RENO, Nev.
Lee Hoffman’s job is challenging in the best of circumstances.
In most presidential election years, the chairman of the Republican Party in Elko County, Nevada, is tasked with rounding up voters to help choose a presidential nominee at the GOP caucuses. It’s a complicated operation in a county of ranches and mining communities spread across an area larger than Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. His success sometimes hinges on how many people pick up the phone when he calls, or how many friends of friends he bumps into at the local supermarket.
This year, Hoffman's work has been even more difficult. For the first time, he must help voters understand Nevada will have two contests over the course of three days — and only one that counts toward who is the GOP nominee.
That's because a state law requires Nevada to hold a primary election, but the Nevada GOP voted to hold their own caucuses, which are party-run meetings open to Republicans only. They’ll only award delegates for that contest, rendering the state-run presidential primary purely symbolic.
Voters have received mail ballots for the Feb. 6 primary that don’t list front-runner Donald Trump’s name. Why? Trump is competing in the party-run caucuses on Feb. 8, when he is poised to take all the state’s delegates on a march toward the nomination.
It’s Hoffman’s job to sort it all out for voters, including the people who call wanting to know why Trump isn’t on their ballot.
“It’s not an easy task, and I don’t have a panacea for it,” said Hoffman, 72, a former engineer for a mining company and four-term city council member.
How is this peculiar arrangement even possible? Blame the Founding Fathers and the federal system of government they embraced in the Constitution. Outside of a few guiding principles, such as the Electoral College, the nation’s founding charter leaves the mechanics of running elections to the states. And there are 50 of them, plus the District of Columbia, each led over the years by lawmakers with their own ideas about how votes should be cast and counted.
Further complicating matters, it’s largely up to political parties to decide how their presidential nominee should be chosen. Some state parties choose to award delegates based on the results of government-run primaries, while others go for party-run caucuses. Then some, such as Nevada this year as well as Michigan, Missouri and a few others, end up with both.
Critics say the Nevada GOP’s new rules were designed to favor Trump and stack the deck against his rivals, most of whom have left the race as it turns to Nevada.
Of the major candidates still in the race, only former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley chose to run in the primary, though a win won't give her delegates needed for the nomination. She has essentially ceded Nevada, instead looking ahead to South Carolina, where she served as governor.
“Talk to the people in Nevada: They will tell you the caucuses have been sealed up, bought and paid for,” Haley told reporters in New Hampshire, where she finished second to Trump in the Jan. 23 primary. ”That’s the Trump train rolling through that. But we’re going to focus on the states that are fair.”
The state GOP, like others across the U.S., is led by Trump loyalists determined to take election processes into their own hands. Three Nevada GOP leaders overseeing the caucuses have been indicted on felony charges that they were so-called fake electors who sent certificates to Congress falsely claiming Trump won Nevada in 2020.
The rule changes also have caused rifts within the state party, with even the Republican governor worrying the dueling elections will confuse voters and decrease turnout. Others feared a muddled result, frustration with the process and bad publicity could hurt Nevada's reputation as an early presidential nominating state. Nevada is the third state to vote in the GOP contest.
Will Bradley, a Nevada GOP central committee member, has been involved in state parties in Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina dating back to 2007. He opposed holding caucuses but is now helping to organize them.
“(This is) the most confusing and significant debacle I’ve ever seen in Republican politics,” Bradley said.
Want to know more about caucuses and primaries? Here’s an explainer:
For years, Nevada held nominating caucuses. But the Democratic-controlled state government in 2021 approved a law that requires the state to hold a primary starting this year.
Nevada GOP leaders say they prefer party-run caucuses because they want rules in place, such as requiring voter ID and paper ballots, that Democrats wouldn’t approve for the state-run primary.
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who took office after the law establishing the primary and its rules was signed, also tried to require voter ID for state elections. Though he was unsuccessful in getting that requirement passed, he still has denounced the Nevada GOP's plan to award delegates through caucuses, calling it “unacceptable" and saying it will disenfranchise voters.
Still, Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald has forged ahead with the caucuses. McDonald was among six Nevada Republicans indicted for falsely certifying Trump won the state in 2020.
He has introduced the former president at multiple events in the state this election cycle, including at a Las Vegas rally in late January. Each time, McDonald has urged supporters to make plans to attend their caucus in-person to back Trump.
“You give us a fair election," McDonald told voters at rallies in Reno and Las Vegas, "I’ll give you the next president of the United States — Donald J. Trump."