Florida’s Meaningless Democratic Primary

My home state of Florida is holding its presidential primary tomorrow in violation of both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee rules. The rule-breaking date was imposed on the state by its Republican state legislature and governor, and those elected officials did not make their decision until after it was absolutely certain that Democratic candidates would not campaign in Florida should they choose a date before February 5 for their primary.

Democrats in Florida objected to the GOP’s imposition, although there is some debate about how strenuously they actually did so. Once the date was set, conservatives ensured that at least one harmful referendum would be placed on the ballot, preventing Florida Democrats from deciding to hold a primary on a different day. To do so would almost guarantee the passage of the Republican ballot initiative, which would provide for a regressive restructuring of property tax rates in a state that already has no income tax.

For Democrats in early states and elsewhere across the country, the issue became a question of who controls the Democratic Party’s presidential nominating contest: should it be the DNC, or should it be Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature? Only one Democratic candidate thinks it should be the latter.

Sen. Hillary Clinton plans to campaign in Florida, hoping that she can make a meaningful competition out of a beauty contest. So far, the media doesn’t seem like it’s going to give her that opportunity:

Like other candidates, she pledged not to campaign in Florida after the state jumped ahead on the schedule of caucuses and primaries set by the Democratic National Committee. She had to make that pledge if she hoped to compete in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses and the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary, as Iowa and New Hampshire zealously guard their starting status on the political calendar.

But Iowa and New Hampshire are history and, after a landslide loss in South Carolina on Saturday, Clinton needs a win.

So she has begun appearing in Florida in anticipation of Tuesday’s Democratic primary there.

Clinton’s move insults not just the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire who trusted her pledge but also the voters of all the states that respected the DNC’s outline for the nominating process. Effectively, she is saying to Democrats in states that will participate in February 5th’s “Super Tuesday” primaries and caucuses and in the two dozen states that have scheduled later votes: You may follow the rules if you please, but I write the rules as I please.

That’s the raw political reality of Clinton’s move, even if she is spinning it as an embrace of participatory democracy.

Clinton’s pretext for campaigning in Florida was an argument that virtually no one in the media believed carried much weight, for good reason. She claimed that Sen. Barack Obama’s national cable news advertising buy, which meant that his advertisements would appear everywhere in the United States where MSNBC and CNN are carried, meant that he was actively campaigning in Florida. I spoke to some politicos around Iowa, and none of them thought Obama’s ad buy violated the pledge he made to the early states, but that was Clinton’s argument.

But there’s a difference between making a national advertising buy and intentionally campaigning in Florida. Fortunately for Clinton, there isn’t actually an official early state pledge referee. In place of one, I think I can propose a pretty obvious standard for what should count as a violation of the pledge and what shouldn’t: if a candidate’s decision had been made public before Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina voted, would the results from those states have been any different?

For Obama’s national television ad buy, the answer is probably no. But for Clinton’s decision to physically appear in Florida, particularly to give an acceptance speech that night in Florida after the polls close, the answer is probably yes. At the very least, it would have discouraged some of her higher-profile endorsers from making their support of her candidacy public.

Now is the time to ask Clinton’s state co-chairs and surrogates in the early states whether they support Clinton’s decision circumvent the DNC rules and the pledge she made to follow them. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack was able to muster a hollow sense of outrage on a Clinton campaign conference call discussing Obama’s national TV ad buy, but what does he have to say about Clinton’s decision?

What about the Shaheen family in New Hampshire? If they hope for future political success, they must defend their candidate’s decision to threaten their state’s first-in-the-nation primary.

I grew up in Palm Beach County. I protested with Jesse Jackson during the 2000 election recount. I remember the Florida Republican power-plays that essentially handed a presidential election to George W. Bush. The US Supreme Court drove the final nail into the coffin, declaring that a recount that would have awarded Florida’s electoral votes to Al Gore was unconstitutional; but it was Florida’s GOP that manufactured the legal question in the first place. That Floridians have once again been disenfranchised is a matter that hits very close to home.

This year’s primary date debacle is again the fault of Florida’s Republican elected officials, who are content to play fast and loose with their Democratic constituents’ voting rights. No Democratic candidate should cave in to their pressure, because it only legitimizes them.

To protect the long-term integrity of the Democratic party’s ability to make strategic decisions about its own nominating calendar, not to mention the long-term integrity of Florida’s overly-politicized elections system, the Clinton campaign must reverse course and agree not to do anything to give GOP state legislators more power.

Although it might sound like Clinton’s newly-publicized strategy is inclusive, it sets a dangerous precedent.