Special: States selecting RNC delegates, GOP meets in Florida, Obama's election-year agenda & a woman on the $10 bill

ANNOUNCER: This is the Washington Week Webcast Extra.

MR. WILLIAMS: Good evening. I’m Pete Williams, and I’m joined around the table by Alexis Simendinger of RealClearPolitics, Jonathan Martin of The New York Times, Michael Scherer of TIME Magazine, and Ed O’Keefe of The Washington Post.

And, Ed, there’s been some nuts-and-bolts politicking that’s going to take place in the next few weeks. Has to do with delegate selection, including the individuals who will be attending the convention in Cleveland. So what more can you tell us? How does this actually work?

MR. O’KEEFE: So, every weekend between now and mid-June, basically, somewhere in America, Republicans will be meeting to pick the people who will sit in the seats in Cleveland. And most years, nobody would care. But this year, of course, we have to, because –

MR. WILLIAMS: This will be like jury selection, right, with jury consultants looking up their past?

MR. O’KEEFE: It kind of it. Actually, that’s a good – leave it to the justice correspondent to come with that analogy. (Laughter.) But that’s essentially what it is, and it’s happening this weekend. In Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia, in one way or another somewhere, either in a congressional district or statewide, they’re meeting to pick these delegates. And the – and the politicking that’s going on is the idea that in all of these states you are bound to vote for the results of whoever won – in most cases it’s Donald Trump – but after that first round, it’s open to most of these delegates to decide for themselves whether to keep going with Mr. Trump or to pick someone else.

MR. WILLIAMS: So in many of these states, then, the state has made the decision that the delegates will support a candidate, either Trump or Cruz or someone else.

MR. O’KEEFE: Mmm hmm.

MR. MARTIN: Most, yeah.

MR. WILLIAMS: Now the question is, who will be the delegates who will do that?

MR. O’KEEFE: Right. And this is – and this, more than any other year in modern times, matters because in so many cases across the country we have found that Senator Cruz especially is being able – is packing these delegations with his supporters, who will wear –

MR. WILLIAMS: Whether they’re Trump – whether they’re going to vote for Trump or not.

MR. MARTIN: On the first ballot, yeah.

MR. O’KEEFE: Yeah. I mean, you used the analogy earlier today that they’re a Cruz supporter in a Trump uniform. Well, they’ll take that uniform off after the first round and vote their conscience or vote their preference and go with Cruz, or perhaps something else will transpire. But that is where Trump is getting played and where he frustratingly realizes that perhaps this thing might slip away from him if he doesn’t start paying attention to that process.

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, I made the analogy about jury selection, but is it possible the campaigns will be actually looking into the backgrounds of these people and trying to figure out how to get to them?

MR. O’KEEFE: Yes. There is a way – there is a way to contest it. There’s a Credentials Committee at the convention in Cleveland where they are likely to bring several names forward and say this person shouldn’t sit because the way he was selected was bad, or this person shouldn’t sit for some other reason.

MR. SCHERER: The committees are also very interesting because the committees have 112 people on them, two from each state or territory, and the people who are chosen for the committees are chosen by the people who are put in the delegations, right? So whether you’re bound to Trump or not bound to Trump, if you – say you’re a delegation that’s all bound to Trump but you all actually really dislike Trump, you can seed those committees with people who will vote against Trump’s interests.

MR. O’KEEFE: And it’s been happening.

MR. SCHERER: And they have – and so the committees – the Credentials Committee, the Rules Committee, all the – the Platform Committee – they could actually really work against Trump in small ways the week before and at the convention, even if they are bound delegates for Trump on the first ballot.

MR. WILLIAMS: So, Jonathan, I want to ask you a question. The RNC spring meeting’s scheduled for next week in Florida. This would ordinarily not attract much attention, but will it be a big deal this year?

MR. MARTIN: It will be a big deal in terms of perception and in terms of attention and coverage – (laughter) – because these otherwise sort of arcane procedural meetings and conversations have now taken on this outsized importance. It’s the stuff of high-stakes drama here that could shape a party and a country. And so –

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, there’s a lead being written in advance. (Laughter.)

