DENVER — Nevada is keeping its caucuses for selecting presidential nominees, a blow to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and other contenders who hoped to shift the early-voting state to a system of primaries.
Caucuses are considered favorable to candidates who have a network of highly motivated activists, such as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.
Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, who has met with Bush, backed legislation to change to a primary, but the bill never came up for a vote before the Legislature adjourned Monday night. It was the subject of frantic horse-trading and lobbying in the state capitol in Carson City until the final minutes of the session.
The state’s Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, chairman of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign in Nevada, had pushed for the bill.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid called one Democratic lawmaker to urge him to not back the measure. Reid felt the bill jeopardized Nevada’s early-voting status “because it created uncertainty,” said Reid spokeswoman Kristin Orthman.
Without Democratic support, the bill fell victim to divisions within the state Republican Party. Nevada’s state party apparatus was taken over by followers of former Rep. Ron Paul several years ago, and critics have contended that the caucuses — and their arcane rules over who can vote in the gatherings — favored the Paul family.
Nick Phillips, political director of the Clark County Republican Party and a supporter of a primary system, vowed to change that despite the bill’s failure. “Obviously, there’s the perception that those people can run the caucuses, but we’ll get the rules better this time,” Phillips said in an interview Tuesday.
Phillips and other backers give similar reasons for preferring a primary — higher turnout. Nevada’s caucuses drew only about 8 percent of the state’s Republican voters in 2012. “It hurts the citizens of the state of Nevada,” said state Sen. James Settelmeyer, the bill’s author. He worried the collapse of the legislation would lead both national parties to remove Nevada’s status as the first-voting presidential nominating Western state by the 2020 contest.
However, the 2012 example showed that the state is no guarantee for the Paul family. Ron Paul, Rand’s father, came in third in the caucuses behind Mitt Romney, who was helped both by the strong influence of Mormon voters among Nevada Republicans and his own well-funded operation.
For 2016, Bush, Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have all signed prominent Nevada Republican operatives in recent weeks, signaling that the state will be fiercely contested, regardless of its system for picking the winner.
“We will strongly compete in every state, including the Nevada caucuses,” Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said. Conant said Rubio’s team was neutral on the legislation.
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