- Food « No OJ?!
No OJ?!
On
Sept. 30, 2011,
Florida's Presidential Preference Primary
Date Selection Committee voted to set the date of the state's
presidential
preference primary on January 31, 2012 in violation of RNC and DNC
rules. The move by this small group of Florida Republicans
prompted the sanctioned early states of South Carolina, Nevada, Iowa
and New Hampshire to move the dates of their contests forward, leading
to a January crush that party leaders had sought to avoid.
However, aside penalizing Florida
Republicans half their delegates, stripping them of guest passes at the
convention and putting the Florida delegation in an inconvenient hotel
during the convention, the RNC seemed powerless to stop the calendar
shuffling. In October some candidates started talk of boycotting
Nevada, which was impinging on New Hampshire, but no one seemed willing
to take on Florida.
On Oct. 19, 2011, longshot Republican candidate Fred Karger set a challenge. In a letter he wrote, "If Florida does not agree to move its primary back to its original date in March 2012 by November 1, 2011, we will officially launch a nationwide Boycott of Florida Orange Juice."
The proposal really came
too
late; it might have had some impact if it had come a couple of weeks
earlier, soon after the Florida committee's announcement on Sept.
30.
There are interesting historical
resonances in this
proposal. Karger is a openly gay candidate. In 1977 Anita
Bryant, singer, beauty queen and
spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission led a campaign to repeal
an anti-discrimination ordinance in Dade County, and the gay community
responded with a boycott of orange juice. [see Wikipedia; Anita Bryant]