BOISE, Idaho — Behind the scenes at the Idaho Statehouse, lawmakers tell me there has been evolving conversations about having a special session to address the presidential preference primary situation.
You might have heard, a new Idaho law inadvertently eliminated the presidential primary because of technical errors. An effort to fix that late in the session failed. So, the current situation allows for political parties to create their own system to nominate a presidential candidate. The Idaho GOP announced, following their convention in June, that they are moving to a ‘firehouse caucus,' which creates GOP caucuses all around the state, on March 2, 2024.
“Right now we're at a bit of a stalemate,” said House Majority Leader Rep. Megan Blanksma.
In a quickly evolving situation, Rep. Megan Blanksma details the dynamic between House and Senate.
“We have two different petitions that conflict with each other, ones from the Senate, and they have 60% of the senators on that petition. And one is from the House and there are 60% of the House members on that petition,” Blanksma said.
To summarize, the Idaho House petition supports a March primary format options for political parties. The ballot would only include the presidential preference vote. That would come with a cost of $3 million every four years.
The Idaho Senate petition supports putting the presidential preference primary on the May ballot.
That 60% number is what is needed from each legislative body to call themselves back. But, it needs to be 60% on one petition, not two efforts. On top of that, the clock is ticking.
“We're trying to figure out with the state party what that clock really means. We're told that there is an October 1st decision point with the National Republican Party as to our state party deciding how they are going to select presidential delegates. That's what this is about. This is about selecting presidential delegates,” Blanksma said.
Senate Pro Tempore Chuck Winder highlights the tricky landscape of the situation, travel of lawmakers is certainly a consideration.
“Sounds like it's a fairly hard deadline. It's from the Republican National Committee, and that's part of their rules that they have to know what the states are going to do by October one. And we're being told other states are trying to make some changes and do some things and that they're not going to allow those. And it's my understanding they've already told the Idaho party that they can't do a caucus without losing delegates,” Winder said.
Senator Winder gives his thoughts on the likelihood of beating the October 1st deadline.
“Well, it's certainly not going to happen this week, I don't think. Even if we could come to some agreement, it takes time to get the petition signed on both sides and to get it organized and give people proper notice so they can get to town and all that. So I don't think anything's going to happen this week,” Winder said.
Winder, like other lawmakers, point to a key point in this: the Idaho GOP can basically do whatever they please regardless of any action lawmakers take. For example:
“Even if we did move the primary back to March, they may want to just have the caucus because they can control that more than they can, you know, the general electorate coming in to vote. So I don't know. I haven't heard that directly from anyone in the party. But that's one of the things that that's stirring around out there is even if we did the presidential primary in March, they still might do a caucus,” Winder said.
Lawmakers will be back in about 3 months, at that point there are a lot of options.
“Will in January, we can do anything right. If we wanted to consolidate all the elections and have them in January, I mean, I suppose we could do that,” Blanksma said. “So, there's always options once we get to January. In the special sessions, these extraordinary sessions are expensive, and you want to make sure that you have everything lined out. And clearly with two dueling petitions, we still have some things to work out. So maybe we will get it done in the next couple of days and we come back. But right now, we're still in a little bit of limbo. You never know.”
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