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FLORIDA'S IMPACT YET TO BE DECIDED

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By BILLY HOUSE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 31, 2008

Updated: 01/31/2008 12:22 am

TAMPA - Florida's decision to move up its presidential primary helped to give Republicans a clearer front-runner headed into next week's Super Tuesday contests.

It also rang the death knell of two other candidates, Democrat John Edwards and Republican Rudy Giuliani, from the field of presidential hopefuls.

And it may yet create a chaotic nominating convention fight between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

The Republican and Democratic parties wanted to limit the impact of Florida because of the state's decision to move up its primary before Feb. 5, against party calendar rules.

State leaders, by ignoring those rules, said they wanted Florida to have more influence in the nominating process.

University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said Florida did help to solidify Arizona Sen. John McCain's hold on the GOP front-runner mantle at a time when he could have slipped against Mitt Romney.

Even then, however, McCain was able to sidestep on his way to victory what had been one of Gov. Charlie Crist's own main reasons for wanting an earlier primary: to garner more attention for Florida issues such as the need for a national catastrophe fund.

McCain, who was the only Republican candidate flat-out opposed to such a national fund, got Crist's endorsement anyway.

"No commitment," McCain said of such a fund.

In the end, however, political experts predict few people will likely remember much about Tuesday's primary. Its impact may not have been worth the trouble.

"This was not the way to go," Sabato said.

"I don't think it altered the trajectory of any of the candidates all that much," said Charlie Cook, editor of The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan national newsletter.

Even Crist, who had been casting the earlier primary as a way to put Florida in the national spotlight, wouldn't speculate about whether Tuesday's voting actually helped reshape the presidential race.

"I don't know," said Crist, in an interview Wednesday.

As Cook sees it, McCain was the widely perceived GOP presidential front-runner following his victory last week in South Carolina's primary, and Giuliani and Edwards were already on their last legs, he said.

"Rudy died as a candidate either this week, or he was going to die next week," Cook said. Edwards' campaign also was mortally wounded before the Florida primary, having lost in his native state a few days before.

Of the Democrats, Cook and Sabato think the primary didn't matter because Michigan and Florida were sanctioned for their decisions to set their presidential-primary dates before Feb. 5.

The debate over Florida's decision to move up its primary may not be over, however.

Now, Clinton says Florida's and Michigan's delegates should be seated at the convention, a suggestion that could ignite a convention fight with Obama. Clinton won those states in races that involved no active campaigning.

In fact, Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.

Cook and Sabato both predict a clear-cut Democratic nominee will emerge in upcoming contests.

If no clear Democratic front-runner does emerge before the party's August convention, a potential fight over the unseated delegates could get heated - especially if their number were enough to defeat Obama.

To win the Democratic nomination, a candidate needs to get 2,025 delegates. Clinton could stand to get most of Florida's 210 Democratic delegates and Michigan's 128 delegates if the party reversed its decision to strip the states of their delegates.

Asked Tuesday night in an interview if she might consider going to court to get those delegates seated, Clinton called it "premature" to speculate.

Sabato said going to court "is really the worst-case scenario that implies the leadership of the Democratic Party could never bring these candidates together if they had to."

Nathaniel Persily, an elections law expert at Columbia University School of Law, said the chances Clinton could win in court are low, given previous decisions that give political parties wide leeway in setting their own rules.

If it really came down to those Florida and Michigan delegates, Persily said he thinks the Democratic National Party would have those states hold new presidential primaries before August's convention that would involve active campaigning.

Reporter William March contributed to this report. Reporter Billy House can be reached at (202) 641-5080 or bhouse@

tampatrib.com.

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