Florida somehow: A primary too early, but campaigning soon to get official

I'm at an early voting site in Miami Beach, the North Shore Regional Library, early Monday

A few weeks ago the Miami Herald was opining that the Florida primary vote wouldn’t count. To HELL with a newspaper’s civic responsibility! Citizens, don’t bother to vote. But that changed. I guess Florida’s flagship newspaper noticed that their darling, Rudy Giuliani, wouldn’t get his anticipated boost from Florida’s primary if the vote doesn’t count.

So the political tune has a new verse, and its title is “Florida still critical for Democrats.” That was the lead headline in Sunday’s Miami Herald, Jan. 13. Flip to the jump inside, and the headline is “Florida is pivotal in general election.” (Don’t ask how they leaped from the impending primary election to the November general election.) Nice photo there of my friend Big Dave Patlak and his wife Maryanne with a cardboard cutout of Barack Obama and a delighted passerby as if they’re doing a honk-and-wave – all gracing a long story to the effect that there is no official campaigning by the candidates in Florida, but it’ll count anyway. Bigtime. Somehow.

We have 10 million registered voters and a primary on Jan. 29. The problem is that the Republican-dominated state legislature passed legislation putting the 2008 primary ahead of the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday – flouting rules of both parties – thereby screwing us addled beach bums out of our seats at the national nominating conventions. Except the rules will change by the time of the conventions. And we’ll be seated. Somehow.

We have a history in Florida of mangling elections, and this is Chapter Umpteen. Plus, we’re already voting: Our early voting started on Monday Jan. 14. I’ll put up a photo of myself trying a honk-and-wave at the early-voting site near my addled beach home. You’ll see that I’m for John Edwards. I even went to Iowa, my birth state, and campaigned for him before the caucuses. Now I’m on a steering committee helping to organize grass-roots campaigning in South Florida – alas, no cardboard cutout of JRE, but we’re doing the best we can. Unofficially. Somehow.

I’m glad we already started, because the pressure is building to let the Democratic campaigns wash over Florida like Global Warming in Al Gore’s wet dream.

My little steering committee is begging John Edwards’ campaign to come and do (permitted under the rules) fund-raisers in Florida. I should know, I wrote the news release and the DailyKos diary about it.

Hillary Clinton is about to do Florida fund-raisers after the Jan. 26 South Carolina primary, and the Obama campaign is complaining loudly. Funny, but wasn’t that Barack Obama raising money like gangbusters in Florida back in the summer? Including a rally for 2,000 people in Miami’s Little Havana to benefit the local Democratic Party? I should know, I wrote some of the news releases for that and organized the media as best I could. Even the Wall Street Journal covered that event – but it wasn’t campaigning, just a little fund-raising.

Others have noticed the logic of campaigning in Florida. Here’s the Orlando Sentinel’s editorial of a few days ago urging the national parties to let up on Florida:

The surprising results and record turnouts in Iowa and New Hampshire show this year's presidential race has lit a fire among voters. So why would national party bosses, of all people, want to pour cold water on that fire in Florida?

Indeed. I saw the enthusiasm in Iowa. Trying to get to a caucus site in Waterloo, where I was working for Edwards, I found myself in a huge traffic jam, and like hundreds of others I never got to the site. They couldn’t caucus; I couldn’t observe, though the view was good when I got to the Irish bar downtown and watched C-span with a jar of well-tended Guinness in hand.

A break here to defend Iowa. The newspapers all call it overwhelmingly white, and therefore, sort of, unAmerican. Well, the Democratic side of the Iowa equation is NOT overwhelmingly white. Maybe the Republicans are, but the Democrats in Iowa are more concentrated in the strongly industrial cities in the east, like Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Davenport and Dubuque (where I was born), some with sizeable minority populations. I’m not saying it’s like Birmingham, just not lily white. Waterloo has several Mexican restaurants and groceries. And Iowa is where I went on my first civil rights marches, in the late ‘50s, so I like to think Iowans have their hearts in the right place in as high a proportion as anywhere in this country. And their reps in the U.S. House are four Democrats and one Republican, with a Democratic governor. What’s yours, progressive Florida? A lot of ground to make up, huh? Well, Florida and Iowa are tied in the U.S. Senate with one each of Republican and Democrat. The Iowa climate is ahead of Florida’s in suitability for having the occasional jar of Guinness. Enough. Not talking here about the perils of glaze ice on the Waterloo driveway.

Back to voter enthusiasm. It’s cooking in Florida. On Monday over 20,000 Democrats used the early-voting privilege, topping Republican turnout by about 3,000. Democrats also are cutting into the usual Republican advantage in absentee voting. Read about it here on the Democratic Party web site. They’re forecasting almost a doubling of the Democratic absentee vote.

Does that sound like Iowa? Yes, Iowa Democrats also came out in almost double their numbers from the previous cycle. That amounted to about 240,000, while in Florida, maybe one million Democrats will vote. That’s to admire and strive for, to campaign for. And that’s why this observer and participant expects campaigning to start to look almost official in the next week.

Footnote: this analysis doesn’t apply to the Republicans, who are campaigning in Florida like no tomorrow. As usual, they don’t care about rules.