Just When You Thought There Was Downtime...

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While the GOP is fighting for its own soul in terms of which direction the party should go, center or right, certain individual Republicans are already headed to Iowa to start stumping for the 2012 GOP primary season. (Yes, I know that Iowa is a caucus state.)

Mike Huckabee will make two sites in Iowa later this month to hawk his new book, and then on to multiple stops in South Carolina.

Bobby Jindal will be headlining a statewide dinner for Iowa evangelicals.

In addition, the Republican Governor's Meeting starts this Wednesday, in Miami.

People to watch: Charlie Crist, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, John Thune, and of course, Spunky.

I have my eye on these folks, and will keep you updated. And yes, I have files on these folks, and will be sharing them as time goes on. If you have anything you'd like me to add to my files, just drop a note.

And for those of you who question why we start this now:

Knowledge is power.
Facts beat innuendo.
Pro-action beats re-action.
Better safe than sorry.

A South Carolina Edwards delegate speaks up

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From the comments, South Carolina Edwards pledged delegate Robert Groce clarifies his plans to vote for Obama:

I, Edwards delegate from South Carolina, am still attending the convention as an Edwards delegate.

When the initial vote is cast, I will vote for Obama, as directly requested by John Edwards in his endorsement.

We're keeping track of all of Edwards' delegates in our What Happens to Edwards' Delegates post

What happens to Edwards' delegates?

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With John Edwards' endorsement of Barack Obama this evening, the question everyone is asking is, "What happens to Edwards' pledged delegates?"

Well, the first answer, is nothing. As we were reminded yesterday, pledged delegates can vote for anybody at any time. So, rules-wise, Edwards' endorsement is meaningless.

However, from a political and practical viewpoint, pledged delegates will keep their pledge to vote for the candidate they were elected for until "released" by that candidate. By endorsing Obama, Edwards finally ended his campaign, which had been "suspended" up to now, and "released" his delegates to vote for the candidate of their choice. Of course, these delegates may decide to follow their original candidate and support Obama, and Edwards will of course be contacting them to urge them to support Obama. But until these delegates speak up and say who they will be supporting, they will essentially become uncommitted delegates. Which, essentially, makes them no different than superdelegates. (We'll keep them in the Edwards column for now).

So how many Edwards delegates are there? Four from New Hampshire, 8 from South Carolina, and 4 so far from Iowa. (The names are at the bottom of the post).

But wait. That's only 16. The DCW tracker shows Edwards with 19 delegates. Why the difference? It's because Edwards is projected by The Green Papers to get 3 state-wide delegates at the Iowa State Convention on June 14. But as we learned at the Iowa Congressional District Conventions in April, these delegate projections are only estimates. And it's difficult to see the Edwards forces holding together in June. (assuming the race is still going on then). So those final 3 delegates will likely get reassigned to other candidates, leaving Edwards with the 16 delegates described above.

But we're not done yet. Edwards also won 13 delegates in Florida, all at the CD level. (He won only 14.4% of the state-wide vote, so just fell short of getting any state-wide delegates - he would have picked up 9 or 10 delegates if he had hit 15%). Whether he keeps them depends on 1) whether the Florida delegates get seated at all, and 2) under what rules they get seated. That will have to wait for the RBC meeting at the end of the month.

Finally, when the history of this nomination battle is written, one question that's going to be asked is, did John Edwards leave the race too soon? While it's impossible to predict that things would have turned out the same way had Edwards stayed in longer, there's no doubt that if Edwards has stayed in, he would have likely won a sizable number of delegates on Super Tuesday. And if so, instead of his endorsement being mostly symbolic, he might have ended up the biggest kingmaker of all, basically getting to decide whether Clinton or Obama would get his support, his delegates, and therefore the nomination.

Politico gives us the names of the delegates from NH and SC:

New Hampshire:
District Level Delegate: Joshua Denton, (Portsmouth) - Endorsed Obama 5/14
District Level Delegate: Deborah Bacon-Nelson (Hanover) - Endorsed Obama 5/23
Pledged Leader Elected Official: Senator Peter Hoe Burling (Cornish) - Endorsed Obama 5/23
At-large Delegate: Representative Sharon Nordgren (Hanover) - Endorsed Obama 6/3

South Carolina:
Robert Groce - Will vote for Obama 5/15
Marilyn Hemingway - Endorsed Obama 5/16
E Tim Moore - Endorsed Obama 6/3
Christine Brennan-Bond - Endorsed Obama 5/15
Lauren Bilton - Endorsed Obama 5/15
Daniel Boan Kershaw - Endorsed Obama 5/15
Michael Evatt - Endorsed Obama 5/15
Susan Smith - Endorsed Obama 5/15

(we mistakenly listed John Moylan as a delegate - he is an alternate. Official list.)

