News & Events
Florida primary battle stays out of court - for now
Justice Watch
March 31, 2008 | DAILY BUSINESS REVIEW
by John Pacenti
A federal appeals court sent up a mighty smoke signal that caught the attention of Florida Democrats hoping to seat their delegation at the national convention that will crown either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton as the party’s nominee.
A lawsuit intended to force the Democratic National Committee to seat Florida’s 210 delegates was rejected March 21 by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
But the court almost invited a do-over. The three-judge panel dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice on standing but acknowledged in the first sentence of a nine-page opinion that the appeal “raises a number of interesting and potentially significant” constitutional questions.
The idea that the judiciary could play a significant role in choosing the party’s nominee sends Democrats into a nasty flashback to the year 2000 when the U.S. Supreme Court halted the Florida recount and handed the presidency to George Bush over Vice President Al Gore.
“As a Democrat, I’m reminded of the capacity to create disaster for ourselves,” said lawyer Kendall Coffey, a former Miami U.S. attorney. “No one wants to see the courts have to step in because the Democrats have in effect an intra-party feud they can’t resolve. It seems undesirable to seek judicial intervention, but it’s unthinkable to completely erase Florida voters.”
Coffey, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, supports Hillary Clinton in her bid to be the party’s nominee.
The DNC warned Florida’s delegation would not be seated at the Denver convention come August if the Sunshine State flouted the national party’s preferred primary schedule. The Republican-controlled Legislature went ahead and moved up the date anyway.
Coffey, a partner with Coffey Burlington in Miami, represented U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who endorsed Hillary Clinton, and other politicos in an unsuccessful lawsuit filed in Tallahassee last October to force the DNC’s hand.
Now the focus is on the lawsuit that the 11th Circuit ruled on recently.
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Coffey said the conventional wisdom at the time was that the distressing delegation situation would sort itself out.
“Now we see things essentially spiraling into an election catastrophe,” he said. “You have a razor-thin margin between two Democrats generating considerable passion, and you have a situation where the most important of all battleground states has been erased from the map.”
Coffey said the “DiMaio dictum” in the 11th Circuit opinion has generated a lot of attention. “Those comments are more tantalizing than illuminating,” he said.
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