The real reason California’s 2020 election law is a blow to Donald Trump

| 7:11 pm EDT July 30, 2019
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California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law today which says that anyone who wants to be on the ballot in the 2020 presidential election has to publicly release their tax returns first. This law is obviously aimed at Donald Trump, who is famously keeping his tax returns hidden, presumably to cover up his financial crimes and foreign entanglements.

Some are asking why this matters. Donald Trump obviously isn’t going to win California in the 2020 election anyway. He’ll get the same zero electoral college votes whether he’s on the ballot or not. So why should he care? The thing is, it’s not about the 2020 general election. It’s about the 2020 presidential primary race.

Because Trump is the incumbent, he’s hoping to get through the 2020 primary season without a serious primary challenger, so he can avoid having to play defense during primary season and taking any blows. But if he’s not on the 2020 Republican primary ballot in California, some other Republican candidate will win the state. More to the point, because California has changed its primary date and will now be voting on Super Tuesday, it’ll happen early enough to cause headaches for Trump for the rest of the primary season.

Will this California law give some also-ran Republican primary challenger like Bill Weld or Mark Sanford a chance to take the overall nomination away form Trump? Absolutely not, unless they become a whole lot more popular than they are now, or unless a bunch of other states pass similar legislation.

But imagine being just four weeks into the 2020 primary voting, and Donald Trump loses the California Republican primary – and those delegates go to some nobody right out of the gate. At the least, the media would spend the rest of the primary cycle insisting that the also-ran had a chance of taking Trump down, and that’s the kind of headache that could damage Trump heading into the general election.