Trump team changes obscure GOP rules in hopes of clinching presidential nomination early
Strategic, surgical efforts by former President Donald Trump's campaign to overhaul obscure Republican Party rules in states around the nation, including California, have created an opportunity for the GOP front-runner to quickly sew up his party's presidential nomination.
The former president's aides have sculpted rules in dozens of states, starting even before his 2020 reelection bid. Their work is ongoing: In addition to California, state Republican parties in Nevada and Michigan have recently overhauled their rules in ways clearly designed to favor Trump.
This election, "despite a large number of candidates, only the Trump campaign went out and did the really hard grunt work of talking to state parties to try and get them to meld their rules to Donald Trump's favor," said Ben Ginsberg, a veteran GOP attorney who represented the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush — notably during the 2000 Florida recount — and Mitt Romney.
The Trump campaign succeeded in changing the rules "in part because they knew what they were doing and in part because everyone else is asleep at the switch," Ginsberg added.
The changes could discourage campaigning and decrease voter participation, said Dan Lee, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
"There's all this uncertainty, and there hasn't been much campaigning going on in Nevada. I think that's due to that uncertainty," Lee said.
The success of the Trump campaign's effort since leaving office.
