Benjamin Ginsberg, a partner at Patton Boggs, focuses his law practice on political law, public policy and lobbying, and litigation and dispute resolution. He represents political parties, candidates, political campaigns, members of Congress, governors, corporations, trade associations, and individuals participating in the political process. He currently serves as Mitt Romney’s top lawyer.
According to The Am Law Daily, Ginsberg is being criticized for forcing a major change in the GOP nominating process in late August 2012 in response to Ron Paul supporters’ efforts to win delegates to the Republican National Committee. The Republican National Convention Committee voted 56-40 to make it impossible for supporters of one presidential candidate to override voters at a state convention, as Ron Paul supporters did in Iowa and Nevada.
Ron Paul is a GOP congressman from Texas. Paul remains a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination but acknowledges Mitt Romney accumulated a majority of delegates and will win the roll-call vote to secure the nomination, according to U.S. News & World Report. Ginsberg said the purpose of the change was “to correct what we saw as a damaging flaw in the presidential election process in 2012.”
The rule forces statewide presidential primaries or caucuses to determine the allocation of delegates, avoiding the takeovers Paul executed in Iowa and Nevada by eliminating unbound delegates in statewide contests. States would be allowed to determine whether to give all their delegates to the winner of the primary or caucus, or distribute them proportionally according to the results.
According to members of the rules panel, Ginsberg led the effort to insert language into a rules committee report that would let presidential candidates elect their own delegates in states they carry, taking away power the state Republican parties hold. A group of delegates against the changes plan to present amendments to eliminate Ginsberg’s alterations before the report is up for a final vote. To some delegates, Ginsberg’s revisions to the rules were a surprise. A national committeeman from North Dakota who sits on the convention rules committee, and has served as a Republican National Committee member for ten years said: “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Ginsberg grew up near Philadelphia, PA. Ginsberg is best known for work on the 2000 Florida recount that ended in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision. Before law school, Ginsberg spent five years as a newspaper reporter at the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, The Berkshire (Mass.) Eagle, and The Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise. After five years as a reporter, he attended law school.