A Do-Over Undone

By Dan BalzEd Rendell and Jon Corzine have done Hillary Clinton no favors in her fight for the Democratic nomination. The neighboring governors (Rendell of Pennsylvania, Corzine of New Jersey) set out to eliminate one obstacle to do-over votes in Florida and Michigan. Instead they ended up creating one.
When officials in Florida and Michigan first started talking about how to set up new primaries to assure that their delegations will be seated at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, they were understandably insistent that taxpayers not be stuck with the bill. Taxpayers had funded their January primaries; somebody else should pay for do-overs.
Because they were in a dispute with the Democratic National Committee, officials in both states looked to the DNC to bear the cost of new contests. DNC chairman Howard Dean, who has taken a hard line in his dealings with the two states, promptly rejected their entreaties. The national committee, he said, needed every available dollar it could raise to wage a general election campaign in the fall. The states would have to look elsewhere.
Dean was not entirely unhelpful, however. He reminded state officials that, while the national committee is barred from raising soft money (large, non-federally regulated contributions), state parties were not. Rendell and Corzine brashly decided to take matters into their own hands.
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