The Democratic National Committee is stepping into the debate over the continued unraveling of the primary calendar for 2008, and setting up a confrontation with the State of Florida in the process:
The Democratic National Committee sought to seize control of its unraveling nominating process yesterday, rejecting pleas from state party leaders and cracking down on Florida for scheduling a Jan. 29 presidential primary.
The DNC’s rules and bylaws committee, which enforces party rules, voted yesterday morning to strip Florida of all its delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver — the harshest penalty at its disposal.
The penalty will not take effect for 30 days, and rules committee members urged officials from the nation’s fourth-most-populous state to use the time to schedule a later statewide caucus and thus regain its delegates.
By making an object lesson of Florida, Democrats hope to squelch other states’ efforts to move their voting earlier, which have created chaos in the primary structure that the national party has established. But the decision to sanction such a pivotal, vote-rich state has risks.
Not the least of them being pissing off an entire state full of voters. The Democrats have done this before; in 1996, they stripped Delaware of its delegates for the same reason, but Florida is, quite obviously, a much bigger deal.
Whether this will lead to some sanity in the primary scheduling process, though, remains to be seen:
The national parties face the prospect of further confrontations: South Carolina Republicans have moved their primary to Jan. 19, a decision that may force New Hampshire and Iowa to vote earlier in January. And Michigan’s legislature is on the verge of approving a Jan. 15 date — a move that would violate the same Democratic rule that Florida faces punishment for breaking.
The Michigan Republican State Committee voted yesterday to endorse the new date.
“Moving up the primary will make Michigan the first major industrial state to hold a presidential primary and will give our voters a chance to educate the next president of the United States about Michigan and its specific issues,” state GOP Chairman Saulius “Saul” Anuzis said in a statement.
The idea of regional primaries, spread out over six weeks or so, makes so much sense that I’m sure it will never be adopted.
August 29th, 2007 at 7:45 am
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