Here’s the news flash from JTA’s Ben Harris:
An increasingly influential pro-Clinton Florida congresswoman opposes the idea of holding caucuses as a solution to the standoff over the state’s primary delegates.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), a national co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said that caucuses would never work in a large state like Florida.
“There is no way that Florida is going to hold a caucus,” Wasserman Schultz told JTA.
The idea of holding a caucus in Florida has been proposed by the Democratic National Committee as a way of resolving the dispute over the state’s delegates.
The DNC stripped Florida and Michigan of their delegates after the states violated party rules by scheduling its primary earlier than Feb. 5. In addition, all of the Democratic candidates abided by their pledge not to campaign in both states, though days before Florida’s Jan. 29 primary Clinton called for the delegates to be seated and then after the polls closed flew down that night for a victory rally in the Sunshine State.
Wasserman Schultz asserted that fewer people would end up turning out for a caucus than who voted in the Jan. 29 primary.
“We had a million and half people cast ballots,” she said. “There are no do-overs in elections.”
Wasserman Schultz rejected the argument that the vote was not a fair contest since neither candidate campaigned in Florida, saying that people in the state were very familiar with both candidates.
“What I worry about is that we not stray as Democrats from our insistence to making sure that every voter’s vote counts,” Wasserman Schultz told JTA. “Denying people’s votes counting would be hypocritical. It would mean that we are not true to our beliefs that we have stood for for decades.”
