Pennsylvania stepping into the spotlight Tuesday
Well, it’s finally happened. After years of sitting on the sidelines watching other states get a stab at nominating candidates for president, Pennsylvania steps into the spotlight on Tuesday, primary election day.
Before cheering the state’s good fortune, consider this: for Pennsylvania Republicans, things are a mess.
After picking among Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich for president, state Republicans will turn to the selections for delegates to the Republican National Convention, and they won’t have any idea -or a very slim idea — what to do next.
In Pennsylvania Republican circles, choosing convention delegates is like playing blind man’s bluff. Voters are left without a clue as to which delegate candidate matches up with which candidate for president.
The Democrats, bless their hearts, match up the two. Under state party rules, a popular majority for Hillary Clinton, for instance, will pretty much ensure that a majority of votes cast at the party’s national convention by the Pennsylvania delegation will go her way.
Not so the Republicans. It may turn out that while Donald Trump is hugely, unbelievably triumphant, he will not leave the state with anywhere near a majority of delegates, maybe not even a plurality.
With a “ground game” grinding out delegates all out of proportion to their popularity, the real winner of the Pennsylvania primary could turn out to be the well-organized Texan Ted Cruz, or even Stowe Township’s golden boy Ohio governor John Kasich.
“It’s a crap shot,” the pollster and political commentator Terry Madonna told me, explaining the jigsaw puzzle facing Republicans on Tuesday. “It’s a throwback to the good old days.”
This is the system, with some modifications, designed by the long dead political bosses of the 19th and 20th century. Boies Penrose, the cigar-chomping vote counter in charge of the Pennsylvania Republican party right up to his death in 1922, would feel right at home.
That said, it’s not cheating. The Republicans, champions of states’ rights, leave it largely up to the state parties to design their own delegation selection process, a fact some people are having a hard time grasping.
For example, Donald Trump has lately been whining about how the process is “corrupt” or even “rigged” against him. You can pretty much bet the farm that should he exit the Keystone state with a handful of delegates while sweeping the popular vote, The Donald will throw a tantrum the size of one of his famous towers.
But the Trump ground game is not presidential quality. That’s not the columnist talking. It comes from a Trump-committed delegate, Cody Knotts of Uniontown.
Knotts was incredulous to hear from Trump state headquarters that he and other delegates pledged to support the New York realtor and TV celebrity at July’s Cleveland convention were neither to be seen nor heard.
He was told, he said, not to talk to the media. How, he asked, was he to get the word out that he was 100 percent for Trump?
He fumed at the suggestion, offered by a Trump operative, that the organization’s delegate campaign was to be conducted with the utmost stealth.
“You can’t run in secret,” Knotts said, adding, “It’s been an odd campaign.”
Knotts doesn’t blame the candidate himself for this state of affairs. He blames underlings: the know-nothing, out-of-state men and women hired to run the Pennsylvania phase of the Trump campaign.
According to Knotts, “Cruz’s people are organized and focused.”
That was something of a surprise to delegate candidate Lois Kaneshiki, who hails from Blair County, on the far other side of the 9th Congressional District.
Kaneshiki supports Cruz for the nomination. She told me it was naive to expect help from the presidential campaigns. “It’s impossible for the campaigns to do a good job at the local level. They need (delegate candidates) who know what they’re already doing
“Running for delegate is not an entry level job in politics.”
The Cruz campaign promised to provide so-called palm cards fixed up with her name and the names of other Cruz boosters. But Kaneshiki said it’s a little late for the cards, which, she believes, are best handed out to voters in advance of election day.
Anticipating inaction by the Cruz campaign, Kaneshiki said she printed and paid for her own cards. She has been giving these out for weeks now.
Kaneshiki took note of the fact that a campaign for one of 54 Republican convention slots up for grabs in the state’s 18 congressional district is akin to running for Congress. The districts almost without fail are big, stretching over many counties.
The 9th, where she and Knotts and a half dozen or so others are competing, encompasses 12 counties, in whole or in part.
Thus, this election, like most local elections, places a premium on name-recognition. She noted ruefully that among the names entered in the delegate contest is that of the incumbent congressman, Bill Shuster, who represents the 9th Congressional District, which includes all of Fayette County and parts of Westmoreland, Washington and Greene counties.
She suggested that Shuster was practically guaranteed a win.
Kaneshiki wants to see changes in the way Republicans select their convention delegates in time for 2020. The state GOP, she said, should adopt a method that aligns delegate candidates with presidential candidates.
If her wish becomes reality, there will be no uncertainty who is for whom four years hence.
As for this Tuesday: Pennsylvania Republicans, welcome to your party’s Penrose world. Expect to be confused.
And maybe a little angry at this intrusion of the 19th century into the 21st.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.