The South Carolina Republican Party has violated its own rules when the party’s executive committee voted yesterday to cancel next year’s primary election.
The executive committee voted nearly unanimously to cancel the primary, state party chairman Drew McKissick said, because President Trump had drawn “no legitimate primary challenger.”
South Carolina’s former governor Mark Sanford announced his intentions to seek the GOP presidential nomination today.
Two other former Republican elected officials, William Weld and Joe Walsh, are also in the race.
Any of those candidates may decide to sue the South Carolina GOP, some Republican insiders said, because Saturday’s vote ran contrary to the state party’s rules.
The rule that governs South Carolina’s presidential preference primary allows the state party to cancel the primary only by a vote at the state party convention, within two years of the subsequent primary.
South Carolina Republicans did not vote to cancel the primary at either of its last two conventions.
The rule gives the state Republican executive committee power to reverse a convention’s decision to cancel the primary if “circumstances surrounding the presidential election shall have substantially changed such that a primary would be deemed advisable.”
But it does not give the executive committee the opposite power — the power to unilaterally cancel the primary.
“This shady backroom deal where a small group of party insiders makes a big decision that stops thousands of voters from participating in the process appears to violate party rules and is precisely the kind of thing that turns people off to politics,” said Rob Godfrey, a former state Republican Party communications director and a former top advisor to then-Gov. Nikki Haley.
“Bad for the party, the process and the president,” Godfrey told The Hill.
McKissick said in a statement there was “no rationale to hold a primary” because a Republican incumbent is seeking re-election.
He pointed to 1984 and 2004, when Republican incumbents did not face primaries, and 1996 and 2012, when the state Democratic Party canceled their primaries and renominated incumbent presidents.
However, South Carolina Republicans did hold a primary in 1992 when Pat Buchanan challenged President George Bush.
The potential rule violation could open up the state party to legal challenges from Trump’s opponents.
“This isn’t North Korea. This isn’t Russia. In America, a President shouldn’t be able to just cancel elections,” former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), one of Trump’s challengers, tweeted on Saturday.
Trump’s campaign has worked with several state Republican parties to stymie the possibility of a primary challenger in recent months, and to install pro-Trump leaders in state party roles.
Those efforts appear to be paying off for Trump, even at the expense of voters who would be overwhelmingly likely to support him in a primary. The Kansas Republican Party said Friday it would not hold caucuses next year, and at least two other state parties are considering ending their caucuses rather than opening Trump to a potential challenge.
The last several presidents who have faced primary challenges from within their own parties,
George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, each lost their subsequent elections.