Winner-Take-All Presidential Primary Has Support of Florida Republican Party Chair

Patricia Mazzei at the Miami Herald's Naked Politics blog:

State Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, the new chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, paid a visit this week to the Miami Young Republicans to rally their support and answer their questions about the party's future.  

One of them was whether the GOP would support legislation filed in Tallahassee setting next year's presidential primary for March 15, the earliest possible date in which all of the state's nominating delegates would be awarded to a single candidate, rather than distributed proportionally.

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Perhaps only the Rubio and Rubio-align folks that pushed the 2013 legislation in the Florida state legislature understood what the bill was doing to the scheduling of the 2016 presidential primary in the Sunshine state. It does not seem as if others in the state get it.

The way the current Florida law reads regarding the presidential primary scheduling is that the Florida primary will be scheduled for the earliest date that does not mean penalties on Florida from either/both national parties. Since the RNC has a proportionality requirement for all states with contests prior to March 15 and a 50% delegate reduction for states that violate that rule that puts the decision-making power on the date of the primary squarely on the Florida Republican Party.

If the Republican Party Florida sticks with its winner-take-all allocation plan, then the Florida presidential primary will be scheduled for March 15.

...automatically.

That does not require action by the state legislature.¹ But those in the legislature pushing additional legislation on the matter and apparently the Republican Party of Florida chair do not yet realize this. The signal, though, is that Florida Republicans intend to maintain a winner-take-all allocation plan for 2016.

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¹ And contrary to the outtake from Mazzei above, there has been no legislation filed in Florida regarding the primary as of now. There was talk last week of that possibility, but nothing has been filed.

Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2015/02/florida-gop-chairman-backs-winner-take-all-primary.html#storylink=cpy

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