Hijacked Senate bill on 'divisive road' over political conventions

Sponsor tries to kill own bill amid GOP rift

A Senate committee sent a hijacked bill to the full floor Wednesday, pulling the pin on a grenade that is likely headed to the House.

In an unusual turn of events, the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jim Mehlhaff, tried to kill his own bill after Senate President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck amended it to – yet again – limit the number of statewide candidates that are picked during party conventions. Similar bills died last year in the Legislature and again this year in the state House.

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Senate Bill 13 was one of the first bills filed in this legislative session, but it has sat shelved, languishing without a hearing. The bill as Mehlhaff introduced it allowed nominees for governor to pick their lieutenant governor running mate rather than the delegates at state conventions picking lieutenant governor candidates.

That change has broad support within the GOP caucus. But Schoenbeck amended the bill to also pull the attorney general and secretary of state offices out the convention as well, putting them on a primary ballot. Efforts to remove other offices from convention nominations have set off a civil war in the GOP.

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