Nikki Haley: Second to none?

Ten years ago, the Nevada State Democratic Party (Harry Reid, proprietor) decided not to run anybody against incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval. Reid had cooked up a byzantine Reid-protection scheme, the details of which I won’t bore you with, but the results of which were Republican control of both houses of the state legislature, Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford losing his congressional seat, and Nevada voters, especially Democratic ones, made to suffer a peculiarly distinctive strain of inanity. But I digress.

A guy named Bob Goodman filed in the Democratic primary for governor in 2014 anyway, and he came in second to “none of these candidates,” which is an option Nevada voters can choose in statewide races – including presidential races.

After suggesting he’d stay neutral last year, Joe Lombardo earlier this week endorsed Trump for president, and said he would be supporting Trump in the Nevada State Republican Party’s presidential caucus (an event notable only for its needlessness and absurdity, and that is being all but ignored by the rest of the nation).

In the process, Lombardo said he would also vote in the presidential preference primary that the state is required by law to hold, but will vote for the “none of these candidates” option on that ballot. The only candidate who still has an active campaign (active as of the day this column is being published, anyway) whose name is on that primary ballot is Nikki Haley.

(I’m assuming readers of this column don’t need an explanation of the caucus-primary nonsense, but just in case: Don’t be confused: Trump deliberately CHOSE not to be on the Nevada primary ballot.)

Lombardo could have just skipped the state-run primary. After all, that’s what Nevada State Republican Party chair and indicted fake elector Michael McDonald told Republicans to do last month while introducing Trump at a rally in Reno.

Lombardo and his political handlers might have come up with the idea of voting for “none” all on their own. Or they might have been nudged in that direction in the course of the Trump team telling Lombardo to quit sitting on his hands and endorse Trump like a good little Republican governor.

Trump has delivered instructions to Lombardo through surrogates before. During the 2022 campaign when Lombardo renounced his own words and issued a gushing sycophantic statement declaring Trump great mere hours after he had said Trump wasn’t great, Lombardo’s publicly humiliating about-face was on the instructions of the chair of National Republican Committee, who was acting on behalf of a miffed Trump.

Haley, like nearly everyone else in the country, has shown zero interest in Nevada’s third spot on the Republican nominating calendar. And while Nevada polling is slight, what there is of it suggests a substantial majority of Nevada Republican voters suspect Trump is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If Trump were to instruct Nevada Republicans to vote for “none” in the primary, maybe “none” would get the most votes. Or maybe not. Come to think of, I’d like to see Trump try.

“None” might get more votes than any named candidate even if Trump says nothing, the result of a plurality of Republican voters doing what they think would please Trump Almighty. There’s some social media chatter indicating a little movement in that direction.

But if “none” got the most votes, “none” still wouldn’t “win.”

Under state law, “Only votes cast for the named candidates shall be counted” for the purposes of declaring the winner of an election. In 2014, even though Goodman got fewer votes than “none,” he was still on the general election ballot as the Democratic nominee for governor. Goodman didn’t really have a campaign, but if he did, his campaign slogan totally should have been “Bob Goodman – Second to none!”

Of course, whether Haley wins the Nevada primary or comes in second to none doesn’t matter at all. The state Republican Party insisted on turning Nevada’s third spot on the nominating calendar into a sick joke and a mere quirky asterisk to the 2024 nominating process.

On the bright side (where I’m always looking), part 1…  The Nevada State Republican Party is in charge of its perverse and rigged-from-the-start Trump-bespoke caucus, but neither it nor the Nevada State Democratic Party for that matter will be administering the election the nation will be watching – the general election in Nevada in November. That will be administered by state and county election officials.

On the bright side, part 2… Since Nevada is one of only a handful of battleground states that will decide the presidency, Lombardo is perfectly positioned to get quite a little bit more Trump on him than he would prefer. In what is going to be a repulsive campaign year, at least that part should be fun to watch.

A version of this column originally appeared in the Daily Current newsletter, which is free, and which you can (and should) subscribe to here.