Big mistake for Florida Democrats to cancel presidential primary
President Joe Biden surely would have won Florida’s 2024 Democratic presidential primary, but we’ll never know. The state party effectively cancelled it by certifying no one else for the March 19 ballot. By law in Florida, uncontested elections don’t appear on a ballot.
It’s an insult to Democratic voters and a disservice to local elections being held the same day. It also sets a very bad precedent at a time when democratic, small d values are struggling nationwide. Democrats are supposed to be the party of expanding voter participation — remember?
As a result, the only action in Florida on March 19 will be in a closed Republican primary and in nonpartisan city elections open to all voters on the same day, which Democratic leaders either forgot or just simply don’t care about.
In Orange County, that includes elections in Apopka, Winter Park, Maitland, Eatonville, Winter Garden, Ocoee, Belle Isle and Windermere. Across the state, other cities should also be headed for the polls, including Pembroke Pines, the largest of six Broward municipalities scheduled to vote that day. In Palm Beach County, 19 will be voting, including Boca Raton, Delray Beach and West Palm Beach.
Unless former President Donald Trump has cleared the field by then, which is unlikely with Gov. Ron DeSantis still around, the GOP turnout will be brisk. That favors Republican candidates downballot. Even if races are officially nonpartisan, many local candidates’ partisan leanings are well known to attentive voters.
It’s arrogant — and wrong
But it’s the principle of cancelling a presidential primary with other candidates still in the field that’s paramount here. It is arrogant and wrong.
“The intentional disenfranchisement of voters runs counter to everything for which our Democratic Party and country stand,” said U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., the insurgent Biden challenger who might have drawn enough votes to embarrass the incumbent president.
The other protesting candidates are Marianne Williamson, an author and speaker, and Cenk Uygur, who co-hosts a liberal news and commentary program.
It’s not unprecedented, the party points out, for primaries to be cancelled when a strong incumbent president is seeking re-election. But that has happened only when there has been negligible intra-party opposition or none. Williamson, who has run before, isn’t exactly negligible. She polled at 12% in an NBC survey last month and 13% at Fox News. Phillips, a later entrant, scored 6% in the first Quinnipiac polls since his announcement. Uygur scored 2%.
That points to a landslide of around 80% for Biden if the primary were held. That would be impressive, usually. But Democrats seem to be afraid that anything less than 100% would be seen as weakness and stimulate even more national dissatisfaction with the prospect of a rematch between Biden and Trump.
Let the people vote
That said, so long as the primary system exists, with all its faults, people should be allowed to vote for anyone seeking their support. It’s fundamental, especially for a party constantly complaining about how the Republicans work to restrict ballot access.
“I just don’t like to see us get into the business of cancelling elections,” said Michael Udine, a Democratic Broward County commissioner.
The Florida Democratic Party says the decision was made by its state executive committee in October. But it initially escaped notice by the media and the other candidates.
If the party can’t find a way to reverse it, the Legislature could. It meets Jan. 9, in plenty of time to revise the applicable election law.
The law at one time required the secretary of state to list all known candidates on the Florida primary ballot except for those who declared in writing that they weren’t running. The announced purpose was to give the voters a broad choice. The unstated but apparent intent was to have Florida exclude the weaker candidates against Sen. Edmund Muskie, D-Maine, for the 1972 nomination. The plan backfired when George Wallace of Alabama won the Florida primary.
The Legislature could use that law as a model, requiring all avowed candidates to be on the ballot regardless of the desire of party leaders to grease the skids for someone else.
It’s not lost on us that Republicans who control the Florida Legislature would have several ulterior motives for doing what Democrats don’t want. But it would be the right thing.
The law also gives municipalities the option to have their March city elections at the same time, but the concept needs rethinking. Isolating cities from regular state and national elections in November is supposed to keep them from being overshadowed by larger issues, but it also makes for very light participation. Now, thanks to a bad decision by Florida Democrats, municipal elections in 2024 will draw a disproportionate Republican turnout. What were they thinking?