Republican Louisiana Caucus Tonight

by: Chris Bowers

Tue Jan 22, 2008 at 11:07

By most indications, the most organized pushes for delegates came from U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

For his part, McCain held a meet-and-greet function at the Camelot Club in Baton Rouge in late December, where handlers were able to get a bit of in-person delegate work done. With members of the national press hunkered down in a waiting area, McCain met privately for a brief period with several donors and members of the transition team of Gov. Bobby Jindal, a fellow Republican.

Romney has taken a more modern approach to herding delegates. His campaign oversaw a mass e-mail drive earlier this month that reached out to conservative voters and asked them to run as delegates for the Louisiana Republican Convention. In a response sent from the originating e-mail address, Alan Philip, Romney's regional political director, wrote that the names targeted for the drive were gleaned from lists compiled by old GOP campaigns in Louisiana. In particular, he cited the recent and failed attempt by term-limited state Sen. Craig Romero, R-New Iberia, to capture the 3rd Congressional District.

Tonight, 105 delegates to the February 16th state convention will be chosen. On February 16th, those 105 delegates will be trimmed down to 44 of the state's 47 national delegates (three delegates, representing the senior GOP leadership in the state, have already been chosen). Unless a candidate receives over 50% of the vote in the February 9th Louisiana primary, all of these delegates will be officially unpledged, and not obligated to support any candidate on the first ballot of the national convention. However, since the delegates signed up to support a candidate in today's caucuses, we will know the candidates which each of the delegates favor.

Now, with little media, and with the delegates almost certain to be officially "uncommitted," it may not seem like anything is at stake here. However, as I discussed yesterday, McCain has struggled in low-turnout party caucuses and conventions like these, while Romney has thrived.  If McCain is able to win the most delegates to the state convention, it will be a strong sign that he can indeed perform well in caucus and convention states, thus greatly improving his chances to become the nominee. However, if Romney wins, especially if he wins by the wide margins of his Wyoming and Nevada victories, it will be a confirming sign that McCain will struggle mightily in caucuses and conventions around the country, and that Romney is indeed the choice of the party faithful (remember that Bush Sr. introduced Romney when he made his big speech on Mormonism). With numerous caucus and convention states between now and February 9th--Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Washington, West Virginia--Romney can potentially use them as a rich delegate farm, combined with a Florida to California strategy, to emerge as the delegate leader after February 9th. From that point, he would be positioned to take the nomination on March 4th with a double win in Ohio and Texas.

So, even without media, and even without official delegate selection, tonight's result will reveal quite a bit about the state of the Republican nomination campaign. Don't expect Huckabee to play well here, since he is not nearly as well liked by the party faithful as Romney, and since Louisiana is mainly a Catholic state rather than an evangelical one. However, Paul's dedicated activists should once again do better than expected, just as they did in Iowa and Nevada. If the results from Nevada are replicated here, a crushing Romney victory combined with Paul edging out McCain for second, that will be the best possible sign that the Republican nomination fight will go on for a long, long time.