Wednesday-Night

See also Democrats: Phantom and Super Delegates and U.S. Primaries: Florida
May 29
Florida and Michigan May See Delegates Halved
May 8
Back to Michigan and Florida
The rules committee plans to meet May 31 to resolve the issues with Michigan and Florida, both of which violated D.N.C. rules in holding their primaries earlier than the party allowed.
The Clinton campaign has argued for months that not seating delegates from those states would disenfranchise voters in those states and put the party at risk for losing them in the fall.
March 20
(TIME) Michigan Hurts Clinton’s Chances
On Thursday, the Michigan state Senate adjourned without taking action on a do-over of that state’s Democratic primary, following the lead of Florida, which ruled out another primary earlier this week. That leaves it up to the party and the candidates to come up with a plan for seating both crucial state’s delegates at the national convention this summer in Denver. But as Clinton and Barack Obama battle it out in the final stretch of the nomination race, there is no obvious solution that is in the interest of both candidates.
January 20
Ronald Reagan Is Still Dead
Frank Rich, New York Times columnist
Republicans in Michigan reconstituted their party’s election-year chaos by temporarily revivifying yet another candidate, Mitt Romney, who had been left for dead.
… I don’t mean to pick on Mitt Romney — though heaven knows it’s a thriving national pastime — but his retro persona exemplifies much of the present Republican dilemma. It’s not just that the old Reagan coalition of social, economic and foreign-policy conservatives has fractured. A more indelible problem for the Republicans in 2008 is that their candidates are utterly segregated from reality as it is lived by the overwhelming majority of their fellow Americans. The G.O.P. presidential field’s lack of demographic diversity by age, gender, ethnicity or even wardrobe, let alone race, is simply the leading indicator of how out of touch its brand has become.
Mr. Romney’s victory in Michigan was most of all powered by a lie far more egregious than his bogus appropriation of King. In a state decimated by unemployment, he posed before auto plants like an incongruously well-groomed Michael Moore, vowing to fight to bring back every last lost job. His plan? He’d scrap the modest new fuel-efficiency standard passed with rare bipartisan unity in Washington last month and give Detroit a $20 billion fund for energy “research” (not to be confused, he claimed, with a bailout).
It’s a poignant measure of Michigan’s despair that some voters willed themselves to believe in Mr. Romney’s preposterous antidote to the decades-long erosion of the American auto industry. It’s a farcical measure of how little the other Republicans have to say about the nation’s economic crunch that Mr. Romney’s con job could pass for substance. Column
January 15, 2008
Romney edges McCain in Michigan primary
DETROIT - Mitt Romney scored a victory Tuesday in the Republican presidential primary in his native Michigan, a win he desperately needed to give his candidacy new life and set the stage for a wide-open showdown in South Carolina in just four days.
Romney’s victory over Sen. John McCain further roiled a volatile nomination fight that lacks a clear favorite. More from MSNBC
(NYT) ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who ran as a son of Michigan though he left the state nearly 40 years ago, won the Republican primary here with a message aimed at voters deeply anxious about the state’s economy and their own financial prospects.
Promising to revitalize the distressed automobile industry, Mr. Romney defeated his principal rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, by winning a clear plurality of Republicans and conservatives, who turned out in greater numbers than they had in the 2000 primary, which Mr. McCain won. More
Details for the Michigan Primary
By The Associated Press
Michigan primary on Tuesday, Jan. 15.
At stake: 30 GOP delegates; 0 Democratic delegates. Because Michigan broke party rules by moving up its primary, it has been stripped of half its GOP delegates and all its Democratic ones. Leaders of both state parties expect to regain the lost delegates at their respective conventions, but Barack Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson pulled their names off the ballot.
Polls show: Hillary Rodham Clinton leading among Democrats still on the ballot, but voters also can choose “Uncommitted,” which Obama and Edwards supporters may do; Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are in a close race among Republicans, but John McCain could be helped by crossover voters as he was in 2000.
2004: John Kerry won the state with 51 percent in the presidential election.

Republicans Make Final Appeals to Michigan Voters

January 19, 2008
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Mitt Romney began what even his advisers concede is potentially a do-or-die moment for his presidential candidacy on Tuesday, by reflecting on the memory of his late father, George Romney, as Michigan voters began casting primary ballots.
The other two leading candidates on the Republican ballot, Senator John McCain of Arizona and former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, were making election-day appeals across Michigan on Tuesday morning.
Mr. McCain, who won the Michigan Republican primary in 2000, was making a final appeal in Traverse City, in the northwestern part of the Lower Peninsula. He said he was hoping for a big turnout, and said he expected to get significant numbers of votes from Democrats and independents, which would demonstrate his crossover appeal in a general election. … He was to appear at a rally in Ypsilanti later in the day with Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, the independent from Connecticut.
Mr. Huckabee met voters at polling places in Macomb County in suburban Detroit in the morning, before flying to South Carolina for a number of campaign appearances there. More
(ABC News) Michigan voters on Tuesday take their turn sorting through the Republican presidential field, with a battered state economy providing the backdrop for a primary that could thin the ranks of the GOP contenders.
With the first three contests of the Republican race having produced three different winners, Michigan is almost certain to hand a second victory to one of them. Either a native son — Mitt Romney — or a defending champion — John McCain — will sputter into South Carolina’s Saturday primary in a jalopy of disappointment.
On this snowy primary day, polls close at 9 pm ET — just as the Democratic candidates debate in Las Vegas, testing a tenuous truce.
January 11
The US economy topped the agenda as Republican presidential hopefuls went head-to-head on Thursday.
In a televised debate before primaries in Michigan and South Carolina, the six rivals agreed the US faced challenges but said they could be overcome.
… Michigan, which goes to the polls on Tuesday, has been hard-hit by the country’s economic woes.
At 14%, Detroit’s unemployment exceeds the national average, with at least a third of local people living below the poverty line. Full story
Romney hopes to catch break in Michigan primary
Sheldon Alberts , CanWest News Washington Correspondent
January 09, 2008
MANCHESTER, N.H. - It may just be Michigan or bust for Mitt Romney.
The former Massachusetts governor, whose strategy to win the Republican presidential nomination rested on gaining momentum from early victories in Iowa and in New Hampshire, was weighing a campaign shakeup Wednesday after losing both high-profile contests.
The 60-year-old GOP candidate is now girding for a week-long political scrap with Arizona Senator John McCain ahead of the Jan. 15 Republican primary in Michigan, a state where each contender has strong political support.