Storm Aid as the New Ethanol

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Craig Crawford’ s 1600: Storm Aid as the New Ethanol
By Craig Crawford, CQ Columnist

ORLANDO — If Florida gets its way, hurricane insurance will be the new ethanol in presidential politics. Jealous that Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status for White House balloting always boosts that state’s self-interested obsession with corn-based fuel, Florida’s political elites are uprooting the campaign calendar in large part to put their own pet issue on the national agenda.

Lobbying presidential candidates to back a federal catastrophe insurance fund is at the root of a bipartisan crusade in Florida to make the nation’s fourth-largest state one of the early battlegrounds in the 2008 nomination races of both parties.

Last month, the Republican governor, Charlie Crist, signed a bill overwhelmingly passed by the state Legislature to hold the state’s presidential primaries Jan. 29. That would place Florida just after the traditional kickoffs in Iowa and New Hampshire, and just before the Feb. 5 blowout in California, New York, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey and perhaps 18 other states. “We may not be first, but we’ll be at the forefront,” Crist said. “We will be the first mega-state to weigh in on the next leader of the free world.”

Florida’s Democratic and Republican party chiefs quickly echoed that sentiment, adding that advancing the state’s primary date by a week, so it’s not part of “Tsunami Tuesday,” will go a long way toward pushing presidential hopefuls to get on board for the so-called CAT fund, a federally backed insurance program to aid victims of any national disaster.

“Ethanol has been in the forefront of the national debate on energy in large part because Iowa is so prominent in the primary process,” said Democratic state Rep. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach. “Now we’ll talk about a CAT fund.”

But Florida politicos are now keenly aware that their near-unanimous consensus for an earlier primary isn’t joined in Washington. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean is playing tough. “Their primary essentially won’t count,” he said bluntly last week, after Florida Democratic leaders endorsed the Jan. 29 date. Dean vowed to enforce party punishments for states that leapfrog the calendar — denying Florida most of its nominating convention delegates and even taking delegates away from candidates who try to win the outlaw primary.

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