1968 in 2008
POD: California and Florida go first.
On September 1, 2007, the California state legislature sets the date of their presidential primary to the earliest date ever.
California's Republican Primary is held Thursday, December 27, 2007, in violation of Republican party rules. The primary will allocate 173 delegates on a semi-proportional basis. A poll the week before the election by Datamar predicts: Rudy Giuliani 28.0%,Mitt Romney 16.1%, Fred Thompson 14.0%, John McCain 9.9%, Mike Huckabee 7.8%, Ron Paul 4.3%, Duncan Hunter 1.6%, Tom Tancredo 1.0%, Undecided 17.3%
During a Christmas Eve televised address Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger endorses Giuliani.
On election day Undecideds break heavily for Giuliani, and he wins 38 congressional districts, with 114 delegates. Winning the Golden State overall, he also gets 14 bonus delegates for a total of 128 delegates. He has strong showings in the Bay Area and Los Angeles county, but is unable to reach a majority in the statewide popular vote.
Huckabee receives 18 delegates, with strong support among Evangelicals and working class Republicans. Romney receives 15 delegates, with strong support in wealthier suburbs and among Mormons. . McCain receives 9 delegates, mostly among the military and in the Inland Empire, where he campaigned heavily. Duncan Hunter receives 3 delegates by barely winning his own Congressional District, with McCain a close second there. Ron Paul wins no congressional districts, but still gets 5% of the popular vote, almost evenly distributed across the state, finishing third or fourth in nearly every district. He runs as a moderate libertarian Republican.
Giuliani's win is widely dismissed as a fluke by the national media, attributed to the Governor's endorsement, the liberal bent of California Republicans and poor voter mobilization among conservatives during the Christmas holiday. Essentially, no one could be bothered to stop Christmassing long enough to research candidates and so they voted for name recognition.
Florida's Republican Primary is also held early, in violation of Republican party rules, on Wednesday, January 2, 2008, the day before the Iowa caucuses. Florida awards it's 57 delegates on a winner take all basis. The statewide results are Rudy Giuliani 19%, John McCain 19%, Mike Huckabee 18%, Mitt Romney 18%, Ron Paul 10%, Fred Thompson 8%, Duncan Hunter 1%, Tom Tancredo 1% and other minor candidates made up the rest. The close outcome between Giuliani and McCain leads to a statewide recount. The national press awards the coverage of the recount story to the most senior reporters. (Given a choice between being in Florida or the snowy states of Iowa and New Hampshire in January, most senior reporters choose the Sunshine State.)
The next day, Iowa's Republican Caucusesare held and the anger among Iowa conservative republicans against Giuliani is evident, but there is little consensus over who should be the leader of the conservative wing of the party. Huckabee, McCain, Romney and Thompson split the caucuses vote evenly (with 23% each), with a slight edge for Huckabee. Giuliani gets 8% of caucus delegates. The press and commentators call it a major loss for Giuliani, but his campaign points out that Iowa only sends 40 delegates to the convention anyway, "so it doesn't matter". There is a minor controversy over this for a few days, but it peters out quickly as only second string reporters have covered Iowa.
New Hampshire, though, punishes Giuliani the following week for his Big State strategy by awarding him none of it's 12 delegates. McCain, distracted by the recounts in Florida, only half-heartedly campaigns here. Ron Paul has been campaigning heavily in New Hampshire for two weeks, pouring large amounts of his internet raised funds into the small state. He has a decent showing, getting 5 delegates. Romney gets 6, and McCain is awarded 1.
Wyoming and Nevada are won by Romney, but the results carried little weight after a national news reporter outside a caucus site in Wyoming points out that a majority of the caucusers in this county all belong to the same LDS church. There is the usual brushfire of controversy about the comment for a few days, until the nation is distracted by the Michigan primary, held January 15th, several weeks before republican party rules allowed it. Amid the controversy about Romney's religion evangelical voters split their vote among Huckabee, McCain and Thompson, giving a slight edge to Giuliani in this winner take all state. Giuliani therefore was awarded 60 more delegates. Romney, beaten in a state where his father was governor considers dropping out.