MR. MARTIN: It already was. Check your paper tomorrow, Pete. (Laughter.)

So I think, yes, you’ll see a lot more attention. Substantively, what will come out of next week in Florida, I don’t think that much will be different, in part because they don’t want to make any waves. The members of the RNC, knowing that Trump is looking for any opportunity to sort of seize on the changing of a comma or a semicolon, they’re going to be extra careful to not monkey around next week with the rules because they don’t want to give Trump, you know, more oxygen for his ongoing campaign against the party.

MR. WILLIAMS: Will the candidates be there?

MR. MARTIN: My understanding is that Governor Kasich is going to be there. I think Cruz is sending some staff. I don’t believe Trump is going to be there in Florida.

MR. O’KEEFE: He’s sending some staff, yeah.

MR. WILLIAMS: So Kasich will be there, adding to the drama? (Laughter.)

MR. MARTIN: High drama, Pete, absolutely. (Laughter.)

MR. WILLIAMS: OK. Alexis, it seems like the president’s been pitching some priorities that appear to be more or less in line with what the Democrats hope to see. What do you think? Is it – he’s, for example, pushing for greater consumer protections, talking about set-top boxes for television. Is this a coincidence, or is there some sort of strategy here?

MS. SIMENDINGER: No, it’s interesting because at the end, you know, presidents are having trouble getting out of the back pages of the newspaper and they’re trying to get attention. President Obama has weighed in, we’ve seen, to talk about Trump, to make warnings. You can tell he’s in it. He is definitely paying attention to this as much as any American is. But what he’s doing is also using his executive authority in various creative ways to indicate where the Democratic Party stands and the issues that are part of the platform, what he hopes the nominee will be spiriting forward. And he’s also challenging Congress all the way through, and you mentioned some examples. Some of it is so wonky and very consumer-oriented.

It’s like the president said, you know, the Department of Labor wants all of us, through its rulemaking, to understand that if you have a financial adviser, they’re supposed to be taking your interest at heart. This is like a new rule. I didn’t know that my financial adviser was not taking my interest at heart – (laughter) – but the president’s saying you have to do this.

Cable. What do all Americans hate? I’m sorry, Pete, but cable, cable television. (Laughter.) And he’s saying, look, this is a rip-off. Consumers are getting ripped off by cable companies, and let’s tackle this. And he had some executive orders saying let’s do this.

On tax inversions – this is something that we’d all go to sleep, usually, thinking about – but Treasury is saying, look, these companies that are using this loophole, these big fat-cat companies going abroad, we’re going to stop this. And he actually did put a torpedo right through, you know, a proposed Pfizer-Allergan, you know, I guess merger that would have definitely benefited them tax-wise.

And the president showcases each one of these, and he’s going to keep doing this all the way through, showing that he has power and this counts.

MR. WILLIAMS: To great effect, or not?

MS. SIMENDINGER: The cumulative effect for him on legacy, it gives him a chance to argue. I think it definitely – you can see the members of Congress on the Democratic side embracing, you know, pay equity, talking about consumer issues, talking about fairness. And to some extent, Secretary Clinton has done the same and Bernie Sanders has picked up on some issues, definitely related to financial issues for instance.

MR. WILLIAMS: All right, thank you. Finally, Michael and his colleagues at TIME have been doing some reporting on the plan announced last year to redesign the $10 bill and include a woman on the currency. But it appears that the buzz regarding the Hamilton play on Broadway has been having some currency of its own. Don’t you wish you could write like that? (Laughter.)

MR. SCHERER: I do.

MR. MARTIN: Hamilton-good. (Laughter.)

MR. SCHERER: I’m sure everyone who’s watching this remembers last year not just the Treasury secretary but every member of the Cabinet was in a video announcing a national discussion about what woman to put on the $10 bill. What’s happened since, there is a shift inside of Treasury. And while Treasury hasn’t announced exactly what they’re doing with the $10 bill, it’s clear now that at least the front-runner position for this woman when she is named will not be the portrait in the center on the front. And the reasons are multiple, but one of them has to do with the play Hamilton, which is Hamilton as a founding father.

