The chairman of the Iowa Republican Party is asking officials at the national level to enforce new sanctions on a group of Florida Republicans.
Florida officials today announced their state will hold a presidential primary on January 31, a move which means Iowa’s Caucuses will have to be rescheduled to sometime in early January. Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn wants the Republican National Committee to bar the Florida Republicans who made that decision from attending the national convention this summer.
“Any of those Republican elected officials who voted to blatantly disregard the RNC rules should not be given credentials or passes or be delegates at the convention in Tampa next August,” Strawn said during an interview with Radio Iowa. “They have shown incredible disregard for the RNC, so I do not think they should be rewarded with being able to participate in the national convention, even though it is in their backyard in Tampa.”
Republican National Committee rules allow just the states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina to hold presidential elections before March 6 and states which skirt the rules, like Florida has done, are to be stripped of half their delegates to the party’s national convention. Strawn won’t speculate on the new date for the 2012 Iowa Caucuses, but he has talked today with officials from New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina about the shifts that will be made.
“We’re going to work in concert to make sure we protect our spot in the order,” Strawn said, “but also to make sure we’re doing it at a time that doesn’t inconvenience Iowans any more than we have to.”
The date for the Iowa Caucuses will be set once New Hampshire’s secretary of state announces the re-scheduled date for the nation’s first primary.
(The headline of this story was changed at 4:02 p.m. to make clear Strawn is speaking of barring only the Florida Republicans who made the decision, not all Florida Republicans.)