![]() Third, if tax records are used as a cudgel against presidential candidates, where else might states go in a partisan effort to embarrass a candidate?Ĭredit scores, sealed divorce records (that would apply to Trump and Ronald Reagan) might be put into play. Bonus question: would the Republican National Convention seat non-Trump delegates that were the result of a non-Trump primary? Should Trump somehow lose California’s GOP primary-i.e., he doesn’t receive enough write-in votes-he’ll still earn his party’s nomination given that he has but token opposition at this point (Democrat Franklin Pierce, in 1856, is the answer to the trivia question of the only incumbent president to have been denied his party’s nomination). Second, even if the courts ultimately were to decide that the new California law is constitutional, does it really interfere with Trump’s re-election chances? ![]() Apply that to the presidency, and California, in theory, is out of bounds for hamstringing Trump in a way that has nothing to do with birthplace, residency, or age. Nearly 25 years ago, the US Supreme Court determined that states cannot impose qualifications on congressional candidates that are stricter than what’s prescribed by the Constitution (this was a 1995 ruling that said California and 22 other states couldn’t impose congressional term limits). Newsom’s action raises plenty of questions. Perhaps, if a bill signed last week by California governor Gavin Newsom remains in place between now and next year’s election.Īt issue is SB 27, the so-called Presidential Tax Transparency and Accountability Act, which requires presidential candidates to file their income tax returns, for the five most recent taxable years, with California’s secretary of state in order to have their names placed on the state’s primary ballot.Īs Trump famously has refused to release his tax returns, this means his name would be absent from the choices available when Californians go to the polls next March. What was news in 2016 was the dimension of Trump’s California drubbing-the worst performance by a Republican since Alf Landon all the way back in 1936.Ĭould Trump go any lower in the Golden State in 2020? Bush-all the way back in 1988 (Republican candidates carried California in nine of the 10 presidential elections spanning 1952 to 1988 the state’s gone Democratic seven consecutive times since). The last Republican nominee to do so, in America’s most populous state, was George H. That Trump failed to carry the Golden State barely qualifies as news. Donald Trump received only 31.6% of California’s vote in the 2016 presidential election.
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