of
the client,” Staver says.
The Liberty Counsel has a petition pending for the Supreme
Court to take up their case
against New Jersey’s ban on gay
conversion therapy. The group
argues that counseling provided
to clients is protected by the First
Amendment and that mental
health professionals shouldn’t
be restricted in providing conversion therapy information.
The group tried a similar approach to block California’s ban
but the Supreme Court passed
on their petition in June 2014.
Jo Linder-Crow, CEO of the
California Psychological Association, says as state lawmakers
were considering a bill banning
conversion therapy in 2012,
mental health professionals
were concerned about its broad
language. At the time the association said the bill “micromanages the work of individual therapists.”
The group supported the bill
after lawmakers added language that would allow mental
health professionals to offer
therapy for youth exploring
their sexual orientation, LinderCrow says.
“Does anybody know what
exactly goes on in a therapy session? No I don’t think that’s possible,” Linder-Crow says. “But if
a person gets a complaint filed
against them and they tried to
engage in this sort of therapy,
not only is it against the law, this
person is vulnerable to being investigated and possibly losing
their license.”
— Marissa Evans
CQ WEEKLY | FEBRUARY 29, 2016
29
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ENDPOINT
CQ Roll Call Archive Photo
1987
Six months before the Super Tuesday primaries on March 8, 1988,
Democratic candidates for president debate in North Carolina.
From left are Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, Bruce Babbitt,
Jesse Jackson, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Al Gore, Paul Simon and the
debate moderator, former North Carolina Gov. James Hunt.
For more photos from the archives,
visit cqrollcall.photoshelter.com
30
FEBRUARY 29, 2016 | CQ WEEKLY