Word: florida
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...According to a poll conducted this week for various Florida media, almost a quarter of Florida Democrats say they'll be "less likely to support" the party's nominee if their state's delegates aren't seated at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August - and by seated they mean counted in the final tally to choose the presidential nominee. Florida has more than 4 million registered Democrats, but even just taking into account the 1.7 million Florida Democrats who voted in the January primary, that's still a potential alienation of some 400,000 votes, on a peninsula...
Then there's the question of all the prodigious Flori-dough. Prominent Florida Democratic donors and fund raisers are now threatening to withhold or seek the return of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars from the national party if at least some of the state's delegates are not reinstated...
...Those risks were already apparent when Dean and the DNC made their original fateful decision. Last May, Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist and the state's G.O.P.-controlled legislature - fed up with what they call an absurd presidential primary process that gives small states like Iowa and New Hampshire inordinate clout - decided to leapfrog Florida's primary from March to Jan. 29. The move violated Democratic as well as Republican party rules, but many if not most Florida Democrats also supported it. Still, the DNC ruled that all 210 of Florida's Democratic nominating delegates would be annulled. It exacted...
...Debbie Dingell, a Michigan member of the DNC, pointed out that one of the perennially pampered primary states, New Hampshire, also broke newly established party rules last year by defensively moving its own primary to an earlier date - and the DNC allowed it. Even discounting that apparent hypocrisy, Florida Democrats insist that the moves by their state and Michigan should have indicated to the DNC that the rules were antiquated and flawed, and therefore required some flexibility. "I detest this ruling," says U.S. Representative Robert Wexler, Barack Obama's Florida campaign director. "This should have been a wake-up call...
...Either way, the DNC's lack of foresight is astonishing, even more so now that Florida and Michigan have rejected the idea of costly and less than reliable primary revotes. After all, the Republican National Committee annulled only half of Florida's G.O.P. delegates - a more measured ruling the DNC could have mirrored. And while Democratic rivals Obama and Hillary Clinton couldn't set foot in Florida in January, John McCain and his Republican competitors campaigned there and scored valuable face time with Florida independents, with McCain even winning the endorsement of the popular Crist. Despite all that, Florida Democrats...