Rove decided on a September convention to maximize two political advantages -- the ability to spend "primary" funds as late as possible, before federal limits apply, and to squeeze out every drop of political blood from 9-11. (Words chosen carefully.)
Problem is, several states have filing deadlines for presidential candidates earlier in the year. One of them is Illinois.
State Dems have agreed to amend the law by forcing state House Republicans to waive election fines against a host of Democratic officeholders and to agree that "dimpled chads" should be counted. Those may be laudable things, but...
What the heck are Illinois Democrats thinking?
Would the GOP be so accomodating -- they of the mid-decade redistricting in three states. Screw the bastards. They made a crass political decision to stage a late primary, they should now suffer the consequences.
Keep Bush off the Illinois ballot. The state is safe Democrat regardless, but make them pay for their actions.
But that's the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Had the situations been reversed, the GOP wouldn't have been so accomodating.
But wait! The GOP in this case is still not accomodating.
Late Thursday, Senate Republicans were mulling their options, but they appeared dead-set against linking Bush with all of the other Democratic election proposals.
"The day we pass the most historic ethics package this General Assembly has ever seen, we won't waive fines for candidates who can't follow the law," said Patty Schuh, a spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Frank Watson (R-Greenville). "It's ludicrous."
In other words, it is the
Republicans who are blocking the compromise bill hashed out in the state House.
Ha ha. There's the opening for Democrats. Kill the deal. Let the GOP run Bush as a write-in candidate.
And it's not just Illinois.
First came the news that officials in Alabama may have to put President Bush on the ballot as a write-in candidate. It turns out Alabama isn't the only state scrambling to figure out what it needs to do to ensure that the president's name will appear on the state ballot next year.
The GOP's unusually late nominating convention -- it does not begin until Aug. 30 -- is the problem. Bush is not scheduled to accept his party's nomination until Sept. 2, 2004. That falls after the deadline for certifying presidential candidates not only in Alabama, but also in California, the District of Columbia and West Virginia. There are bills in the Alabama legislature to move its deadline from Aug. 31 to Sept. 5. But if, for some reason, they don't pass, the president would be forced to run there as a write-in candidate.
DC is as easy a Dem victory as they come. Alabama will undoubtedly make the necessary change. And Bush would win as a write-in candidate anyway.
But California? After the Right's power-grab in the state, there should be no reason for the state's legislature to amend the law to allow Bush on the ballot.
And WV is a Dem-led state as well, and an important swing state to boot.
It's time for Democrats to play hardball. It's time to take the initiative away from the GOP and go on the offensive. And what better way to do so than to simply let existing law stand?
Update: Strategem updates the situation, which is mostly different than noted above:
First of all, the Washington Post article you've cited was dreadfully inaccurate on several counts.
To begin with, as noted here by ballot-access.org, California and West Virginia do not have deadlines prior September 2nd. Moreover, Idaho, Utah, Virginia, and Indiana which were omitted from the WP list did have earlier deadlines, which were modified immediately after the scheduling of the GOP convention.
Moving on, Maryland, which was also unmentioned, revised its statute on May 13, while Alabama, Delaware, and D.C. which also had deadline conflicts altered their statutes on June 19, June 12, and June 20, respectively.
Finally, as the Maryland link above also notes, the California guidelines involved some ambiguity (but no hard certification deadline) which Secretary of State Kevin Shelley asked the legislature to clarify. In any event, the California legislature passed AB 1680 in September which:provides that the state chair of the Calif. Republican Party, in 2004 only, will certify the nominees before the national convention is held, if: "a candidate for President has attained a sufficient number of delegate votes to assure his or her nomination at the Republican national convention"; and "the candidate described in par. (1) has identified a person who will be nominated to run for the office of vice president."
In other words, other than in Illinois, everyone else already caved.