but more often it put state parties out of touch with their constituents and the state

leadership. The RNC provided a crucial bridge between national and local politics

when the leaders had good relations. When they did not, the party structure provided

added stress to the National Chairman and his efforts to promote unity.

 The federal nature of the GOP was also critically important for the presidential

nominating procedure. Delegates from each state were sent to the quadrennial national

convention to nominate the president and vice-president. In the decades before the

establishment of binding preferential primaries, which required delegates elected by

the people to vote for a specific candidate, the selection process for delegates varied

from state to state. A handful, most notably those from Oregon, Wisconsin, and Ohio,

were elected via popular referendum, but not all primary states bound delegates to a

particular candidate. More commonly in this period, the state committees appointed

the convention delegates, meaning that state leaders could stack their slates with

individuals who favored a certain candidate.

 For an individual to win the party's endorsement, they needed to control a

majority of these delegates and maintain their loyalty throughout the convention. To

achieve a victory, then, a candidate and his organization had to seek out and establish

close ties with potential delegates and state leaders from around the nation who were

favorable to them. Because the president appointed people to local patronage jobs, the

state leaders traded delegate support for future considerations and, if one local group

aligned with one potential nominee, another would back their competition in hopes of

gaining favor and bargaining chips to expand their local prestige. These local

divisions meant that a potential candidate had to step into a proverbial minefield and

risk inciting factional conflict in every state in order to have a chance at the

nomination. Although the Chairman usually chose to remain publicly neutral in the