Florida Moves Up In The Primary Shuffle

Governor Charlie Crist is expected to sign a bill that will move up Florida’s primary from March to January 29. This would put only the Iowa and Nevada Caucuses and the New Hampshire primary ahead of Florida. South Carolina’s Democratic primary is on the same day. “It puts us in a place where we should have been before, in my humble opinion,” Crist said. “It’s the first mega-state that will weigh in on who the next leader of the free world is. It’s important that we have that opportunity.” The Republican and Democratic leaders have said they will take away delegates to the nominating conventions if Florida moved its primary to earlier than Feb. 5. the penalty will be Florida could lose 50% of their delegates and all of it’s superdelegates which are usually members of Congress. Florida lawmakers don’t care saying it is better to help choose the next President than it is to send delegates to a convention with a preordained outcome. Also buried in the Florida bill is a provision that allows state office holders to run in a federal election and still keep their job. This will allow the popular Governor Crist to run as a vice presidential candidate and still keep his governorship. Other states like California, New York, and New Jersey with 9 others have all moved their primaries up to February 5th with at least 7 others looking to change to that date. That would be a super-duper primary day then.
Alan Cosgrove