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CSPAN

Moderator: Susan Swain

March 30, 2008

SUSAN SWAIN: Our guest on Newsmakers this week is Senator Bill Nelson. He's joining us from Jacksonville. Senator Nelson is a super delegate and as he has been thinking a great deal about electoral politics this season, including offering a number of suggestions for reform. We have two guests at our studio in Washington who will be questioning Senator Nelson, both of them have covered Florida and national politics a great deal. Mark Silva is now with The Chicago Tribune, but he spent much of his reporting career at The Miami Herald and he along with our guest Amie Parnes, covered the 2000 Florida recount. Amie Parnes is now based at Politico.

Mark Silva, you have the first question.

MARK SILVA, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Thank you. Greetings, Senator and I would like to ask you today how you see the democratic national committee resolving the conflict with Florida over the seeding of Florida's delegates and can this actually be resolved as long as there are still two democratic candidates in the running?

SENATOR BILL NELSON, DEMOCRAT, FLORIDA: Well, at the end of the day, it has to be resolved, but right now, both of these candidates are looking at any offer of compromise and they look at it through the lens of whether it advantages them or disadvantages them. And neither one of them are ready to agree. The most recent compromise that I've offered and I've been doing this since long before this became a close race, I started on this last summer trying to get the DNC and Howard Dean to understand that we had a coming train wreck if we didn't solve this problem with regard to Florida. In the meantime, over those eight or nine months, Michigan has joined the fray. But as we throw out different solutions, for example, I spoke a couple of weeks ago, we were in an all day, all night session and Barack and Hillary were both there and I talked to both of them and then, I called Howard Dean and I said, ‘Well, let's do this. The DNC rules and for that matter, the republican rules, as well, say if a state moves and breaks the deadline, you're going to take away half of the delegates. So let's do that. And as a practical matter, same thing that the republicans did, as a practical matter, Hillary, by the vote on January the 29th, was ahead of Barack 38 delegates. So if you cut them in half per advantages only going to be 19. Can we get an agreement to seek the Florida delegation in the spirit of compromise with Hillary having 19 ahead of Barack?” And both of them said to me they would consider it, they wanted to move and have a compromise reached, but then the campaigns get a hold of it and it ground to a halt.

SILVA: So, if I could just follow up quickly then. Will it be a question of the super delegates deciding who the nominee is before Florida's seeding is ever resolved? Or Michigan's, as well?

NELSON: At this point, it looks like that. I think we are in a stalemate for at least another couple of months until the course of these primaries and caucuses have run.

SWAIN: Amie Parnes.

AMIE PARNES, THE POLITICO, POLITICAL REPORTER: Senator, what have your colleagues said to you on the matter? Have they expressed an interest in this delegate split?

NELSON: Which colleagues are you speaking of?

PARNES: Senators Obama and Clinton.

NELSON: Well, I've certainly breached it to – or broached it to both of them and both of them said they wanted to get this thing settled. They were non committal as to this particular proposal, but I think they realized that whoever is the nominee at the end of the day that you better not give the stiff arm to Florida and Michigan because those two states are going to be very, very important to the nominee come the November election.

PARNES: Senator, you also introduced a proposal yesterday before the Florida state senate that would essentially eliminate the electoral college and replace it with a national popular vote. Can you talk a little bit about that? And is that an uphill battle for you, this kind of proposal?

NELSON: Well, if ever there's a time for reform, the time is now as a result of what we've seen, this mess that has been created in the nomination process. Now, Senator Levin of Michigan and I have filed legislation some time ago that would instead of this matrix of caucuses and primaries and states trying to jump other states, I mean if we keep going like we are, the first primary is going to be on Halloween. So what Senator Levin and I have said let's have six inner regional primaries. Start the first one in March and the last one in June. The states draw a number, one to six, and the ones that drew number one in six different parts of the country would all go together on the first date. You would have a mixture of big states and little states, so you wouldn't be giving preference to a state that was not representative of the country, like Iowa and New Hampshire are certainly not representative. And that way you would have a shortened period for all of this to occur, it wouldn't start until March and it would be over by June. Now, that's just one suggestion on trying to bring order out of this chaos that we see in the primaries.

But the overall election reform bill is much more extensive than that and if you want to discuss it, we can.

PARNES: Why wasn't something like this introduced after the presidential debacle in 2000, in your opinion?

NELSON: Well, in some cases, it was. For example, the question of a paper trail on the ballot machines. Florida clearly has gone through that trauma last 2000 election and then, low and behold, we went through it again in a congressional election in 2006 when 18,000 votes in one county, there was an undervote in a congressional race. So, to the credit of the Florida legislature, they abolished the electronic machines because you really couldn't have a paper trail there and went back to the optical scan ballots. And part of my election reform would be to abolish these electronic machines.