Two days later, Florida's State Supreme Court awards Giuliani it's winner take all 57 delegates.
Giuliani seemed to become an unstoppable force. A deeply divided conservative movement could not choose a standard bearer. The press seemed ready to award the nomination to Giuliani.
Then on January 20th Karl Rove, who recently resigned from the Bush White House and was an unofficial advisor to the McCain campaign wrote a cover story for Newsweek examining whether the primaries in California, Florida and Michigan should be set aside. He argued that since those states had violated Republican party rules in advancing the dates of their primaries, the results were null and void.
A major storm of controversy exploded onto the cable networks, talk radio and internet. Should the votes of three large, heavily populated states simply be invalidated completely? Should they get awarded half the delegates? Should there be new primaries? The controversy dragged on for months, with no good solution in sight. Everyone involved, and a few who weren't, lawyered up immediately and started filing briefs. The Democratic congress offered in February to hold hearings to help the Republicans sort it all out, or at least to ensure the airing of Republican dirty laundry on national tv. Republican congressional leaders were terrified to take a side, after all, what if they took one candidate's side and the opponent was elected in November? The Bush administration remained characteristically mute on the controversy.
Super Tuesday was a five way draw. Thompson dropped out and gave his delegates to McCain. No one noticed.
By Texas' March 1st primary, five candidates remained. Giuliani had a solid majority of delegates if California, Florida and Michigan were counted in full. Huckabee and Romney were evenly matched in delegates. Huckabee had nearly swept the southern delegates. Romney had done well in the midwest and west. Ron Paul was solidly in fourth place in the delegate count but pulled a steady 10% in primary after primary, except for Nevada where he nearly tied Romney's win. McCain had strong support from veterans and in the southwest, but he was running very low on money.
Texas had little interest in a liberal New York Italian, or a carefully manicured Mormon corporate executive. But they listened when Romney said during a Meet The Press interview that every sentence Giuliani ever used was composed of three things: "a noun, a verb and 9/11".
The Texas primary rules being incredibly convoluted, no one knew the final outcome until days later. Inexplicably, Ron Paul won 71 delegates, Huckabee 50, McCain 13, Romney 5, and Giuliani 1. Three delegates were appointed by the state party and were unofficially uncommitted.
On March 2nd, the New York Times ran a story connecting McCain romantically with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, and further reported he had given her clients preferential treatment in the Senate. After a week of controversy, on March 9th, McCain (whose campaign was deep in a money hole) announced he would "suspened his campaign so he could fly immediately back to Washington to work on clearing his good name of these cruel, salacious and completely untrue rumors". McCain pledged his deleagtes to Giuliani.
Romney dropped out graciously on March 13th, for the sake of party unity. He did not however, release his pledged delegates.
This left Giuliani, Huckabee and Paul among the major candidates. By June 3rd, the date of the last Republican primary, Giuliani and Huckabee had a nearly equal number of delegates, about 35% of the total. Giuliani's delegate count, however, was dependent on California, Florida and Michigan being counted in full. If they were not, he would be outvoted on the convention floor in St. Paul. Ron Paul had just over 15% of the delegates pledged to him. Romney had 10%. The remaining 5% were a scattering of minor candidates and uncommitted delegates.
During the convention the subject of the California, Michigan and Florida primaries was center stage, with debate in the credentials committee running late into the night. Vote after vote failed to reach a decision. The credentials committee finally agreed to allow the delegates from the contested states to vote in committes, but not to vote on the convention floor for the nomination. Giuliani was furious and decided to turn the platform into a poison pill.
The Giuliani and Paul delegates, in alliance, gutted the social conservative platform, including removing planks about abortion, gays and medical marijuana, with bare majorities of just over 50%.
