State law prevents Michigan Republicans from joining other states to cancel their presidential primaries, but the state party adopted changes all but assuring its delegates will go to President Donald Trump and not his long-shot GOP challengers.

Republicans in several states are making it harder for primary challengers to have a shot at competing with Trump in 2020. Michigan Republican Party spokesperson Tony Zammit said the state party’s delegate apportionment rules were changed this year, requiring candidates to receive at least 20% of the primary vote in order to receive any delegates.

Candidates had to earn 15% of the statewide vote to receive delegates in 2016. A candidate who receives 50% or more of the primary vote will receive all of Michigan’s delegates.

Zammit declined to share a full document outlining the state party’s delegate allocation rules with MLive.com. However, he said it’s “not unusual” for the state party to change its delegation apportionment rules each election cycle.

“I think what the rules reflect is to try to reflect the will of the voters in Michigan,” Zammit said.

Other state parties have made even bigger changes. Arizona, Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina will not be holding Republican presidential primaries and caucuses. Trump will be awarded all Republican delegates in each of those states.

A trio of candidates who lined up to challenge Trump for the GOP nomination said state parties are subverting the Democratic process by closing off their access to the ballot. Tom Shields, a GOP strategist and founder of public relations firm Marketing Resource Group, said the moves are not unexpected.

“Both parties tend to take actions that support the current president of their party,” Shields said. “We saw the Democrats build rules in with super delegates four years ago which made Hillary Clinton a prohibitive favorite.”

Historically, when primary opponents take on a sitting president in their own party, the incumbent ultimately loses the general election. Republican President George H.W. Bush was denied a second term after shrugging off a primary challenger in 1992, and President Gerald Ford met the same fate in 1976 after facing a tough primary against Ronald Reagan.

Trump is facing three Republican primary challengers who harbor deep objections to the president’s governing style during the last two years. Former South Carolina U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld and former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh stepped forward to provide GOP voters with an alternative to Trump in 2020.

Shields said Trump’s challengers aren’t likely to make much of a dent in the president’s reelection campaign.

Trump told reporters outside the White House Monday he has no objections to state parties saving money by forgoing expensive primary elections.

“The four states that canceled it don’t want to waste their money," Trump said. "If there was a race, they would certainly want to do that. But they’re considered to be a laughing stock. They’re considered to be a joke. And those four states don’t want to waste their money. Having primary campaigns and having a primary election is very expensive.”

South Carolina, Arizona, Kansas, and Nevada just cancelled elections. On orders from Trump.



Cancelling elections should never happen in America. Russia, China, maybe. But not America. — Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) September 10, 2019

Trump’s challengers said cancelling primaries disenfranchises voters and silences criticism of the president.

“It’s something a mob boss would do,” Walsh told the New York Times. “All the times in 2016 when he said the Democrats were rigging the system to elect Hillary? He is actually eliminating elections in certain states, and that’s undemocratic.”

Shields said Trump has a “huge advantage” by mobilizing Republican organizations around his reelection effort.

While Democrats are sifting through a historically large primary field, Trump’s campaign is raising vast sums of cash and putting boots on the ground in battleground states like Michigan.

A history of scrapped primaries

The Trump campaign pointed to recent examples of state parties cancelling primaries. Republicans in some states cancelled primaries in 1992, and again when President George W. Bush sought reelection in 2004.

Michigan’s presidential primary law was repealed in 2003, which resulted in the cancellation of the Republican presidential primary in 2004. The presidential primary law was re-enacted in time for the 2008 presidential primary.

Democrats cancelled primaries in 1996, when President Bill Clinton ran for a second term and again when President Barack Obama ran for reelection in 2012.

Trump said he’s not worried about losing any primaries, characterizing his GOP challengers as “a total joke” and “a laughing stock.”

While the top of Democratic primary field is comprised of sitting U.S. senators and a former vice president, the Republican primary challengers are all private citizens.

Weld served as the Republican governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997, and ran as the Libertarian vice presidential candidate alongside Gary Johnson in 2016. Weld attended a presidential candidate forum hosted by the NAACP in Detroit earlier this year, where he called Trump a “raging racist.”

Sanford served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001, then became governor of South Carolina before returning to Congress for three terms. Sanford’s bid for a fourth term was ended when he lost to a pro-Trump primary challenger in 2018.

Walsh served in the U.S. House representing Illinois from 2011 to 2013. He was defeated by 9 percentage points to a Democrat in 2012 and launched a nationally syndicated conservative talk radio show after his departure from Congress.

The Michigan Republican Party is focused on earning Trump a second term in the White House, but couldn’t end the GOP primary without a change in state law.

A presidential primary is required to take place on the second Tuesday in March each presidential election year; this time scheduled for March 10, 2020.

The Michigan Secretary of State will issue a list of candidates "generally advocated by the national news media” as potential Republican Party and Democratic Party presidential nominees on Nov. 8, according to its website. State party chairpersons submit their own list of potential presidential nominees to the state by Nov. 12.

Candidates who aren’t listed as a potential nominee by the Secretary of State or Michigan GOP can still get on the primary ballot by collecting enough signatures on a nominating petition.

The Republican National Committee will formally select its presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina next August. State parties have until Oct. 1 to submit their delegate plans to the RNC.

Michigan sent 59 delegates to the 2016 convention. Those delegates were split up proportionally based on how each candidate performed in the primary election, with Trump receiving 25 delegates.

The state will have 73 delegates in 2020.