Another part is to do also what we do in Florida which is don't make voting just on a particular day. Have a period for early voting. We vote for two weeks ahead of time. Have an absentee ballot on demand. So if somebody wants to vote on a paper ballot and to do that sometime in the future and then, also, in the legislation, we're going to give grants for pilot projects to see if states want to do what Oregon does with a mail in ballot or what others do with regard to looking on how you would vote by Internet and indeed, have it secure. So there are a number of elements to this election reform plan.

SILVA: Senator, while you're looking at reforms, if you look at the current season in which neither Senator Obama nor Senator Clinton can obtain the delegates needed for nomination based on the pledge delegate count. Do you think you super delegates have too much power? Should the party rules be reformed to lessen the count or the influence or the freewheeling nature of the super delegate in the democratic party?

NELSON: Well, Mark, at the end of the day, what I think ought to be is you ought to have the popular vote accumulative in all of the states and that ought to determine who the nominee is instead of this strange mixture of how you allocate delegates on the basis of a congressional district instead of the state. But right now, we are where we are and the rules of the democratic party says that there are these some 700 super delegates and they have a status by virtue of their position either in the party or as an elected official and so, I don't think you're going to be changing the rules this year.

SILVA: Well, that said, when you get to early June and if Senator Obama is in the position of having a greater popular vote in the primaries and caucuses and a greater number of the delegates, will you, as a pledged Clinton super delegate, suggest to your colleagues that Obama is the nominee?

NELSON: Well, remember Mark, they've taken my vote away from me, even as a super delegate. They've abolished not only the pledged Florida delegates that were elected on January 29th, but they've taken away us as super delegates. But to your question, the rules are what everybody knows and I just don't think that – well, I can imagine there would be an explosion as much as a mile high if you start saying that super delegates can't vote just like there's going to be an explosion a mile high if they say that Michigan and Florida can't vote.

SILVA: Well, if I may follow up. Then absent the vote, will you as a Clinton supporter, recommend to your colleagues in the senate and elsewhere that Obama is the nominee if he has the vote in November?

NELSON: If he has the vote in November? You mean …

SILVA: Excuse me. In June.

NELSON: The popular vote in June. Well, that was – that would certainly be one consideration, but I'd want to see a bunch of other things, too. If I had a vote as a super delegate, I'd want to know who won the states that are going to be critical in November. I'd want to see what was the allocation of the existing delegates. I'd want to see what the popular vote total was if you added the Florida vote and by the way, 1.75 million Florida democrats voted; a huge increase from the last presidential primary. So I would want to see a lot of things before I would decide.

PARNES: Senator, who, in your opinion, is responsible for allowing the state of Florida, your state, to be in this mess?

NELSON: Well, I think the DNC was hard over and they lost sight of the forest for looking at the individual trees. And they wouldn't consider things such as that Florida the date was moved forward by law. It was passed by a republican legislature and it was signed into law by a republican governor. The democratic leaders in both the house and the senate of the state legislature offered an amendment to put the presidential primary back to February 5th so that they didn't break the DNC rules. But no, the DNC, when we were trying to work this out last summer, they wouldn't consider those factors, they said, ‘Florida broke the rules. We're going to penalize Florida.” OK. Then the rules said when you move ahead of the magic date, we're going to take away half of your delegates. No. The DNC decided they were going to get a full pound of flesh out of Florida by taking away all the delegates.

So, I think it was exactly the opposite of what the good book says. The good book says, ‘Come, let us reason together.” And people weren't considering in the spirit of compromise working something out and it was easy to work it out. And I offered that to Howard Dean last August and September, but they didn't want to, so we are where we are.

PARNES: But Senator, you, yourself, suggested that with all of this hopscotching there would be primaries in Halloween if it kept going. How does the party enforce discipline if it doesn't have hard and fast rules?

NELSON: Well, that's why we ought to change the system. The mess that's been created begs for reform and that's why I have filed this legislation that would suggest a way, then the rules would be clear because it would be law that it was going to be the popular vote total cumulative in all of the primaries, six primary dates, all evenly spaced, all neat and clean, no messy mathematics and everybody was going to understand how you got to be a nominee for president of your party.

SILVA: Senator, how damaging will the backfire – the crossfire that's going on now between the Obama and Clinton campaigns ultimately be to the party's chances in November? Howard Dean, the DNC Chairman, has suggested that this really needs to come to a stop that it's not doing anybody any good.

