The Daily Signal - What to Watch for on Super Tuesday

Starting point is 00:00:04 I'm Virginia Allen, and this is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, March 5th. Happy Super Tuesday. 15 states have GOP contests for Super Tuesday today. Those states include Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia. Those are the states all holding primaries. And then Alaska and Utah are the two states that have caucuses. So what should we expect to see from these states today? And will the winner of these states be the person who is the GOP candidate, the nominee? Executive Vice President of Heritage Action for America. Ryan Walker joins us on today's show to answer these questions and more.

Starting point is 00:00:52 So stay tuned for our conversation after this. So what is going on with Ukraine? What is this deal with the border? How do you feel about school choice? These are the questions that come up to conservatives sitting at parties, at dinner, at family reunions. What do you say when these questions come up? I'm Mark Geinney, the host of the podcast for you.

Starting point is 00:01:18 Heritage Explains brought to you by all of your friends here at the Heritage Foundation. Through the creative use of stories, the knowledge of our super passionate experts, we bring you the most important policy issues of the day and break them down in a way that is understandable. So check out Heritage Explains wherever you get your podcasts. Heritage Action for America's Executive Vice President. Ryan Walker joins us now. Ryan, thanks for being with us. Thank you for having me on.

Starting point is 00:01:46 Today's a big day. Voters in 15 states are headed to the polls or caucuses today, as we just mentioned. And for GOP voters, their choice is really between two candidates. You either have former president Donald Trump or former South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley. What are the states that you're going to be watching closely today? You know, we're looking at all of them, really, to see where both candidates perform. But, you know, I think it's an interesting question when we look at the states that have already voted. Nikki Haley has not garnered more than 40% of the vote.

Starting point is 00:02:19 And so I think the important question for me into today is looking at which states she has the likelihood of getting close to 40%. And then importantly, if she gets past that. And in all the states that you've mentioned, I don't know that there is a single one so far that has shown that she will get above that threshold of 40% where we saw her perform in states like New Hampshire. And she got close to that in South Carolina. Okay. Now, a big game changer came on Monday as we were waiting for that Supreme Court case to drop. And everyone was saying, is it going to happen before Super Tuesday? Is it going to happen?

Starting point is 00:02:52 And it did. So obviously that case involved the 14th Amendment. looking at is a state constitutionally allowed to say a candidate can't appear on the ballot, in this case, former president Donald Trump, because according to the state of Colorado, they claim that Trump had engaged in an insurrection on January 6th. So the Colorado Supreme Court had said he can't be on the ballot. That went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, no, a state can't decide who can and can't be on a ballot in a federal case.

Starting point is 00:03:23 Were you surprised by this ruling out of the Supreme Court? Court on Monday? No. A state cannot decide if a former president or a former candidate is allowed to be on the ballot, especially if they have not been convicted of a crime. And to date, Donald Trump has not been convicted of a crime. And they were trying to use the Insurrection Act, which was a law that was passed following the Civil War to keep members of the Confederacy from holding office again. That is not what this is about. This was about, in my view, going after a political candidate with certain views and trying to keep him off the ballot. It was political in nature, not based on any truth or, importantly, any crime that has been committed. Yeah. So now, of course, obviously Trump's name will be on the ballot and those votes will count for former President Donald Trump. And as he seeks to gain more victories and more states, and you look at the landscape so far in GOP primaries and caucuses in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Idaho, and Missouri.

Starting point is 00:04:29 We've seen Trump clench all of those, as you mentioned. Haley did have a victory in D.C. over the weekend. How many states do you think Haley would need to win today in order to stay in the race? Or do you think that she'll stay in the race no matter what? It sounds like she will stay in the race. You know, I think if she wins any state, she'll continue to stay in the race. I think her perspective is to be the last person standing with, any amount of delegates should something happen to Donald Trump, either in some of the court cases he has coming up or otherwise.

Starting point is 00:05:01 And so I think that's her intention. I think that, you know, she did win the Republican primary contest in Washington, D.C. over the weekend, which I'm not sure any Republican candidate wants to go around touting. But nonetheless, she gets delegates from that. And going into a convention, you know, if you're the last person there with who is on the ticket who still got some delegate votes, then I think you can make a compelling. case. So I think that's what her intention is. And is the convention that final deadline where technically we won't have the GOP nominee until the date of the convention? That's correct. Yeah. Okay. So I think, listen, we'll see the states play out over the next couple of weeks. In order to win the nomination at the convention and to be named the nominee, you have to have 1,215 delegate votes from around the country. Right now, Trump has 8504

Starting point is 00:05:54 up for grabs today. So he could get very close to that 1,215, that magic number. But once he hits that, it's safe to assume that he is the nominee. And then at the convention, they will make it an official, you know, statement of the party that he is the nominee. And is it pretty normal that whoever wins the most dates on Super Tuesday ends up being the nominee? Yeah, just by math.

Starting point is 00:06:18 It works out that way. You know, I mean, there have been, we were just talking before this show that, you know, We can't, in recent memory, Super Tuesday has always been a contest for one of the parties unless they have an incumbent in office. And this year, you know, I don't know that anyone views today as necessarily a contest that's up for grabs. I think everyone anticipates that former President Trump will win. What are the issues that are on the mindset voters as they head to the polls? I know Heroddard Jackson does a lot of polling looking at where the hearts and minds of Americans at. What have you all learned?

