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Restore Delegation, McCain Urges

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By WILLIAM MARCH

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 5, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - Sen. John McCain said Wednesday that he will seek to restore the full Florida delegation to the Republican National Convention, but "can't dictate" that it will happen.

"Obviously I have a big influence, but I can't dictate it," McCain said in an interview with The Tampa Tribune.

"But I certainly have made my feelings known to people who are going to be on those committees," he said, meaning national Republican Party committees that will meet during the convention and control delegate seating.

Some Florida Republicans see the continuing sanctions applied to the state's delegation, which has been cut in half, as an indication that McCain hasn't been able to establish control over the party despite being its presidential nominee.
Party insiders say a compromise deal has been reached: Florida will get a full delegation of 114 with convention floor seats, but only half will be allowed to vote. Neither McCain campaign spokesmen nor state party spokesmen would confirm that publicly, however.

There also has been talk that some in the party, who resent Florida and Michigan's jumping up to an early primary date, oppose restoring Florida's delegation. But McCain denied in the interview that he has met any such resistance.

If McCain fails to seat the Florida delegates with full voting strength, "this would be a sign of his inability to influence the party on a key issue," said University of South Florida political scientist Darryl Paulson, a Republican and McCain backer.

Paulson noted that it was McCain's win in the Jan. 29 Florida primary, with the help of a key endorsement from Gov. Charlie Crist, "that pushed him into the front-runner position and allowed him to win the Super Tuesday primaries that followed."

Not to repay Florida "would be a slap in the face and make the Republicans look like Democrats, something they never want to do," Paulson said.

The issue of the Florida Republican delegates has been overshadowed by the controversy over Democratic delegates, finally decided Saturday by a meeting of the Democratic Party's rules committee.

The Democratic Party initially banned the entire Florida delegation from its convention because the Jan. 29 date was too early, breaking the rule against primaries in most states before Feb. 5. The rules committee restored the delegation, but with only half the voting power.

The national Republican Party, with a similar Feb. 5 rule, sanctioned seven states that held pre-Feb. 5 primaries or caucuses, including four that had permission from the Democrats for January primaries, plus Florida, Michigan and Wyoming.

The GOP decreed loss of only half their delegations to the national convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul in September.

Unlike in the Democratic race, the Florida sanctions made little difference in the outcome of the nomination battle. McCain quickly amassed enough delegates in primaries after Florida's.

Florida party leaders including Crist and state party chairman Jim Greer declared themselves unconcerned about the sanctions, partly because Florida substantially influenced the outcome.

Still, many Florida Republicans have assumed their delegation would be restored.

Meanwhile, the Florida Republican Party has repeatedly mocked and criticized the Democrats for slighting Florida, both through the delegate sanctions and because the Democratic candidates boycotted the state during the primary campaign.

Failure to fully seat the Republican delegation puts the Republicans in a similar boat, Paulson suggested.

"It undercuts something that has worked to McCain's advantage," he said.

McCain said there's time to deal with the issue, and "I will be telling the rules committee and those people that Florida ought to have full representation.

"I have an influence over that decision, but we do have a process," he said.

He added that the hassles in both parties over the early primaries in Florida and Michigan prove that "we've got to fix this system, it's broken.

"Otherwise, we're going to have every primary on the night of Jan. 1; it's getting too early."

But McCain said he doesn't favor the solution proposed by Florida Sen. Bill Nelson and others: a national primary system spelled out in federal law.

Instead, "The parties should sit down together, Democrat and Republican, and work this out," he said.

In other topics from the interview:

•McCain insisted that his support of George W. Bush twice for president, in 2000 after losing the primary to Bush and in 2004, doesn't make him the candidate for a "third Bush term" as his presumptive Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, contends.

McCain sought to distance himself from Bush in a speech in New Orleans on Tuesday, and may do the same in a speech to a gathering of newspaper editors in Orlando today.

Bush "was the candidate of my party," he said of his earlier endorsements. "We're a big tent party, we're a big party, we should have differing views. But the point is that I disagreed on some very important issues with the president."

•He said he is still the independent-thinking "maverick" politician, a reputation he courted during his 2000 race, despite having extensively courted elements of the party he formerly opposed, including Christian conservatives, for this race.

"I think my record indicates I've always acted in the country's best interest and many times against the majority of my party," on issues including climate change and spending, he said.

•He said he expects Florida to be a key state in his campaign against Obama as it was in the 2000 and 2004 campaigns.

McCain was in St. Petersburg for a $1,000-a-person fundraiser attended by Crist, the start of a three-day tour of Florida that will include several fundraisers and an appearance Friday in the Everglades.

Reporter William March can be reached at wmarch@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7761.

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