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Senft: The argument against a Jan. 31 Florida primary

Posted Sep 29, 2011 by William March

Updated Sep 29, 2011 at 12:53 PM

Paul Senft, a long-time state GOP activist and one of Florida’s delegates to the Republican National Committee, has outlined the case against a Jan. 31 presidential primary date for Florida, arguing that it will decrease, not increase, Florida’s impact on the Republican nomination process.

The essence of Senft’s argument: The race is still likely to be unsettled in early March, the date that seemed to be the consensus choice among state GOP leaders until Arizona and other states moved their dates up into February. Even with those states moving up, Senft notes, there still would be only 212 total delegates available in all the January and February states, likely split up widely among the candidates.

Florida would then have 99 delegates available in its primary, and could award most of them on a winner-take-all basis. Thus an early March Florida primary could vault a trailing candidate into the lead, or make a leading candidate into a a clear frontrunner.

But if Florida jumps into January, blowing up the calendar and breaking RNC rules, it loses more than half those delegates, ending up with 48, and must allocate them all on a proportional basis. The winner of the primary could then end up getting fewer than 20 delegates from Florida, possibly changing the race little.

True junkies can see Senft’s analysis here.

He also argues that it will be an embarrassment to the state to flout party rules in a year when Tampa’s hosting the convention.

But most likely, Senft’s argument will turn out to be nothing more than a futile squawk of protest. It seems clear the minds of the three decisive individuals involved—state House Speaker Dean Cannon, state Senate President Mike Haridopolos and Gov. Rick Scott—are made up. They’re focussing in the counterargument, which is plausible, that the publicity and momentum from winning the Florida primary will be more important to a candidate than the number of delegates.