John_Schwada's Blog

Florida could be the tie-breaker again.

Democratic Party chair Howard Dean Wednesday encouraged Florida and Michigan to consider “re-doing” the primaries they originally held Jan. 15 (Michigan) and Jan. 29 (Florida); the Democrats have refused to recognize the results of those primaries because Michigan and Florida violated party rules by moving the dates of their elections forward to increase their political impact.

No big surprise, Clinton, who won both of these tainted primaries, has been trying to get the results of the Michigan and Florida primaries validated; Obama’s name was not even on the ballot in Michigan. How big is the prize here? Before they messed up by trying to leapfrog their primaries, Florida was entitled to send 210 delegates to the Democratic convention, Michigan 157.

Clinton is now hoping, more realistically, that if she won in re-do primaries in both states she might close her delegate-gap with Obama.

It’s hard to imagine how Obama could gracefully object to new primaries to give Michigan and Florida a chance to (violins please) have their voices heard.

Still, Obama's Florida finance chairman, Kirk Wager, is apparently throwing cold water on the idea. Wager was quoted Wednesday as saying a second contest would probably result in a narrow split of delegates and not prove to be a decisive tie-breaker. How long the Obama camp can allow this to be its position remains to be seen. You can just see the Clinton camp wetting its lips over the opportunities posed by this situation: let’s see, Obama wants to disenfranchise Michigan and Florida Democrats and is afraid to go to the mat two more times against Clinton? How many political hit pieces can you squeeze out of this?

One practical difficulty: who’d pay for the elections? Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida says he won’t ask Florida taxpayers to pick up the tab. Wednesday, Michigan’s Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, joined with Crist, a Republican, to urge the Dems to “seat our delegates.” Is Crist playing games here? McCain has flattered him by suggesting he’s a potential running mate, and now he’s saying to the Dems, if you want to re-do your primary, it’ll cost you $18 million (the estimated cost of the election). But Democratic party chair Dean says no - the party needs that money to run its November campaign.

Is it possible that Crist would secretly pleased if the Democratic primary contest dragged on, into his state, getting nastier all the while, and costing the national Democratic party $18 million it would rather be spending on its campaign to defeat the Republicans in November? Naahh. Not possible.