MR. WILLIAMS: That is hot now.

MR. SCHERER: Yeah, is about as hot as can be. But the other reason is, you know, Jack Lew sits in an office under a portrait of Hamilton. After –

MR. WILLIAMS: Jack Lew is?

MR. SCHERER: The Treasury secretary. After he announced this, Ben Bernanke, the former head of the Federal Reserve, wrote a public letter to Jack Lew basically saying please do everything you can to save Hamilton on the 10, because for this group of people who do financial policy, who worry about the finances of the nation, Hamilton is THE founder. I mean, he’s the guy who set up our financial system. And they just feel it would be a sacrilege to take him off.

MR. WILLIAMS: So no woman on the currency?

MR. SCHERER: Well, so, no, the secretary of Treasury remains committed to putting a woman on the currency, but the most likely outcome now is that that woman goes on the back of the currency and that around the same time the –

MR. O’KEEFE: You need this? Here. Tell us where it’s going to go. I just took this out because – you’re telling me now it goes on the back?

MR. SCHERER: I don’t have a design.

MR. MARTIN: You can keep it, too.

MR. O’KEEFE: (Laughs.) No, you can’t. (Laughs.)

MR. SCHERER: Secretary Lew has been talking about – has been talking about making – he says nobody knows what’s on the back of bills, and he says we’re going to make these scenes more interesting. So I think what he’s referring to, if you read through the lines, is you could have a scene in front of the Treasury Building on the back of the bill, or they could change the building on the back of the bill, and then you could put a notable woman on that scene. Now, what he’ll probably also do, if he goes this route – and again, the Treasury admits there’s been an evolution in thinking, but they have not said what they’re going to do. So you’re reading between the lines here.

MR. WILLIAMS: But isn’t there – isn’t there a little – I mean, have they thought about the sort of optics of the woman goes on the back?

MR. SCHERER: All right, so this is what they’re going to do. They’re going to also announce – because this is the other thing Secretary Lew’s been saying, is that we’re also looking at the five and the 20. So at the same time they do the 10, assuming they go this route, they will also announce changes to the five – probably the back, because you don’t want to take Lincoln off the five, right – (laughter) – and the 20. And Andrew Jackson is about as low – if Hamilton is hot, Jackson is – Jackson is cold. And so, you know, the betting money would say that at the same time they do this announcement, Jackson will be announced to leave the 20.

Now, there’s a complication here as well. Because of the order of the currency redesign, which is determined actually by counterfeit risk – it’s not determined by politics. So they figure out right now the 10 is the most risky currency. If you want to – if you want to counterfeit a bill, the 10 is the going one right now.

MR. WILLIAMS: Thanks for the tip.

MR. SCHERER: Yeah.

MR. O’KEEFE: All these puns. (Laughter.)

MR. SCHERER: Because of that, the 20 –

MR. WILLIAMS: It’s the highest priority for redesign.

MR. SCHERER: Highest priority, so the 20 will not be redesigned until later. So what it means is, if this announcement goes forward as expected, then women – America will have to wait probably four or so years more, until maybe at late as 2030, to actually have a bill in their pockets, probably the 20 at that point, with a woman on the front.

MS. SIMENDINGER: Time for a new Broadway play. I see it. (Laughter.)

MR. SCHERER: Right.

MR. O’KEEFE: Jackson.

MR. SCHERER: Someone needs a – someone needs a Jackson play, yeah. The clock is ticking.

MR. WILLIAMS: All right, thank you. Keep us posted. We’ll wait till they get the answer, I guess. We’ll be back in 2017 or whenever it is.

That’ll have to do it for now, but be sure to check out our website for all sorts of fun features, including a look at 16 candidates that you might not have known were running for president and our new Washington Weekly News Quiz. That’s at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek. And we’ll see you on the next Washington Week Webcast Extra.