Starting point is 00:06:51 Yeah. The number one issue right now is the border. And that has not been historically the case. It's always been, well, recently it has been a top four issue for voters. Now it's number one, by far margins. And then secondly, people care about the price of goods. They care about the price of rent, gas, and groceries. It's the day-to-day impact on their daily lives.

Starting point is 00:07:13 And so they see it. And there are other issues related with all of that. With the border, you have crime that comes with it, drugs that come with it that are coming into the communities. And then safety, security, the society. this idea that somehow the school system and your hospital infrastructure and all of these social goods that are part of our great system are being undermined by illegal immigrants coming into towns and communities across the country. It's a dominating and will be, I think, a vote determinative issue for a large number of people come November. Will you say that remaining dominant?

Starting point is 00:07:47 Do you foresee that in November that immigration will still be number one? Or do you think maybe it's something that, you know, it's being covered a lot right now on the news. And if there's shifts that we might see another issue like something like the economy that's traditionally number one, retake that slot. Yeah, I think that there are two things to that. One, I think that most folks have sort of come to assume or these are President Biden's policies that have directly led to this influx of folks. There are 10 million people in the country now that were not here previously to President Biden. And so people feel that. They see that. There's a direct impact on them again, not only just the impact of crime and drugs in their community, but cities are having

Starting point is 00:08:27 to cut budgets. For instance, Denver announced two weeks ago that they're cutting their parks and wrecks department by millions and millions of dollars to be able to give benefits to illegal immigrants. People feel that. That's a real thing that people see. So no, I don't think it's going away just because of the sheer volume of activity that's happened, the number of folks that have come into the country. And it doesn't sound like President Biden will be able to do anything because of his own party's reluctance to act on the border. I don't think he'll be able to act without upsetting his base, which would then damage turnout numbers for Democrats come November, which could spell a disaster for him in the general election. And so I think that he's sort of between

Starting point is 00:09:07 a rock and a hard place on this issue. He feels maybe like he has to act and do something politically. I don't know that policy-wise he cares a whole heck of a lot, but he does understand that it's a vulnerability. So we'll see if it plays out. I think that it's a stand. issue. It has been fascinating to see the back and forth a little bit. Just coming out of the White House where we saw about two weeks ago, President Biden did float. There was rumors of maybe him taking executive action on the border. And now it's almost crickets on that. Yeah. The outside organizations, groups that represent illegal immigrants and fight for what they call the illegal immigrants rights have a very strong hold on the Democrats. And they become very active when even a

Starting point is 00:09:50 whisper of action is being discussed. And so they'll engage very heavily and very loudly when President Biden or any elected leader in Washington with a D next to their name starts to engage on these types of issues. So I think it will stay. You know, the economy may be one of those things that falls off or becomes, has less of an impact on people's decision making in November. Who knows what it looks like in November. But I think immigration's here to stay. As far as the states that not only we're watching now, but especially come November. Let's fast forward. It's the start of November. We have our confirmed GOP Democrat candidate. What are the states that at the end of the day will determine the election? Yeah, great question. We think. Always speculating here. We can't

Starting point is 00:10:40 confirm, right? Yeah, it's sort of a, you know, it is a guessing game at times, or at least sometimes it seems that way. I think that there is sound data to show this, but I think, There are five states that we think will determine the presidential election. It is Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Those are the five states. You might throw in a Michigan or a North Carolina if you believe that those states are in play or will determine the outcome. But I think those five that I mentioned are going to be the battleground states. And I think it might actually come down to two.

Starting point is 00:11:14 I think it might come down to Arizona and Georgia. I may be a little outside of the class of folks that looks at elections and races and tries to predict. But I think that those two states are critical. They're purple states. They've become quite the battleground states. The margins in the 2020 election were very small in Arizona and Georgia in particular, around 13,000 on average between the two states. So I think it could come down to those two. But there are five that we're looking at.

Starting point is 00:11:42 Okay. Wow. This is going to be an eventful few months ahead of us, Ryan. And I know busy for you all, share if you would, just before we let you go a little bit about what you all do at Heritage Action. And how can average Americans actually get involved with the work that you guys do? Yeah, Heritage Action is a grassroots lobbying organization. So we take feedback from the people about issues that they care about and want changed in Washington and also in the states. We are registered across the country and states and at the federal level to represent the people,

Starting point is 00:12:11 to represent people on the ground in their communities who are fighting back against some of these disaster. policies. So we educate, train, and then activate folks who want to be civically engaged at both the federal and state level. That's huge. And how can we follow the work of Heritage Action? Please visit Heritageaction.com. We're on all of the social media platforms you can imagine. Great. Ryan, thank you. Really appreciate your time today. Thanks for having me on. And with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. If you have not had a chance to check out our evening show, make sure you do so. We're every evening around 5 p.m. We bring you the top news of the day. And if you would, take a minute

Starting point is 00:12:54 to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows and also take a minute to leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks again for being with us today. Have a great Super Tuesday. Don't forget to vote. We will see you right back here at 5 p.m. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.

The Daily Signal - What to Watch for on Super Tuesday

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