Democratic
National Committee chairman Howard Dean urged Florida and
Michigan party officials to come up with plans to repeat
their presidential nominating contests so that their
delegates can be counted.
''All they have
to do is come before us with rules that fit into what
they agreed to a year and a half ago, and then they'll be
seated,'' Dean said during a round of interviews
Thursday on network and cable TV news programs.
The two state
parties will have to find the funds to pay for new contests
without help from the national party, Dean said. ''We can't
afford to do that. That's not our problem. We need our
money to win the presidential race,'' he said.
Officials in
Michigan and Florida are showing renewed interest in holding
repeat presidential nominating contests so that their votes
will count in the epic Democratic campaign.
The Michigan
governor, top officials in Hillary Rodham Clinton's
campaign, and Florida's state party chair all are now saying
they would consider holding a sort of do-over contest
by June. That's a change from the previous insistence
from officials in both states that the primaries they
held in January should determine how their delegates are
allocated.
Clinton campaign
communications director Howard Wolfson said in a
conference call with reporters Thursday that it's hard to
envision a scenario where the Florida and Michigan
delegations are not seated at the conventions.
That would send a
''very unsettling signal to the people of those
states,'' Wolfson said.
Asked whether the
campaign favored a caucus over a primary if the states
had a do-over, he said it would be premature to comment on
any particular one at this point.
Clinton won both
contests, but the results were meaningless because the
elections violated national party rules.
''We believe that
vote ought to count,'' Wolfson said.
The Democratic
National Committee stripped both states of all delegates
for holding the primaries too early, and all Democratic
candidates -- including Clinton and rival Barack Obama
-- agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama's
name wasn't even on the Michigan ballot.
Florida and
Michigan moved up their dates to protest the party's
decision to allow Iowa and New Hampshire to go first,
followed by South Carolina and Nevada, giving the four
early states a disproportionate influence on the
presidential selection process.
But no one
predicted the race would still be very close at this point
in the year.
''The rules were
set a year and a half ago,'' Dean said. ''Florida and
Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn't need
to abide by the rules. Well, when you are in a contest
you do need to abide by the rules. Everybody has to
play by the rules out of respect for both campaigns
and the other 48 states.'' (AP)
