A BROKERED CONVENTION COULD PRODUCE UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES

The GOP is in a bind. Its elders and strategists are attempting to do whatever they can to prevent its frontrunner, Donald Trump, from amassing enough delegates to win their party's nomination for President outright when they meet at their national convention in Cleveland, Ohio in July. While strategizing obstruction, Republican Party regulars agonize over how a contested convention would develop, or, if it decided to broker the outcome, who would take the lead and at what cost. Throughout our political history brokered conventions are nothing new. However, they did not always develop as intended.

The 1880 Republican convention in Chicago opened with three candidates fighting for the nomination. A draft movement attempted to nominate ex-President Ulysses Grant for a third term after a four year absence. Grant's opposition supported either Maine Senator James Blaine or Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman. The convention deadlocked for 35 ballots. Grant remained 66 votes short of the nomination. On the 36th ballot the anti-Grant vote switched to dark-horse candidate Ohio Congressman James Garfield, who was nominated, and assassinated only months after inauguration.

The 1912 Democratic convention was held in Baltimore, Maryland. At the time Democratic rules stipulated that the winning nominee needed to secure two-thirds of the delegate vote. The principal candidates were House Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri and Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey. Both had won several primaries. Clark entered the convention with a plurality of the delegates, and received 440 votes on the first ballot, against 324 for Wilson. Nobody even received a majority of the delegates until the 9th ballot when the New York delegation, with support of the powerful and corrupt Tammany Hall, shifted its support to Clark. This gave Clark the majority, but drew staunch opposition from William Jennings Bryan, a three time Democratic presidential candidate and leader of the liberals, who denounced Clark as the candidate of Wall Street. He threw his support behind Wilson, who gradually gained support and finally won on the 46th ballot.

In 1920, during the Republican convention, Ohio Senator Warren Harding trailed badly during the first eight ballots before the convention adjourned for the day. Half a dozen party leaders met that night in a "smoke-filled" room. They collectively decided to throw the nomination to Harding, who subsequently won the election in November, but later died in office.

The big turnaround came after the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968. President Lyndon Johnson had recused himself after coming within seven points of losing the New Hampshire primary to Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and after Senator Robert Kennedy proclaimed his candidacy a week later. Subsequently, Johnson's Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, entered the fray, but refused to run in primaries. He collected delegates in state caucuses where party leaders acted behind closed doors. Senator Kennedy was killed June 5, leaving McCarthy as the only remaining anti-Johnson, anti-war candidate at the convention. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and President Johnson's White House aides cleared the process for Humphrey, and helped him win the nomination on the first ballot. In the mean time, for the entire nation to follow on national television, more that 10,000 demonstrators and 23,000 police and national guardsmen battled in the streets surrounding the convention hall. The National Guard had been ordered to shoot to kill if necessary. Protesters were openly beaten. Tear gas even reached the convention delegates, and presenters inside accused police of using Gestapo tactics. Although public opinion tended to support Mayor Daley, the Democratic Party subsequently reformed its rules and required all states to select delegates in open primaries and public caucuses.

Thus far Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has accumulated about 47% of the awarded pledged delegates. If he continues on that pace, he would end up with a significant plurality, but about 100 delegates short of the 1,237 delegate majority needed to win the nomination outright in Cleveland. Unless Trump's supporters manage to shift a sufficient number of uncommitted delegates to their candidate to secure the nomination on the first ballot, the convention would technically become brokered. During subsequent ballots most delegates would no longer be required to vote based on their state's primary results, and things could get ugly - potentially worse than what we saw in Chicago in 1968.

There will be more than one thousand Trump delegates in the convention hall. Donald Trump has already warned that, if he were denied the nomination, millions of his supporters would feel disenfranchised and are likely to riot. In addition, Ohio is an open-carry state. Guns are allowed in public places. Besides, more than 53% of Cleveland's population is African-American, an ethnic group which recently demonstrated aggressive opposition to the Republican frontrunner and his supporters. Also, if Trump is denied, he could exit the convention and run as an independent. If he succeeds in becoming the nominee, establishment Republicans may start a third-party campaign. A myriad of variables that may interact and develop into unintended outcomes. So yes, the GOP is in a bind. Many mainstream Republicans are openly hoping to get beyond this election cycle without major damage to their party, and, I imagine, some are wondering whether Cleveland is really the best place for the Republican Party to hold its convention this year.