When Democrats in the country's biggest battleground state hold a political convention in the midst of a heated presidential primary, the event is sure to be a barn burner, right?
Just look at the speakers scheduled less than a month from now for Democrats who fork over $275 for meal tickets. Saturday breakfast: To be determined. Saturday lunch: To be determined. Saturday dinner and Sunday brunch: To be determined.
And the speakers for the general session? Also to be determined.
Such is the state of affairs in a standoff between a muscle-flexing Florida Democratic Party on one side and the Democratic National Committee and Democratic White House contenders on the other.
Even in the face of a promised boycott by all nine presidential candidates, state Democratic activists appear bent on holding a straw poll to show the nation the presidential preferences of Florida Democrats. Florida Democrats have little sympathy for presidential candidates worried about wasting money on a vote of dubious relevance.
"The idea of a straw poll has pretty much taken on a life of its own. It probably will pass by a pretty overwhelming margin," said Broward County Democratic Chairman Mitch Ceasar, who will join other party officials a week from today in Tampa to vote on whether to hold the straw vote at the party's Dec. 5-7 convention at Disney World.
It's hard to blame Florida Democrats for their stubbornness. Twenty-nine states will have held caucuses and primaries by the time Floridians head to the polls March 9. Most campaigns and pundits expect the nominee will be decided by then.
Florida wants in on the action, and state party activists aren't buying the boycott threat. It might work on Montana or Alabama Democrats, they say, but not on "count every vote" Florida Democrats.
"This is Florida. Who's not going to be here?" asked former Miami-Dade Democratic Chairman Joe Geller. "Which one one of them plans to win the election without winning Florida?"
The question is which candidate blinks first. If one candidate decides to come, most or all the rest will surely follow. Otherwise, a convention aimed at raising money and energy for the 2004 election could be a snooze.
All nine candidates last month signed a letter promising to skip the convention if a straw poll is held. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards were the most reluctant to sign the letter, but so far no one is backing off the boycott threat.
"I feel badly about it, but that seems to be the way the party rules go," Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman said last week in Orlando.
At the same time, local supporters for Dean, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts have been busy in recent weeks trying to round up delegates should the straw vote go forward.
"It is now time to take our organizing initiative to the next level," Dean supporters in South Florida said in a recent e-mail calling for people to sign up as delegates to the convention. "The convention will be a great opportunity to show the strength and passion of the grass-roots Dean campaign in Florida."
The straw poll would be an official but nonbinding survey of Democratic insiders and activists willing to head to Orlando and drop $119 a night for a hotel room.
The pay-to-vote system hardly makes it a representative sample of the Democratic electorate, and the national party has long viewed such exercises as a waste of badly needed campaign money. In 2000, the Al Gore campaign staunchly opposed having a Florida straw poll, estimating it could cost more than $150,000 to court delegates. So it didn't happen.
"Straw polls are kind of like beauty contests. They don't mean much, but they cost resources and time," said U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, who can't afford to lose the Iowa caucuses that come six weeks after the Florida convention. "We've got to get to the real events, and the first real event is Iowa."
Previous Florida straw polls, however, have consistently proven prescient in measuring the strength of primary candidates.
In 1975, Jimmy Carter overwhelmingly beat George Wallace in the Florida straw poll, helping dent Wallace's image as a strong Southern candidate. Carter called it "the first major test of strength in the South." Four years later, Carter beat Sen. Edward Kennedy in Florida's straw poll by more than 3-1.
In 1983, former Florida Gov. Reubin Askew's claim to be the overwhelming favorite of his home state was badly damaged when he received less than 50 percent of the straw vote and Walter Mondale had a strong second-place showing.
In 1991, the last time Florida Democrats had a straw poll, Bill Clinton overwhelmingly won. He often credited Florida with giving him a crucial early push.
This year, there could be one big loser who's not even on the ballot: state party Chairman Scott Maddox.
If the boycott holds, the ambitious former Tallahassee mayor will be blamed for not having put the brakes on the straw poll and staging a weak convention that otherwise could have raised big money and excitement.
Maddox is still talking about reaching a compromise that might satisfy both the DNC and state party activists, and Florida Sens. Bob Graham and Bill Nelson oppose the straw vote. Still, stopping it looks anything but certain. As it is, some party activists are grumbling that Maddox antagonized several presidential campaigns by trying to strong-arm them for money for the state party. Others are fretting that with so little time Maddox won't be able to stage a straw ballot that looks legitimate.
"He's going to have to do everything he can to make it not seem that the straw ballot is for sale," said Screven Watson, a lobbyist and former executive director of the state party.
Organizing a straw vote campaign is especially tough because of the late date. Many of the delegates were chosen last summer, before anyone knew a straw vote was even possible. Since then, activists have been scrambling to register delegates, and the party has been vague about how additional delegates will be selected. Maddox has broad authority and could wind up appointing half of the more than 3,000 delegates expected at the convention. He insists he will be fair to every campaign.
For now, the contest to watch is the test of wills between Maddox and DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe.
"The bottom line," said Maddox, "is Terry McAuliffe is my friend, but he has his constituency and I have mine."
- Adam C. Smith can be reached at 727 893-8241 or adam@sptimes.com
