Next week, snow-bound Iowa Republicans will overwhelmingly caucus for Donald Trump.
And next month, a significant number of Nevada Republicans will have a cow – and falsely blame Democrats – because Trump’s name isn’t on the state primary ballot.
Most people who follow Nevada politics at least a little already know this, but to reiterate:
Trump is not on the Feb. 6 Nevada presidential preference primary ballot because Trump deliberately chose not to be on it.
Instead of filing for the primary – which he deliberately didn’t do – he’s competing in the separate Feb. 8 Republican caucus run by the state party.
The state party has thus far done little to actively explain those facts to casual Republican voters, who may follow state politics very little if at all. It’s by no means clear the state party has the capacity to provide information to anyone other than those who have signed up for (and open) its fundraising emails.
In other words, it’s a safe bet that a substantial portion if not a majority of registered Republicans in Nevada are still unaware that there is both a caucus and a primary, let alone why Trump (and Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy for that matter) won’t be on their primary ballots.
Sample ballots for the state primary are being mailed now. Ideally, as registered Republicans see their ballot – and see that Trump’s name isn’t on it – that will kickstart broader voter awareness that the state is holding a primary (as required by state law) but the Republican Party is holding a separate, privately run caucus, and Trump filed only for the caucus.
If Republican voters want to blame someone because Trump isn’t on their primary ballot, the person to blame is Trump.
But how many of them will know that? Especially, as seems likely, the state Republican Party – and Trump – will be delighted to let voters blame the state, and more specifically, the Democrats.
Nevada’s third spot on the Republican presidential nominating calendar was neutered by the state Republican Party. Deliberately sowing chaos by needlessly holding a caucus even though the state is required by law to hold a primary, the Nevada Republican Party has guaranteed that despite Nevada’s otherwise coveted spot on the nominating calendar, the primary and caucus both will be all but ignored by the nation and its press corps.
But with much of the Republican electorate having demonstrated a hair-trigger willingness to embrace conspiracy, Nevada’s role in the nomination process could still have a serious consequence: More distrust of elections and disdain for democracy.
And that of course is a top priority of Trump and the Nevada State Republican Party. They don’t combat chaos. They nurture it, and exploit it.
Nevada news organizations have explained the primary/caucus thing again and again, and they’ll be stepping that up over the next month. That’s great.
Unfortunately, an awful lot of voters don’t pay much if any attention to news, especially local news.
Meanwhile, state and local election officials are walking on eggshells. Mailings and statements from officials include phrases like “only candidates who filed for the Presidential Preference Primary will appear on the ballot.”
Gosh, there are candidates running for president who didn’t file for the state primary? Whoever could they be?
Election officials in Nevada prefer not to say. They have evidently signed a pact agreeing Trump, like Voldemort, must not be named.
Officials assert they are focusing only on the part of the process they’re involved in – the state-run presidential primary – and leaving state Republicans to explain their caucus.
“We really relied on the party to message its members about the caucus process,” Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said Wednesday.
But do state officials really have the luxury of taking such a dainty, high-minded approach to the caucus-primary mess?
Lest anyone forget, the people administering the state Republican Party – and the Republican presidential caucus – are fake electors who are currently under indictment for participating in Trump’s plot to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Those fake electors running the state party and its caucus, along with Trump, are always eager to exploit any opportunity to cast doubt on the integrity of the election system, and democracy.
Election officials are acting as if indicted fake electors privately running a presidential caucus is none of their business. And technically, that’s true.
But as a practical matter, it will be the business of Nevada officials when Republican voters start blaming them because Trump’s name isn’t on the ballot, and trust in the election process suffers yet another blow maliciously inflicted by Trumpism.
Maybe it will all be OK. Maybe all Republican voters, even casual ones who don’t follow a lot of news, will overcome the confusion and understand that Trump isn’t on their primary ballot because he deliberately chose not to be.
And maybe Nikki Haley, the only active candidate listed on the Nevada primary ballot, will get more votes in the primary than the entire number of people who participate in the party-run caucus, which would be funny, but also another nail in the coffin of the absurd caucus process that 99 out of 100 people find disgusting.
Alas, the more likely, and most significant, outcome of the Republican Party’s privately run presidential caucus will be a lot of confusion, some of it laced with anger. In other words, Trump’s preferred habitat.
Portions of this column were originally published in the Daily Current newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
