Can the Democratic Party ignore Florida's primary?

Florida Democrats filed suit against the national party for imposing sanctions against the state for its early primary.

from the October 16, 2007 edition

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That is a claim Florida officials flatly deny. The legislature, with the governor's support, did vote this spring to move the primaries – Democratic and Republican – to Jan. 29. But after Democratic amendments to set a Feb. 5 primary failed, nearly every Democratic lawmaker joined the Republican majority in favor of the Jan. 29 date.

Several Democrats invoked the same reason as Republicans: to give the nation's fourth most populous state a bigger role in the nominating process.

"Moving the primary up earlier puts Florida center stage," Anthony DeLuise, a spokesman for the governor, said in a phone interview. He said that Governor Crist has declared his support for the lawsuit, which was filed by Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Alcee Hastings, Democrats of Florida, in their capacity as delegates to the convention, and by Janet Taylor, an African-American county commissioner and possible delegate.

"It's the national Democratic Party" – not Florida – "that is unfairly punishing Democratic voters," Mr. DeLuise said.

A DNC spokeswoman, Karen Finney, said the Democratic Party was on firm ground to disregard contests that run afoul of party rules. "The DNC has the absolute legal right to treat the state-run primary as a mere beauty contest," she said in an e-mail interview.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Tampa seemed to second that view in throwing out a somewhat similar lawsuit over the DNC sanctions. "The Supreme Court has consistently recognized that national political parties have a constitutionally protected right to manage and conduct their own internal affairs, including the enforcement of delegate selection rules and the decision as to which state delegates it will recognize," Judge Richard Lazzara wrote.

Citing the First Amendment right to free association, courts tend to treat political parties as private bodies, much as they might a parade organization, which is free to decide who may march.

Kendall Coffey, a Miami lawyer for the Florida plaintiffs, sought in an interview to distinguish his case from such rulings. In those cases, he said, parties had compelling reasons to exclude some voters. In the 1981 Wisconsin case, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that the DNC could ignore that primary because Republicans and other non-Democrats were permitted to participate, a violation of Democratic Party rules.

Limiting a party primary to members of that party is rational, he said. But in the Florida case, Mr. Coffey asserts, the DNC's reasons – to protect the traditional roles of a few early-voting states – are too weak to justify what the lawsuit calls "disenfranchisement on a massive scale" of that party's own members.

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