WASHINGTON — Florida should keep its early presidential primary date in 2012 and the Republican National Committee would be wise to accommodate the important swing state, Republican U.S. Sen Marco Rubio says.Both parties have agreed that only four states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — should have primaries before March 1. When Rubio was state House Speaker, the legislature moved Florida’s 2008 primary to January to give the state more influence. The 2012 primary will be in January as well unless the legislature changes the date.
Says Rubio: “I think if the Republican Party wants to pay for the elections in Florida, they can have them any day they want. But as long as the voters of Florida are going to pay for this election, it should be on the most meaningful day possible. An election in late January costs the same as an election in April, but it’s a lot more meaningful.”
Rubio added: “I’m OK with Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina — those are established states and I don’t think Florida desires to get ahead of any of them. But after that, why should Florida be behind anyone else? And as a Republican, I’ll tell you this flat out, no Republican can win the presidency of the United States without winning the state of Florida. We cannot win the presidency without winning Florida as a Republican, and so it behooves us to make sure that whoever our nominee is is someone that is palatable in Florida and does well in Florida. And the best way to do that is by winning the primary.”
Asked about the possibility the RNC would strip some or all of Florida’s delegates to punish the state for holding its primary too early, Rubio said, “If the RNC thinks the way to win Florida — which they cannot win the presidency without — is to sanction the most important swing state in the country, then good luck to them.”
Rubio said he plans to be neutral in the 2012 presidential primary and in the 2012 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat of Democrat Bill Nelson.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
"Rubio favors early presidential primary for Florida in 2012"
Midweek Update on Presidential Primary Movement
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Are we done writing the eulogy for the Iowa Caucuses?
Iowa: 118 (41%)New Hampshire: 82 (28%)South Carolina: 73 (25%)Nevada: 15 (5%)
Iowa: 1943 (55%)New Hampshire: 994 (28%)South Carolina: 420 (12%)Nevada: 145 (4%)
Iowa: 729 (48%)New Hampshire: 489 (32%)South Carolina: 277 (18%)Nevada: 35 (2%)
Virginia Senate Bill to Move Presidential Primary to March Passes House
"We're still going to be early," said Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (R-Winchester), who sponsored the bill. She is a lawyer who specializes in election issues and helped advise the RNC as it considered the new rules.
The Virginia House of Delegates adopted a bill setting the date on a bipartisan 97 to 1 vote on Tuesday. The bill has already passed the Senate and will now go to the governor. Vogel said it was written with Gov. Bob McDonnell's input, and she expects he will sign the measure into law.
"Democrats, Republicans and the governor joined hands to make sure we were together on this important issue," she said.
Vogel said that Virginia is dealing with the scheduling issue earlier than other states but that it is likely that a number of states will choose March 6 for their primaries, in an attempt to hold their elections as early as possible under the new party rules. She said the date could emerge as the nation's "new Super Tuesday."
Missouri House Bill Introduced to Move Presidential Primary to March
Monday, February 14, 2011
2012 Presidential Primary Movement: The Week in Review (Feb. 7-13)
- Pass it on: The Virginia House followed the Senate's lead in passing a measure (HB 1834) to move the commonwealth's primary from the second Tuesday in February to the first Tuesday in March last Tuesday. The House of Delegates in Virginia remained active last week, voting with little dissension (21Y, 1N) in the Committee on Privileges and Elections to send the Senate companion to the floor for a vote.
- Bottled up: Bills currently in committee in California and Washington (and this one) had future public hearings scheduled last week The California bill would move the presidential primary back to June to coincide with the primaries for state and local offices while one Washington bill would eliminate the presidential primary altogether while the other would allow for a presidential primary only if both parties use that as their method of delegate allocation. All four bills in Oklahoma dealing with the 2012 presidential primaries received a first reading, had amends added and were all referred to committee as well.
