Primary Dates!

Things have been in the works for a few weeks now for Florida to move up its Presidential primary.  The date has officially been set:  January 31st, 2012.  No state is supposed to hold its primary before the end of February, besides a few states such as Iowa and New Hampshire.  These, because of history are allowed to be before that; it has just always been that way.  Now, Florida wanted a sooner date.  I believe this was unnecessary, and for a number of reasons it will actually hurt Florida's impact on choosing the actual nominee.  Firstly, this causes the need for four other states-- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina-- to move their primaries (or in Iowa's case, caucus) up as well.  They want to maintain their early-primary dates, too.  This not only violates rules in place by the GOP, it may cause possible violations of some private state rules as well.  For example, a rule in New Hampshire is that they are the first-in-the-nation primary by at least one week.  The scheduling change may cause a lot of conflict in the next few days.  New Hampshire is saying they may hold their primary in December of this year-- a first in Presidential politics.

Florida will most definitely lose some of its credibility around the nation by disobeying party rules.  They were set to be a huge part of the nominating process.  The original number of delegates they would have was 99-- after breaking one rule, that number went down to 96-- now cut that in half for holding the primary before the earliest legal date, and they only have 48.  That is a huge difference-- 96 to 48!  I think it would have been better for Florida to keep its primary the way it always is.  Fifth in the nation is not a bad standing, plus the 96 delegates that would go with it just add to it.  Florida claims it wanted to be a bigger part of the nominating process; there is not much more they could do, especially since the Republican National Convention will be held there next year!  The place where the candidate who was chosen announces it will be in Tampa, Florida.  Overall, this was just a selfish move on Florida's part.

Below is an email from Paul Senft, Republican National Committeeman from Florida (written on September 29th).

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Why Moving Florida's Presidential Primary

To January 31, 2012 Hurts Our State

As was outlined unanimously by all the commentators on Fox News at 6PM – It makes no sense for Florida to move up to January and blow up the Presidential Primary Calendar. They all agree that we will be the first large and diverse state to go and with our full complement of delegates we will be more significant.

Since a story was leaked today saying that we were going to hold our primary on January 31, 2012, my phone and email have melted down. I, therefore, have been asked to do one summary to help inform people about our position. The only thing others will say is that going early will help Florida be more significant. I would submit that we will be less significant because no candidate can get momentum from the few delegates they will get from Florida. Further, how much more significant can we get than hosting the convention?

HERE FOLLOWS THE SUMMARY:

Our full allotment of delegates is: 99

After the three officers are removed our base becomes: 96

Cutting us as the penalty, we get only: 48

The rules require proportional allocation of delegates as follows – Example:

Candidate “A” gets 30% of the vote would get 14 delegates
Candidate “B” gets 20% of the vote would get 10 delegates
Candidate “C” gets 15% of the vote would get 7 delegates
Candidate “D” gets 10% of the vote would get 5 delegates
And so on until the 48 delegates are gone.

The rules as adopted by the RPOF do not define proportionality – thus the RNC will decide on our definition of proportionality for us. The RNC is on record stating that they will honor the rules of state parties if proportionality is limited to state wide at large delegates. They indicated the Congressional Districts could still be awarded on a winner-take-all basis. The RPOF did not choose to define proportionality at all.

With the total delegates available in the six or seven states that are attempting to go before Florida, there will only be 212 delegates available. With a normal distribution of delegates among the candidates it is probable that several candidates will have 75 or 80 delegates if they are in the lead. Florida would be in a position to really lock up the lead and momentum for a candidate if it voted to go March 1,2,3,4 or 5 and still had its full allotment of 99 delegates. There is no penalty provided in the RNC Rules for those five days. It would be possible, with the proper definition of proportionality for a candidate to get 60 to 80 of Florida’s delegates and thus have a nice lead. (Again IF we were at full strength)

If Florida goes as early as is being discussed (January 31), we will have little, if any, impact on the delegate count for any candidate. Further, we will be slapping the RNC in the face after they gave the convention to Florida and we have not given the new rules a chance to see if they work.

Republicans have always been law abiding people who obey the rules. If we don’t want to go by the rules – if we want to be arrogant and only abide by the rules we like or agree with - then we should consider another party. As long as we are a member of the Republican Party we should go by their rules. If we want to change things, we should do it through the proper channels and procedures, not break the rules because we think we are better than other states. I agree that we have better demographics and are more representative than some of the four states that are authorized because of tradition and history to go early. They are small and we will be more meaningful if we are close to the front and at FULL STRENGTH.

If we break the rules again (this will be two in a row) we will alienate the remainder of the country. We have to demonstrate and prove that we can and will play by the rules before we can ask to legally be allowed to go early to help the country get our view (which we think will be a better view) of how the candidates will do with large state which has the many different voter groups that we have.

Republican National Committee Co-Chair & Florida's National Committeewoman Sharon Day and I will now be embarrassed for our state as we host the convention from the back row and have a hotel 30/40 miles away. It will also be sad that we will not have the guest passes we would normally have, even if the Nominee does give us a few.

I hope that this information is helpful. I wish our leadership had been more open to input and suggestions from the RNC and our representatives.

Paul Senft
National Committeeman,
Republican Party of Florida

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