DNC's Dean urges do-over in Florida, Michigan

But national committee won't help pay for the contests

WASHINGTON - Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean urged Florida and Michigan party officials to come up with plans to repeat their presidential nominating contests so that their delegates can be counted.

"All they have to do is come before us with rules that fit into what they agreed to a year and a half ago, and then they'll be seated," Dean said during a round of interviews Thursday on network and cable TV news programs.

The two state parties will have to find the funds to pay for new contests without help from the national party, Dean said.

"We can't afford to do that. That's not our problem. We need our money to win the presidential race," he said.

Officials in Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes will count in the epic Democratic campaign.

The Michigan governor, top officials in Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, and Florida's state party chair all are now saying they would consider holding a sort of do-over contest by June. That's a change from the previous insistence from officials in both states that the primaries they held in January should determine how their delegates are allocated.

Clinton campaign communications director Howard Wolfson said in a conference call with reporters Thursday that it's hard to envision a scenario where the Florida and Michigan delegations are not seated at the conventions.

That would send a "very unsettling signal to the people of those states," Wolfson said.

Asked whether the campaign favored a caucus over a primary if the states had a do-over, he said it would be premature to comment on any particular one at this point.

Clinton won both contests, but the results were meaningless because the elections violated national party rules.

"We believe that vote ought to count," Wolfson said.

The Democratic National Committee stripped both states of all delegates for holding the primaries too early, and all Democratic candidates _ including Clinton and rival Barack Obama _ agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama's name wasn't even on the Michigan ballot.

Florida and Michigan moved up their dates to protest the party's decision to allow Iowa and New Hampshire to go first, followed by South Carolina and Nevada, giving them a disproportionate influence on the presidential selection process.

But no one predicted the race would still be very close at this point in the year.

"The rules were set a year and a half ago," Dean said. "Florida and Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn't need to abide by the rules. Well, when you are in a contest you do need to abide by the rules. Everybody has to play by the rules out of respect for both campaigns and the other 48 states."

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23499719/

DNC May Deny Florida Slots at '08 Convention

Florida Democrats accuse DNC Chairman Howard Dean of disenfranchising voters.

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 25, 2007; A01

Florida lawmakers angrily assailed the Democratic National Committee and its chairman, Howard Dean, saying he is threatening to "disenfranchise" the state's voters by considering a plan to invalidate the state's presidential primary.

The DNC's rules committee is to vote today whether to sanction Florida for violating party rules by moving its primary up to Jan. 29 and violating a party rule against holding a primary before Feb. 5. The action would deny Florida its delegates at the party's national convention next year and prohibit Democratic presidential candidates from campaigning in the state before the primary.

In a conference call with reporters yesterday, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said the DNC "is poised to assault the basic right of a person to vote at its meeting tomorrow." He threatened to sue the national party to prevent the sanctions from being imposed.

"I hope that cooler heads are going to prevail tomorrow," an exasperated Nelson said. "If they don't, and if the full DNC were to then take that position, then certainly we will have to assert what we think are important rights."

The extraordinary clash between a national party and one of the nation's biggest -- and most politically important -- states is the latest evidence that the decades-old system of picking presidential nominees is in crisis. Republican leaders, too, are struggling to maintain control over the schedule of voting and could similarly sanction Florida's Republican Party.

Florida's decision to move its primary has sparked moves by other states, threatening the tradition of presidential campaigning beginning in Iowa and New Hampshire. Desperate to maintain their place at the front of the process, the two states have vowed to vote even earlier, possibly even in December.

"You now see the end of a system that we've been living with since the 1970s," said Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's campaign in 2000 and is a member of the DNC rules committee. "It fell apart in the last cycle, but we kept it together with very interesting glue and duct tape. Unfortunately, this is really out of control."

    Howard Dean and the DNC had better come up with a plan that will allow the Florida and Michigan voters to have their say in these historic '08 Democrat primaries. Voter disenfranchisement happens in America but it is very much against the spirit of American democracy. Do the right thing, Howard Dean! People are more important than stupid rules!

tags: howard dean  dnc  2008  2008 elections  democrats  takebackamerica  politics  president  power  florida  michigan  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit