Today, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich announced that he is forming an exploratory committee “beginning an exploratory phase” to investigate a 2012 Presidential run. As this is the first step that anybody with a remote chance of getting nominated (sorry, Herman Cain) actually taken towards running for President in 2012, it means that it’s time to officially begin tracking delegates to the 2012 Republican National Convention, to be held in Tampa at the end of August 2012. While Republicans don’t have the same quantity of superdelegates as Democrats do, all 168 members of the Republican National Committee do get automatic delegate slots, and so any early endorsements from them have to go on the delegate board.
The actual delegate selection process for Republicans tends to be a bit more confusing than that of the Democrats. While Democrats have a uniform rule for delegate selection in every state, Republicans have historically given state parties wide leeway in determining how delegates should be selected. While recent Republican rule changes require that delegates selected before 1 April shall be allocated “on a proportional basis”, this language is really vague and we won’t know what it actually means until state parties get around to issuing their delegate selection plans. Fortunately, this isn’t really something to worry about until the actual primaries and caucuses start happening, in a bit under a year.
Since the Call to the 2012 Republican National Convention isn’t available yet, the provision delegate count for each state has been calculated pursuant to Rule 13 of the current Rules of the Republican Party [pdf] as calculated by The Green Papers. These numbers will be replaced with official delegate allocation numbers when those become available. Additionally, many state parties will be electing new state party chairmen in the next several months, so some people on the current superdelegate list won’t actually be superdelegates at the convention. I’ll be keeping track of all of these changes, but just be advised that the delegate count really isn’t that meaningful until primaries actually start.
One final disclaimer: Due to oddities in Republican rules, some “superdelegates” may actually be pledged to a candidate, and some delegates selected by a primary or caucus process may be officially unpledged. As an initial simplifying assumption, I’m currently listing the Republican National Committee members as “unpledged delegates” and all other delegates as “pledged delegates”. This will be revised when information on each state’s delegate selection process becomes clear later in the year, and should be fully accurate by the time Iowa and New Hampshire are voting.
Since it’s too early to have a clear view of the Republican field, at this time candidates will be added to the delegate tracker if either they have at some point been elected to federal or statewide office or they get at least one endorsement from a Republican National Committee member. When Republican presidential debates start happening, those will probably be used to determine who should be included in the count. So here we go:
|
Gingrich |
Roemer |
Unallocated |
| Pledged |
|
|
2254 |
| Unpledged |
|
|
168 |
| Total |
|
|
2422 |
The first entrant into our field is the former governor of Louisiana, Buddy Roemer:
Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer will announce Thursday in Baton Rouge that he is forming an exploratory committee, he told POLITICO.
“I should be president or somebody better than I should be,” Roemer said in an interview. “And the only way to make sure of that is to make [my opponents] go around me, through me or over me in the primaries.”
Since Roemer’s last election, in 1991, saw him placing behind white supremacist David Duke, I don’t really expect him to go very far. But his entry is worth noting, in a “sure, why not” kind of way.
The more notable challenger now approaching is Newt Gingrich, who represented the northern Atlanta suburbs in the House from 1979 to 1998 and was the Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1998.
Newt Gingrich affirmed in a radio interview Thursday that he plans to take his first official step toward a presidential bid later in the day after a meeting with Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal.
…
A spokesman said Gingrich will announce later in the day that he is exploring a 2012 Republican presidential primary run.
Gingrich is “beginning an exploratory phase,” spokesman Rick Tyler said. How long this phase will last, he said, “depends on the success for the phase.”
Gingrich is not forming an exploratory committee at this time, Tyler said, and one reason is that he and his wife “have several businesses” and they need to “tie up some loose ends.”
It’s hard to envision somebody who hasn’t held public office since the Clinton Administration as the Republican nominee for President in 2012. Still, the field’s got to start somewhere, and current officeholders haven’t exactly been clamoring to run.