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Cruz and Kasich Form Small Anti-Trump Electoral Pact

News broke over night that the campaigns of Ted Cruz and John Kasich have form a mini-electoral pact in a desperate attempt to deny Donald Trump delegates to the Republican National Convention. Their deal calls for Mr. Kasich to stand aside in Indiana in favor of Mr. Cruz, allowing a better shot at winning the state and taking most of the state's 57 delegates. In return, Mr. Cruz will do the same in Oregon (28 delegates) and New Mexico (24 delegates), where the allocation is more or less proportional. It's an excellent move. The flaws are doubtful execution and poor timing.

The two candidates have more or less agreed to stay out of one another's way in these places. That is a start. However, both names will be on the ballot in all those places. They are going to have to find a way to communicate that they have made this deal for the good of the party and the country. Some of their supporters will play along, but not all of them will. Some will recoil at the "political wheeling and dealing." Furthermore, some of them will actually cross over to Mr. Trump. In places where Mr. Trump has 40% of the support, and Messrs. Cruz and Kasich share the remainder, withdrawal of one or the other implies a 60% majority. However, in practice, one may find the turnout drops by 10% and that Mr. Trump picks up 10-20%, rendering this idea less than effective.

There are further complications in the execution. Oregon votes by postal ballot and that means the campaigns can't have volunteers hanging around the polling places on Election Day -- they need to get people to knock on doors, air TV and radio ads and otherwise work to explain the agreement. And there is a chance that votes will be cast well ahead of the May 17 official polling day, so far ahead that people don't get the message.

Furthermore, the pact won't really improve the delegate situation when it comes to the allocation of delegates in Oregon and New Mexico. Proportional allocation means Mr. Trump's 40% will win him about 40% of the delegates whether the other two cooperate or not. What they are hoping to achieve is a Trump defeat in either or both places. That will make a great headline, but it won't fix the 1,237 count.

Overall, this arrangement looks a great deal like an agreement in 1938 between Czechoslovakia and Luxembourg to partition Germany. The premise has appeal but the political realities are going to get in the way.

That said, this is as good an option as they have. Should Mr. Trump win Indiana and collect 40 or so delegates, the rest of the map is such that he may well secure the 1,237 delegates he needs. If he comes out of that state with just 10-20 delegates, the arithmetic is different. Moreover, it sets the stage for cooperation in California, where they could really do themselves some good because the state has the most delegates with 172, and it awards them by Congressional District.

What is disappointing about this deal is that is should have come right after Mr. Kasich won Ohio. The anti-Trump forces have suffered from disunity, but they have also suffered from a failure to realize that there is not a single national campaign. There are more than 50 state and territorial races. There could have been a single anti-Trump candidate in every race for the past month. Winner-take-all Arizona's 58 delegates went to Mr. Trump with just 46% of the vote. Would Mr. Trump have racked up about 90 of New York's 95 if he had faced just one candidate? When Mr. Trump wins in Pennsylvania tomorrow, the question will be, might the state have gone another way if there had been greater unity against him?

This agreement between the Cruz and Kasich campaigns is useful for those Republicans who fear the idea of a Trump nomination, and it could throw a monkey wrench into the Trump campaign's plans in Indiana. The arithmetic, however, remains pro-Trump. He is about 390 delegates shy of a majority. His path to the nomination requires him to be within 300 or so by month's end. He should reach that comfortably tomorrow. The electoral pact won't affect that at all. And he needs to be within about 200 of his target by the end of May. The deal probably can't stop that either. If it extends to California, though, it might just work.

© Copyright 2016 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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