- Introducing...: There were also several bills either introduced or pre-filed last week to move back several states primaries. Florida would move to March under two Democratic bills, Maryland would move to either March or April, DC would move to June and hold all its primaries concurrently (Technically, that happened the week before last.), Tennessee would join a host of states on March 6 and New Jersey would follow the California plan to eliminate the separate presidential primary moving it back to June with everything else.
- As has been mentioned in this space several times, there are currently 18 states with presidential primaries scheduled for February 2012. That would put those 18 states in violation of both parties' delegate selection rules for 2012.
- Of those 18 primary states, 15 of them (California, Connecticut, Missouri, New York, Arizona, Georgia, Delaware, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Utah, Oklahoma and Virginia) have convened their 2011 state legislative sessions.
- Of those 15 states, 6 (California, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Maryland, Tennessee and Virginia) have bills that have been introduced and are active within the state legislature to move their contests' dates back. Both California and New Jersey have bills that would eliminate an early and separate presidential primaries and position those events with the other primaries for state and local offices. That would mean June presidential primaries for both states if those bills pass and are signed into law. In the remaining states, the efforts are to simply shift the states' presidential primaries from dates in violation of the two major parties' rules to the earliest allowed date (the first Tuesday in March). There is also an active bill in Washington, DC to move the districts primary back to June.
- For this next week the 15 early states in conflict with the national parties' rules will be the ones to watch. They will not be joined by any additional states this week or for that matter the rest of February. Alabama will be the next February primary state to convene its legislative session on March 1.
- How would all of this look if all these bills happened to be passed and signed into law? States with active bills to move their primaries are listed twice, once where law has them currently and once in bold and italicized for where active legislation could move them. NOTE: THIS IS NOT THE CURRENT CALENDAR, ONLY WHAT IT COULD LOOK LIKE IF CURRENT LEGISLATION IS ENACTED.
Tuesday, February 7 (Super Tuesday): Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Utah
Saturday, February 11: Louisiana
Tuesday, February 14: Washington, DC, Maryland, Virginia
Tuesday, February 21: Hawaii Republican caucuses, Wisconsin
Tuesday, February 28: Arizona, Michigan
Tuesday, March 6: Florida, Maryland, Minnesota caucuses, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia
Tuesday, March 13: Mississippi
Tuesday, March 20: Colorado caucuses, Illinois
Tuesday, April 3: Kansas, Maryland
Tuesday, May 8: Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia
Tuesday, May 15: Idaho, Nebraska, Oregon
Tuesday, May 22: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky and Washington
Tuesday, June 5: California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Mitt Romney's already got trouble in Nevada?
LAS VEGAS — Mitt Romney has a lot riding on Nevada as he readies his early-state strategy for a possible Republican primary campaign, but changes in the state’s caucus rules and surge of Tea Party activism will make the state a tougher environment for him than 2008, when Romney romped with more than 50 percent of the vote.Nevada falls third in the tentative primary schedule, and it holds outsized importance for the former Massachusetts governor. If he runs for president, as appears likely, he would not be expected to win the early states of Iowa or South Carolina.
Under almost any scenario, that means he must win in New Hampshire. And Nevada, falling just after the Granite State, would present the second key test of his strength.
By the numbers, Romney — who is scheduled to visit Las Vegas on Monday — should perform strongly in the Silver State. An estimated 7.5 percent of Nevada residents share Romney’s Mormon faith, and exit polls showed Mormons accounted for one in four caucus voters in 2008.But while he would start the 2012 Nevada contest with a formidable organization and as the overwhelming favorite, the landscape in this Western state is more hostile.
Seeking to become more than a primary backwater bypassed by most candidates, Nevada changed its caucus rules for next year’s campaign to make the outcome binding on its delegates to the Republican National Convention.
The intent was to increase the state’s prominence in the primaries, and it’s working. Nevada is attracting stronger interest from such would-be candidates as Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty, who have made early visits and are planning more.
The rightward tug of insurgents in the Republican Party, meanwhile, has added a measure of anti-establishment volatility to the Nevada electorate that was largely absent four years ago and could seriously hurt Romney, whose health care plan in Massachusetts, used as the model for the national overhaul last year, is widely despised by conservatives.
