GOP convention

Former Romney lawyer lays out chances of chaotic GOP convention

By Nick Gass

The former national legal counsel for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign on Tuesday broke down how a potentially chaotic Republican convention could play out next July in Cleveland, but ruled out the idea of a "brokered" convention.

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Ben Ginsberg, who also worked on both of George W. Bush's campaigns, detailed three separate scenarios for the convention after all states and territories have chosen their delegates.

"There will be a clear winner, a bunched up field of several candidates, or a leader who can’t get a majority of delegates on the first ballot," he wrote. "The latter two scenarios would make Cleveland uncharted territory."

One of those latter two scenarios, termed a "Clear Cluster," is the least-likely situation where several candidates could arrive in Cleveland all a few hundred delegates short of the 1,237 needed to secure the nomination.

"This historical anomaly would produce a real-life experiment in how button-downed, conservative Republicans deal with pure chaos," he wrote. "The broadcast networks might actually want to cover all four nights."

The other scenario, which Ginsberg called a "Party Buster," would occur if an all-but-decided nominee is still short of the exact number of delegates to clinch the nomination. At that point, he wrote, other candidates could band together to keep that candidate from a first-ballot victory.

What will not happen is a so-called "brokered" convention, Ginsberg wrote, opining that "there are no 'brokers' left in the Republican Party."

While Republicans went to great pains to ensure an orderly nomination process this time around, including limiting the number of debates and tweaking delegate allocations, the GOP field has nonetheless been chaotic, with an unwieldy number of candidates and the disruptive force of Donald Trump.

Speculation over the convention escalated earlier this month after The Washington Post reported that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and people close to several presidential campaigns huddled at a Washington restaurant, where the topic of an unsettled convention came up, according to the sources present.

"Indeed, no planning would border on malpractice," Ginsberg concluded, noting that the 2016 convention starts weeks earlier than in the past three cycles. "It takes considerable time to plan sessions, slot roll-call votes, find speakers if there’s no clear nominee, and be sure that the arena and hotel rooms are available if the convention goes more than four days. Republicans share the universal goal of winning the White House. A smooth, unified Cleveland convention is crucial, whatever the scenario."

Ginsberg, a partner at Jones Day, served as a negotiator in November for Republican candidates dissatisfied with the way networks were handling the debates. During that time, he drafted a letter of items for networks to commit to, among them, having the temperature in the room not exceed 67 degrees and not allowing "candidate-to-candidate questioning."