RNC strips 5 states of half their delegates
Posted: Monday, October 22, 2007 12:27 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC's Domenico Montanaro
The Republican National Committee has voted to strip New Hampshire, Florida, South Carolina, Michigan and Wyoming of half their delegates for violating party rules and shifting their nominating contests earlier than was originally agreed upon.
Iowa and Nevada, which also moved their contest dates, are not being punished because they have non-binding contests.
Here's a link to the AP story.
*** UPDATE *** “Our rules lay out a clear process for delegate selection,” RNC Chairman Mike Duncan said on a conference call with reporters. Duncan added, “We spent most of this past year educating them on what the rules are. This should come as no surprise to them.”
In fact, the RNC approved its rules at the 2004 Republican convention -- “unanimously,” Duncan points out.
The states have not been officially notified yet. Those letters are being sent out today.
South Carolina, for one, has already threatened legal action. “We’re going to check the legality of it,” Katon Dawson, South Carolina’s Republican Party chairman, told the AP. Dawson pledged to “put up a fight.”
Florida’s Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer said in a statement: “While we disagree with the Republican National Committee’s recommendation to sanction the State of Florida, at the end of the day this is a disagreement among friends and we recognize that we are all working towards a common goal -- re-electing a Republican President in 2008. With that in mind, we are confident that Florida will retain our full delegation to the Convention and all 114 delegates will be seated.”
New Hampshire potentially could lose 90% of its delegates if it does not select a date before the Republicans’ final call to convention, which has to happen by the end of the year. Duncan stressed that the scenario, posed by a reporter on the call, is a “hypothetical” and didn’t want to comment. Though he called it “interesting.”
Democratic candidates have pledged not to campaign in rule-breaking states during the primary process. Duncan said he’d make no such requests and took a shot at Democrats in the process.
“The Democrats have such flexibility with their rules, I don’t know where to begin,” Duncan said, citing waivers and exemptions. “We aren’t saying don’t campaign in Florida. Our rules stick for a four-year period; their rules can be amended in between.”
Also unlike the DNC, the RNC does not have rules as to when non-compliant states would have to submit new plans.
“We always believe in redemption,” Duncan said. “So if they wanted to make a change we’d certainly be open to that.”
