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RNC sanctions state GOP for staging early primary

By WILLIAM MARCH | The Tampa Tribune
Published: January 12, 2012

The national Republican Party has approved sanctions aimed at housing, convention floor seating and other perks for the Florida delegation to the 2012 convention.

The penalties are in response to the state’s schedule-busting Jan. 31 presidential primary date.

The exact effect of the sanctions won’t be clear until hotel assignments and other details of the Tampa convention are worked out this summer.

But Paul Senft, one of Florida’s representatives on the Republican National Committee, said the sanctions aren’t severe.

“It could have been much worse than this,” he said. “I think it will have minimal effect.”

Possibly more significant, the party also received a recommendation for another sanction: that Florida’s convention delegates be divided proportionally among the top finishers in the state’s primary, rather than all going to the first-place winner.

That could mean the Florida winner would receive only about 15 delegates instead of all 50, and the second- and third-place finishers could get 10 or more instead of none.

Senft said there’s no indication the party will act on that recommendation until near the time of the convention. If there’s a clear nominee at that time, “It may be moot,” he said.

“But if the nomination becomes a contested issue at the convention, it would become a brass ring for someone to grab,” possibly leading to a contentious legal fight, he said.

Even if the nomination is settled, a small cache of delegates could prove desirable to a losing candidate. Losing candidates sometimes use the delegates they win as bargaining chips for convention speaking slots, appointments, platform language and other political deals.

The sanctions result from rules agreed to by both national parties forbidding any state except the traditional four early ones — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — from holding a primary or caucus before March 1.

Seeking more influence on the nomination process, Gov. Rick Scott, state Senate President Mike Haridopolos and state House Speaker Dean Cannon appointed a committee that chose to set Florida’s primary for Jan. 31. That caused other states, including the four early states, to move up as well.

Florida has lost half its delegation, which would have been 99 delegates, because of the date.

RNC rules also allow the delegation from a state that commits a violation to be penalized in the selection of their hotel accommodations, the prominence of their floor seating location, and the guest and VIP passes distributed to delegates by the party.

A resolution passed by the RNC’s Rules Committee on Wednesday says Florida will get “reduced priority” for its hotel accommodations and floor seats, and that the guest passes and VIP passes that would have gone to the delegates will instead go to the RNC, whose chairman, Reince Priebus, can dispense them at his discretion.

As the host state and possibly the nation’s most important swing state, Florida normally would get the first priority for hotel and floor seating. Reduced priority means not the best, but not necessarily bad, Senft said.

He said he thinks the Florida delegation will still be able to stay in a single hotel in Tampa, rather than being split up or pushed out of town.

“I think we’ll be able to move around Tampa comfortably,” Senft said. “We’ve all been to the (Tampa Bay Times) Forum, and we know where the escalators are. It will have a minimal effect.”

State Republican Party officials say they think Priebus will allow Floridians to use their guest and VIP passes, rather than take a hard line against party activists from such a politically important state.

In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Priebus didn’t directly address that question, but promised, “We’re going to work great with Florida … Those folks from Florida that would like to attend the convention, they’re going to have plenty of opportunity to have a great time.”

At the RNC meeting in New Orleans, where the decision took place, state GOP Chairman Lenny Curry argued that the RNC shouldn’t severely punish the state party, which didn’t choose the primary date, said party spokesman Brian Hughes.

“The legal authority for that rested with others,” Hughes said. “The idea that you would punish the party activists in a state that’s so important on the road to the White House doesn’t make sense.”