[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 157 (Wednesday, October 17, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12949-S12950]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES

  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. Presdient, I actually came here to talk 
about a different subject, and that is the fracas that is now engulfing 
the National Democratic Party with regard to the selection of its 
Presidential nominees. Florida is right in the middle of this because 
an order was set up under the rules of the Democratic National 
Committee that allowed four States to go before any other State, and 
those four States, they set out an order and said it would be first a 
caucus in Iowa, then a caucus in Nevada, then an election, a primary 
election in New Hampshire, and then a primary

[[Page S12950]]

election in South Carolina. Those were going to be representative of 
the country and all of those four had to occur before any other State 
could start its primary or caucus in the selection of the Presidential 
nominees and that the date they could start was February 5 of next 
year.
  Over the objection of Democratic State legislators in the Florida 
legislature--indeed, with the Democratic leader of the Florida Senate 
offering an amendment to keep Florida's election from violating the 
Democratic National Committee rules and, therefore, to be on February 
5, over his and others' objections--the Florida legislature changed the 
date of the Florida Presidential primary from March to January 29. The 
Florida legislature is basically two-thirds Republican, one-third 
Democrat, in both Houses of the legislature. Governor Crist, a 
Republican, signed the legislation, setting the Florida primary date as 
January 29, and signed it into law.
  The Democratic National Committee took great umbrage at this and 
under its rules said it was going to strip Florida of half its 
delegates. That is what the Democratic National Committee rules 
provide. In the Democratic National Committee Rules Committee's 
deliberations, they went further. Unlike the Republican National 
Committee, which said they would take away half of Florida's delegates 
for the Presidential nominee, the DNC said: We are going to punish 
Florida completely by taking away all their delegates to the 
convention. What is more, we are going to enforce a part of the DNC 
rules that say, unless Florida backs up and ignores that election, 
makes it a ``beauty contest'' that has no meaning and selects their 
delegates sometime from February 5 or later, Florida was going to 
receive additional punishment, which was that no Presidential candidate 
could go and campaign in Florida, and campaigning was defined as 
speaking in Florida, interacting with voters in Florida, hiring 
campaign staff in Florida, opening an office in Florida, having a press 
conference in Florida, except--oh, by the way, you can go into Florida 
to raise money.
  This is as violative of the constitutional right of freedom of speech 
as anything I have ever heard. It conjures up that you can't come to 
Florida so Florida Democratic voters can interact with Presidential 
candidates unless you pay a fee at the door in order to gain entrance 
because it is a fundraiser. Doesn't that remind you of something that 
was held unconstitutional called a poll tax?
  It was because of this kind of punishment that was inflicted on the 
4.25 million registered Florida Democrats that this Senator, with a 
heavy heart, joined with his colleague, Congressman Alcee Hastings, 
also with a heavy heart, and filed suit in Federal District Court in 
Tallahassee, the seat of government of our State, against Howard Dean, 
the chairman of the DNC, and the Democratic National Committee.
  A defendant was also named, Kurt Browning, the secretary of state of 
Florida, purely for functionary purposes since he is the one authorized 
under Florida law to conduct the election. As a result, that suit had 
been filed 2 weeks ago alleging the violations of the Constitution in 
the 1st, 5th, and 14th amendments, as well as violations of the Voting 
Rights Act of 1965.
  A Federal court will ultimately determine that issue of whether the 
party has the right to prohibit people, in a duly called, State-run, 
State-sanctioned by State law election, whether that national party can 
take away those constitutional rights of people to see and hear and 
interact with the Presidential candidates, as well as taking away all 
of their ability to be heard at the national convention by stripping 
away all of the elements. That is the issue in front of the court.
  It should not have come to this. For the last 6 months, I and others, 
like Congressman Hastings, have offered compromises on three different 
occasions, three different compromises on how we could get out of this 
box. It would be a win-win situation, but the DNC and its rules 
committee said ``nyet,'' they are going to sanction Florida.
  Why am I making this speech this day, Mr. President, when the suit 
was filed 2 weeks ago? Because there is a news article in this 
morning's papers saying that the Iowa Republican Party has announced 
that it is bumping up its caucus, not where it was previously 
prescribed--somewhere in the middle of January of next year--but 
instead moving it up to January 3. And South Carolina Republicans, some 
time ago, had a joint press conference with the secretary of state of 
New Hampshire, who under New Hampshire law is the sole authority to 
determine what date New Hampshire's primary, both Democratic and 
Republican, will be held, and the South Carolina Republicans announced 
that they were moving their primary up some 10 days earlier--it might 
have been 8 or 9 days, but it was earlier than the prescribed time of 
January 29--to which the New Hampshire secretary of state said he would 
move New Hampshire's primary up early.
  So the question that is begged today, Wednesday, the middle of 
October, is, if all of these parties are jumping early and the order 
that the Democratic National Committee wanted to preserve is being 
thwarted, does the DNC intend only to punish Florida Democrats or will, 
in fact, they punish the Democratic parties in New Hampshire and Iowa 
if they, in fact, jump forward from what the DNC rules had prescribed?
  So I bring to the floor of the Senate something that involves only a 
few States. Yet it has enormous implications for the entire country 
because this is the process by which we select the Presidential 
candidates of the two major parties, one of which is likely to be the 
next President of the United States.
  Because of all this fracas and I think just the news of today that 
indicates the Iowa parties are jumping much earlier, we will probably 
now see all of the others start to jump, and as a result there will be 
increased turmoil. It is certainly my hope that reason will prevail and 
the Democratic National Committee, which has taken out its frustration 
on Florida, will suddenly realize there is no reason to continue that 
frustration on Florida because, at the end of the day, if everybody 
else is doing it, why just try to punish Florida? And because of this 
fracas, this turmoil, will reason prevail that there is a better way to 
do this? It is regional primaries spaced out in a logical order over 
one in March, two in April, two in May, and one in June, that would 
give the candidates plenty of time to get around to these regional 
primaries, which order could be determined by lot, and in that primary 
one State from each region in the country could have an election, so no 
particular part of the country is favored. In the favored first status, 
all of this fracas should point to that goal.
  Let's bring order out of this chaos in the way we select the next 
President of the United States in both of these great political parties 
that participate in American politics.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Mississippi is 
recognized.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, it is none of my business, but I say to the 
Senator from Florida that I tend to agree with him. Maybe it is a 
regional thing. I wish him good luck in his effort to have Florida 
assume its rightful place.

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