Thousands of protesters (mostly liberal) had already converged on St. Paul, and the Minnesota state police had, as usual, confined them to "free speech zones", enclosed areas behind chain link fences set up in Rice Park. When the platform was taken over by the libertarians, though, thousands more protesters, this time radical conservative Christians, joined them in the cattle pen-like areas of the park. Police did their best to keep the two seperated, but the increased numbers of protesters quickly overwhelmed water and food supplies, available space and the port a potties in the park. Tempers flared even higher in the heat of an Indian Summer.
When word reached the park that an abortion clinic in Minneapolis and a gay bar in Mankato had been nailbombed (13 dead or wounded total) in a seemingly coordinated attack, both sides exploded.
Radical Christians (of the Fred Phelps and Operation Rescue variety) shut down traffic around the Xcel center by laying in the streets. Liberal activists attacked them with bricks and flaming trashcans. The Chritians threw animal fetuses at the liberals and the police. A running battle in the streets filled the prairie night. Police, confused and exhausted, began arresting everyone they saw, beating them if they resisted at all, even verbally. They processed those arrested in makeshift holding areas on the park in front of the State Capitol Building, a few blocks from the Xcel center north across I35.
Inside the Xcel center, the delegates were largely unaware of the disorder, except for the few who had tired of the proceedings and returend to their hotels vis various skybridges. These delegates could see the teargas and beatings below them and hurried back to their hotel rooms.
At 3 am, inside the Xcel center, Fox News correspondent and late night host Greg Gutfeld went live on the air and interviewed Mike Huckabee, asking him his opinion of the protesters. Huckabee (having been awake and politicking at the convention for nearly three days straight, and completely unaware of the intensity of the rioting) responded that they were doing the right thing to follow their consciences, that he admired them in all they do, and he only wished he could join them. Giuliani, responding to the same question countered by complimenting the police saying they had been doing a wonderful job of keeping order and they deserve our full support, and he wished he could join them rather than the protesters. (Gutfield did not bother to interview minor candidate Paul. Moderates are boring.)
At about the same time, a protester in the processing area was shot and killed. No one was sure which side the protester was on, but it didn't matter. The activists on both sides assumed it was one of theirs, and quickly overwhelmed the police holding them.
A pitched battle between the three sides raged westward and southward from the park as over 10,000 rioters tried to reach the Xcel center. The police blockaded I35 as a rampart to protect the center. MSNBC was filming the riot from the roof of United Hospital when they inadvertantly broadcast police officers (tired, angry, scared and panicked police officers, to be exact), tightly cornered up against an onramp to I35, firing blindly into a massed crowd of people which was advancing towards them, many whom were local residents simply trying to escape the neighborhood.
Seven people were gruesomely shot, on national television, before the network's overnight crew realized how horrific the raw footage was. The death toll at I35 would climb to forty. Two dozen blocks in the Thomas-Dale neighborhood between University Avenue and I94 would be burnt to the ground by morning. The campus of St. Paul College would be so heavily damaged, it would not repopen for classes for three months. The Cathedral of St. Paul, with stone walls acting like an oven, would burn so hotly the copper dome would melt.
The next morning a quiet settled over the city as the fire department doused embers and ashes. Eighty four people had been killed; twice that many seriously injured. Many of them were bystanders and neighborhood residents. Tape of one candidate seemed to be congratulating the rioters, while the other candidate seemed to be egging on the police to more violence and a firmer hand. Both tapes were played almost continuously on all networks. America was stunned to see the Culture War being fought with actual bullets and deaths. They reject it and demand moderate candidates. (But in fairness have little time to find some.)
Both Giuliani and Huckabee announce their withdrawal from the race that afternoon. Secretly, a backroom deal had been reached to nominate their seconds. The convention quietly, and without fanfare, nominated moderate libertarian Ron Paul for president, and moderate businessman Mitt Romney for Vice-President.