Dan Gelber is/was the minority leader in the Florida House, Steve Geller is/was the Florida Senate minority leader.
They were major players in moving up Florida's primary because of their positions.
We have seen the video of Steve Geller introducing his amendment. It was all a big joke to him. It was an amendment made to make them look like they had shown "good faith" and made an effort. Here is the
video if somehow you missed it.Steve Geller has filed a lawsuit against Dean, one of two pending.
I will repost something I posted about Dan Gelber, though I am not as critical of him. He is not suing, he apologized to Dean for his rudeness, and he is supporting Obama.
But still he played a role in the beginning.
Gelber admits they did not fight the GOP about the primary.Gelber publicly on TV here said he did not represent Howard Dean, and a few other words.
Here is a portion of a letter he wrote to Dean. He admits they did not fight the GOP. Remember, they HAD to fight the GOP if they wanted to take advantage of the
"good faith" clause in the DNC rules.
Much of the back and forth and criticism of Florida by the DNC has been focused on the conduct of the Democratic legislators who – some argue – did not fight against the early primary bill. Yes, there is gambling in Casablanca. Of course we didn't fight against the bill. When the Republican leadership made it clear that this was their priority, Democrats had two choices: support something their constituents support and that was going to become law anyway; or support the DNC Rules Committee enforcement of a primary system that our constituents revile. For me, this decision was easy.
No "good faith" shown.
The DNC had the following information when they voted to sanction Florida.
. Florida Democratic Legislators sponsored the bill to move the primary to January 29th;
2. Florida House Democratic Legislators voted in committee three times for the bill to move the primary to January 29;
3. All but one Florida House Democratic Legislator vote on the floor to move the primary to January 29; and,
4. Florida House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber stated, after receiving a call from DNC Chair asking for help in opposing setting the primary date before February 5, “I don’t represent Howard Dean.”
5. Florida House Democratic Leader Dan Gelber stated, after offering an amendment to move the primary to February 5th, that the only reason he offer it was “to show that there was an attempt to state within the Democratic Party rules.” The amendment failed on a voice vote with no debate being offered.
6. Florida Senate Democratic Legislators voted in committee to move the primary to January;
7. Florida Senate Democratic Leader Steve Geller stated on the Senate floor that he was offering an amendment to move the primary to February 5 only because he was threatened by DNC Chair Howard Dean. Sen. Geller than mocked his own amendment which failed on a voice vote without any debate.
If I had been on the rules committee that had that information when they met, I would have been prone to believe that absolutely no "good faith" was shown. All Florida had to do was fight them, but they did not do that.
More on the subject
here.