Iowa:
Merci Wolff (Sioux City) - Endorsed Obama 6/3
Machelle Crum (Newton) - Endorsed Obama 5/15
Arlene Prather-O'Kane (Cedar Falls)- Endorsed Obama 5/16
David Redlawsk (Iowa City) - Endorsed Obama 6/3

Florida: (CD districts shown)
1 Bill Vincent - Endorsed Obama 6/3
2 Mary Mooney - Endorsed Obama 6/3
2 E. Alan Brock - Endorsed Obama 5/17 (Back to Edwards 6/1 - see below)
4 Deborah Courtney - Endorsed Obama 6/3
5 Fred McDowell - Endorsed Obama 6/3
6 Debbie Boyd
7 Joseph Beutenmuller - Endorsed Obama 6/3
12 Justin M. Troller
13 Rita Ferrandino - Endorsed Obama 6/3
14 Sally Gene Frederick
15 Barry Randall Birdwell - Endorsed Obama 6/3
16 Linda E. Spisak - Endorsed Obama 5/17 (Back to Edwards 6/1 - see below)
24 Gregory M. Shimkaveg - Endorsed Obama 6/3

Update: NH delegate Joshua Denton endorses Obama. Sidebar will be updated after the Green Papers updates.

Update 2: From Crack the Bell:

Just got an email from Daniel Boan (Edwards pledged delegate from SC):

"Sen. Edwards's endorsement will be an important factor in how I decide to vote."

Update 2A: Supposedly John Moylon and Lauren Bilton said on CNN last night they were supporting Obama. We'll try to find confirmation. More from CNN:

John Moylan, a former senior adviser to the Edwards campaign, said the former North Carolina senator's delegates "are very, very committed to John Edwards."

He said at least six of his eight delegates in South Carolina are prepared to endorse Obama.

"I think you will see overwhelming support of John Edwards delegates standing with John Edwards, and now standing for Barack Obama," he said on CNN's "American Morning."

Update 3:

The co-chair of John Edwards’ presidential campaign in Iowa, Rob Tully, said he hopes the former vice presidential candidate’s supporters in the state heed his endorsement Wednesday of Barack Obama. “I was excited to see him endorse Obama,” Tully said. “I’m certainly going to follow his lead.”
...
Tully said he would reach out to those delegates, as well as others going to the state convention, encouraging them to close ranks behind Obama. “I encourage all our Democrats in Iowa to realize this race is over,” he said. - Quad City Times

Update 4: The names of Edwards' Iowa pledged delegates have been added thanks to Avi at Politico

Update 5/15 11:30 PM: Six delegates from SC have endorsed Obama and have been moved to the Obama column. We will update potential Iowa endorsements tomorrow.

Update 5/16: Machelle Crum, Arlene Prather-O'Kane (IA) and Marilyn Hemingway (SC) have been moved to the Obama column

Update 5/23: NH delegates Bacon-Nelson and Burling switched to Obama.

Update 6/1: The two Edwards delegates from Florida have been moved back to Obama by Green Papers pending further information on the status of all Florida pledged delegates after the RBC ruling.

Update 6/4: Major updates from yesterday. All Edwards delegates except 3 from Florida have endorsed Obama. Also, Edwards still has 3 state-wide delegates from Iowa, which will be allocated at the Iowa State Convention on June 14th. They will remain in Edwards column until then.

Edwards delegate update

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We previously analyzed the status of Edward's delegates, and determined that he would keep his 4 New Hampshire delegates, but his 14 Iowa delegates will very likely vanish at the next stage of Iowa's convention process.

So what's up with his 8 South Carolina delegates? Well after researching, and discussing in detail with the experts at The Green Papers, it seems clear that as long as Edwards keeps his campaign "suspended" as opposed to "ended", he will keep all of his delegates. Why is that? From the South Carolina Delegate Selection Plan:

If a presidential candidate is no longer a candidate at the time of selection of the At-large delegates, then those At-large slots that would have been allocated to the candidate will be proportionally divided among the remaining preferences entitled to an allocation.

This clause is also present in the national rules. So since Edwards is still technically a candidate, he will keep all his delegates. Now if he ever officially ends his campaign (although it's not clear why he would), it all depends on the meaning of "time of selection of the at-large delegates". If it's the time of the primary, than he keeps his 3 at-large delegates. If he ends his campaign before the state convention on May 3, and you consider the "time of selection" to be when specific delegates are actually selected, then he wouldn't get the delegates. I've been told this clause is actually open to debate, and there was talk of challenging it early in the Gore-Bradley matchup in 2000. But for now, the question is moot, as Edwards has not ended his campaign, so he keeps his 3 at-large delegates. And clearly, since no such clause exists for the district delegates he keeps those 5 under any circumstances.

