Seeking an Edge, Florida Changes Its Primary Date

[didymus]

tinyurl.com/ynnwfu

** Seeking an Edge, Florida Changes Its Primary Date**

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

   MIAMI, May 3 — Casting more uncertainty over the presidential nominating process for 2008, the [Florida](http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/florida/index.html?inline=nyt-geo) Legislature on Thursday moved the state’s primary up to Jan. 29, ignoring the threat of sanctions from the national Republican and Democratic parties.

The new date puts the Florida primary ahead of contests in all but four states. Political leaders here hope it will give Florida, the most populous swing state, a bigger role in choosing presidential nominees.

But officials in other states said Florida’s move would only create more chaos around the nominating process, which has already been upended by other states’ decisions to hold earlier primaries. New Hampshire may move up its primary as a result — possibly even to this year — and in South Carolina, Republican officials said they, too, would advance the date of their primary.

“South Carolina will name a date that keeps us first in the South,” said the party chairman, Katon Dawson. “It could be as early as Halloween and our version of trick-or-treat, if we have to.”

This is getting totally out of hand. Here in NY we’ve moved our primary to February 5th – it used to be much later but we got sick of having half the candidates knocked out in stupid states like Iowa and New Hampshire and S. Carolina.

Modest proposal: any state that holds a primary before the 4th of July is ineligible to receive federal funds for anything. Presidential campaigns didn’t used to take two years. If only as an act of mercy to the candidates (and the Republic!) we should do what we can to shorten things up again.

 

[stbruno]

The worst part is sitting through months and months of TV and radio ads. Who is sick of them already and they haven’t even started?