‘‘Mitt Romney has a strong Mormon base of support in Nevada that will continue,’’ said Chuck Muth, a conservative activist who is planning to host candidate forums at a bar with a mechanical bull, just south of the Vegas strip. ‘‘The biggest hurdle for Mitt Romney to overcome is RomneyCare.’’
Romney, who is expected to announce his candidacy in the spring, declined requests for an interview. Like most other potential candidates, Romney has been quietly testing the waters for a run. He appeared Sunday in Washington at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual event that attracts many presidential aspirants. He will travel to Las Vegas on Monday to speak at a business convention on the strip.
Romney is ahead in the polls in Nevada and his supporters maintain he can attract Tea Party support by talking about fiscal conservatism and other issues important to the party’s right wing.
‘‘No one candidate is going to get every Tea Party vote in Nevada,’’ said Ryan Erwin, a top political consultant in the state who is prepared to lead Romney’s state operation. ‘‘But regardless of whether we are talking about activists in the Tea Party movement or those who simply share the philosophy, voters focused on balanced budgets and fiscal restraint in Nevada are largely Romney people.’’
Romney has been defending the 2006 Massachusetts health plan, the signature accomplishment of his gubernatorial administration, as an example of a state exercising its powers to solve problems within its borders. He criticizes the Obama plan, by contrast, as a federal overreach that usurps states’ rights.
That argument has yet to appease Tea Party activists.
Sharron Angle, the Tea Party candidate who stunned the GOP by winning Nevada’s Senate primary last year before losing to Majority Leader Harry Reid, would not criticize Romney directly in an interview. But she said the Massachusetts health plan will be a factor in the Nevada election.
‘‘It failed, and we know that this Obamacare is unconstitutional,’’ she said. ‘‘I think that those kinds of things are going to come into play during the presidential election.’’
Surveys of Republican Nevada voters have shown Romney with a moderate lead. A poll conducted last month by Public Policy Polling put Romney at 31 percent, compared to Sarah Palin (19 percent), Gingrich (18 percent), and Mike Huckabee (14 percent).‘‘The 800-pound gorilla in Republican politics is Mitt Romney,’’ said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. ‘‘You’re going to see him run the traditional top down organization and count on his religious affiliation. But he’s got a lot of issues to overcome.’’
While the mood is uncertain a year before the Nevada caucus (tentatively scheduled for Feb. 18, 2012), a billboard on I-215 leaving Las Vegas warns of the some of the dangers for establishment candidates like Romney: ‘‘Ron Paul 2012.’’ The Texas Republican congressman finished second behind Romney four years ago, and conservative activists want him back in the race.
Paul’s last high-profile trip to the state was in 2009. But several Tea Party favorites — Representative Michele Bachmann, of Minnesota, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, and former Godfather’s Pizza executive Herman Cain — have made multiple visits to the state in recent months. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, a Mormon who is resigning as US ambassador to China and weighing a run for president, could cut into Romney’s church support.
High unemployment, which at 14 percent was the worst in the country in December, and foreclosures are big issues in Nevada and helped fuel voter anger in 2010.
With few formally declared candidates and a year to go, voters have yet to seriously tune in to presidential politics. In a dozen interviews with Nevada Republicans, support for Romney was mixed.‘‘The key issue here is jobs, jobs, jobs,’’ said Robert Sulliman, a security services manager. ‘‘Who better to make things happen than Mitt Romney?’’
But those who identified themselves as aligned with the Tea Party tended to oppose him.
‘‘I’m not a fan,’’ said Bettye Gilmour, a 67-year-old retired social worker. ‘‘He’s very presidential looking, but he’s too much of a politician.’’Romney’s organization has not yet geared up in Nevada — but it is ready to go on short notice, said his supporters. His team still has its database of voter identification files — called ‘‘Romney Connect’’ — that will give him a big head start. Romney’s son Josh has been staying in touch with former campaign workers.