So we'll keep Edwards at 12 delegates in our delegate tracker.

Update: Answering some questions in the comments: If Edwards wins any future delegates, as long as he keeps his campaign in "suspended" mode, he will keep those delegates into the convention. However, it is highly unlikely that he will win any future delegates, as he has to beat the 15% threshold in any Congressional District or statewide. That's not going to happen.

But to make things clear, the 12 delegates he has, like any other delegate, can vote for anybody they want to. They can vote for Edwards, they can vote for whoever Edwards endorses, or they can vote for themselves if they want.

Edwards out

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John Edwards is dropping out of the race today. What happens to his delegates? First, all of his superdelegates go back into the no endorsement pool. Second, his 4 delegates from New Hampshire and his 8 delegates from South Carolina will go to the convention as Uncommitted. And finally, his delegates from Iowa don't exist anymore, but will be replaced with Clinton or Obama delegates. That's because delegates to the national convention haven't actually been picked yet in Iowa. There are Congressional District (CD) and state conventions still to come, and all his delegates to the CD conventions will have to vote for one of the remaining candidates to the state level convention. We'll get the delegate trackers updated as the day goes on.

Update 1: The post above has gotten a lot of play around the net, but one thing must be corrected.

Iowa: Edwards received 14 delegates from Iowa, but they were split. 5 were state-level delegates, and 9 were CD-level delegates. The CD-level delegates are basically history. First, there are county conventions, and then CD conventions. Since Edwards won't meet the 15% threshold at the county conventions, he won't have any representation at the CD conventions, and won't get any CD-level delegates. Where they go at this point is impossible to say. But he will keep his 5 state-level delegates. By keep, what I mean is that his campaign gets to choose the 5 delegates. Who they end up voting is still up in the air. We'll update the Delegate Tracker.

Update 1A: Turns out I was right in the first place. The state-level delegates are chosen in the state convention, and as Edwards won't meet the 15% threshold, he won't get any state-level delegates either.

Update 2: The South Carolina situation is a bit confusing. But reading the South Carolina Delegate Selection Plan, they essentially have a system similar to Iowa's, except the final number of delegates selected for each candidate have to match the numbers out of the primary. There's no mention of a candidate "releasing" his delegates, so for now, we'll assume Edwards gets to name his 8 delegates. (Who they end up voting for at the convention is another matter).

Update 3: a non-incremental version of this post can be found at MyDD. Also note the following:

There is no first-ballot "vote for your candidate" rule at the Democratic Convention. Technically, any delegate is free to vote for any candidate on any ballot. (There may be state rules mandating a vote - we're still looking into that). Therefore, there is no such thing as a "legal" release of delegates. There is a political "release" - almost all delegates will vote for their candidate unless their candidate tells them they don't have to. But from a Rules point of view, a "release" of delegates mean nothing.

And therefore, it doesn't matter whether Edwards "ended" his campaign or "suspended" it as far as his delegates go. My guess is he will tell any delegates he has left that they can vote for who they want, or he could endorse someone and tell his delegates to vote for that person. But it doesn't matter from a rules point of view. They can vote for anybody at any time anyway, regardless of what Edwards did or say today or does in the future.

Original Update: Before we remove John Edwards' endorsements and numbers I wanted to add them to this post so we have a record of where things stood when he dropped out.

Endorsements: Edwards Rep. Bob Etheridge (NC) Rep. Mike McIntyre (NC) Rep. Brad Miller (NC) Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD) Rep. Charlie Gonzalez (TX) Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX) Rep. Jim Oberstar (MN) Rep. David Obey (WI) Rep. David Price (NC) Rep. Heath Shuler (NC) Rep. Bart Stupak (MI) Rep. Mel Watt (NC) Rep. Michael Michaud (ME) Rep. Bruce Braley (IA) DNC Joe Wineke (WI) DNC Sarah Swisher (IA) DNC Nancy Larson (MN) DNC Mary Jo Neville (MD) DNC Muriel Offerman (NC) DNC Elisa Parker (TN) DNC Carol Peterson (NC) DNC C Richard Cranwell (VA) DNC Diane Saxe (MA) DNC Jim Frasier (OK) DNC Richard Machacek (IA) DNC John Knutson (ME) DNC Vince Powers (NE) DNC John Perez (CA)