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The two men responsible for keeping Congress in the hands of Democrats said Thursday that their party must deal with the controversial Florida and Michigan primary results or risk disaster this fall.
“I think it would be important to avoid a big, messy fight at the convention,” said Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“You don’t want to exclude Florida and Michigan,” said Charles Schumer (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “They’re two very important states.”
The top campaign gurus called for a truce as Florida Sen. Bill Nelson (D) said failing to take into account the votes cast in the two states would cause a political “train wreck” in November by alienating thousands of Democratic voters in two important swing states. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) decided not to recognize the results of their primaries because state leaders scheduled them before the Feb. 5 date required by party rules.
Finding a solution, however, will not be easy. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) won both Florida and Michigan, and recognizing those states’ delegates would give her an advantage in the race against Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Complicating the picture, Obama’s name did not even appear on the ballot in Michigan, giving officials little guidance for how many delegates to apportion him.
DNC Chairman Howard Dean has not shown the same sense of alarm as Democrats in Congress.
“While we would be delighted to have Florida and Michigan seated, it has to be done within the rules that everybody agreed to a year and a half ago, out of respect for the Clinton campaign, for the Obama campaign, and for the 48 states that did what they were supposed to do during this process,” Dean said Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Dean has suggested that Democrats in Florida and Michigan submit a plan for selecting delegates in accordance with DNC rules. But he has also said that if the states hold new elections they must pay their own costs.
“We need our money to win the presidential race,” he said on CBS’s “Early Show.”
Florida and Michigan Democrats have angrily rejected that suggestion, which would cost their states millions of dollars.
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