Florida Democrats are keeping Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) and President Joe Biden’s other opponents off the state’s primary ballot, effectively handing Biden the state’s 250 delegates, Politico noted Thursday night.
Thursday marked the deadline for the Florida Democrat and Republican parties to submit their lists of approved candidates for their receptive primaries, and Biden was the lone name on the Democrat ticket, per Politico.
Phillips took to X to contend that the move disenfranchises millions of Florida voters and said he would challenge “this absolute nonsense.’
The Florida Democratic Party is gifting all 250 state delegates to Joe Biden without a single vote. We won’t stand for it.
Help support our efforts to pursue legal channels to rectify this absolute nonsense: https://t.co/9HToQNkmvK pic.twitter.com/9yMcpsGgMn
— Dean Phillips (@deanbphillips) December 1, 2023
“What happened in Florida yesterday is a tragedy and a travesty. The Florida Democratic Party – just a handful of people – decided to disenfranchise millions of Democratic voters in Florida by saying, ‘We’re not gonna have a presidential primary,’” Phillips said in a video posted Thursday.
“I’m running for president; there are others running for President as Democrats, and this is the kind of stuff that happens in Tehran, not in Tallahassee. We’ve got to do something about this,” he added.
Marianne Williamson will also be left off the ballot in the Sunshine State. This comes as 35 percent of registered Demcorat primary voters are not behind Biden, according to a Messenger/Harris poll published Thursday. Biden took 65 percent of the response, followed by Williamson at 8 percent and Phillips at 4 percent. Another 24 percent were either undecided or planned to vote for someone else.
The full poll, which also gauged national trends and the temperature of the Republican primary, sampled 4,003 voters from November 22-28, and the margin of error is plus or minus 1.6 percent.
“I’ve been a lifelong Democrat… supported our party since I was in my 20s, been a member of Congress for three terms, and was a member of House Democratic leadership. I’ve never seen something so absurd, so disenfranchising, and so suppressive of Democratic voters,” Phillips explained in the video.
In response to a separate statement he sent to Politico, Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried, a failed 2022 gubernatorial candidate, called Phillips’s concerns “conspiratorial.”
“We are dismayed by Dean Phillps’ conspiratorial and inappropriate comments comparing the state of Florida to the Iranian regime as part of his knee-jerk reaction to long-established procedures,” Fried said. “This is unbecoming of someone running for higher office.”
Williamson also took to X to strongly criticize the Democrat Party of Florida’s move.
Well you won’t believe what Florida is doing now…
You have to jump through a lot of hoops to get on the ballot in states across the country, but Florida takes the cake: they won’t even let you try!
The FL Sec. of State has decided to simply allow the Florida…— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) November 30, 2023
“You have to jump through a lot of hoops to get on the ballot in states across the country, but Florida takes the cake: they won’t even let you try!” Williamson wrote in a post on X, arguing the secretary of state is allowing the party to “DECIDE who it wants to be on the ballot.”
“This absurd and unconstitutional display is exactly how an authoritarian state works: People are told they can vote, but are informed by someone else who their options will be,” she added.
Williamson’s campaign penned a letter on the matter to the Florida State Democratic Party executive staff.
“The Florida Democratic Party must TODAY submit or augment its candidate list for the 2024 Presidential Preference Primary to include Marianne Williamson as a candidate for the Democratic Party Presidential Preference Primary,” wrote Carlos Cardona of Williamson’s campaign.
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