NELSON: I thought you were going to ask me another question and I'll answer your question, but I thought the question you were going to ask me is, how damaging is it that Florida is being treated as it is to the nominee eventually? And I can tell you the polls in Florida are showing, for example 20 percent of independents in Florida are saying they're less likely to vote for the democratic nominee because of all of this fracas. Now, as to your question, the fact that they are basically almost even-steven (ph) and neither one is able to get to a majority of the delegates, I think it's pretty damaging and I think we certainly don't want nor should we allow this condition to go all the way to the convention because if you do that, that's late August, that's only two months before the November election and that would be a hard thing to repair within 60 days.

SWAIN: 10 minutes left.

PARNES: Senator, I know hindsight is 20/20, but do you have any regrets about pushing up the Florida primary date?

NELSON: Well, I certainly didn't. That was the republican legislature of Florida, signed into law by the republican governor, as I just told you, that whole saga. And so, it would have been a lot better if they had not put it up one week ahead of January – of February the 5th. However, them having done that, which was done a year ago in the annual legislative session, there was plenty of opportunity to solve this thing just by having all of the four privileged states, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, just move up at least one week ahead, which is what they ended up doing anyway. But you see, they let them move up, but they kept the penalty on Florida for the Florida legislature by law moving it forward one week.

SILVA: Senator, by citing the poll of Floridians that you mentioned, I think you're suggesting that if the Florida delegation situation is not resolved that the democrats can kiss Florida good-bye in November. Similar polls have also suggested that if Senator Hillary Clinton is not nominated, 28 some percent of her supporters would vote for John McCain. Do you buy that? Do you think there's really that sort of disaffection possible among democrats?

NELSON: Not with regard to democrats going to McCain because the economy is in such a mess, people are so scared about their jobs, their economic future, they are very scared about Iraq and the war on terror. So I don't think that's going to translate, but with regard to Florida and Michigan, if they are treated like the redheaded stepchild and kicked around all day, is that going to have a result at the polls in November? I think that's what you're seeing in the survey data that's coming out of those two states right now.

PARNES: Senator, what are the next moves in this process? I mean what are you doing to sort of push this issue forward and bring your state forward?

NELSON: Well, that's why I went yesterday to the Florida senate and their annual session and spoke to them. I complimented them on the election reforms that they had done and said that a lot of these reforms and others ought to be applied to the entire country. One of the other reforms is abolishing the electoral college. If you want to increase the confidence of the American people that the ballot is going to count and it's going to count as they intended it under the principle of one person, one vote. If that's the goal and that's certainly ought to be a goal in this country, then what you have to do is to make voting as easy as possible and let the popular will of the people as expressed in their votes be the determining factor.

Now, the electoral college, for example. We've had a few cases in the history of this country where one candidate gets more votes than the other candidate nationwide and yet, because of this electoral, antiquated, college system in our constitution, the other candidate is elected. And a most recent example of this was 2000, one candidate got more votes than the other, but it was the other candidate that was elected. And so, what we need to do is to get back to the principle and honor the principle which is one person, one vote.

PARNES: Senator, with the passion around any constitutional amendment being changed and particularly around this one, do you think that you realistically could see the electoral college abolished during your lifetime?

NELSON: Well, I hope so, but you've got to start somewhere and the time for reform is now after we've gone through all of this mess. So you have to start. You would assume that small states are going to oppose giving up the power that they have in the electoral college. You've got to basically have enough agitation that elections aren't working like they are in order to amend the constitution because that's a big hurdle, we make it very difficult to amend the U.S. constitution. You have to get a two thirds vote in each of the houses and then, it has to go and be ratified by three quarters of the states as expressed through their state legislatures. So that's a big hurdle, but it's time to start it and that's what I'm going to do.

SWAIN: Five minutes left.

SILVA: Senator, let's fast forward the tape and say that the party comes to an agreement in June, there's a nominee – a presumptive nominee, there's some accommodation made for the Michigan and Florida delegations, they're seeded in some capacity. Denver is all love, peace and harmony. What will it take in November to – for the party to capture a swing state like Florida? Will it be the economy? Will it be the war? What will be the deciding factor between John McCain and the democrat?

NELSON: It will be all of the above. People are so ready for change, they just don't have any belief in the Bush administration. The credibility is very low there. People are very uncertain about their future. Look at all of the national polls that you see on the question, is the country going in the right direction or the wrong direction? And there's a huge majority that says the country is going in the wrong direction and they want a president that they can believe in. They want a president that they feel like is respected abroad. They want a president that will, as Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘Speak softly, but carry a big stick.” In other words, they want a president that can be out there speaking softly in the nuances of diplomacy in order to achieve our goals without having to strike militarily. And I think Florida is very much representative of the country. It is a micro-cousin of the country. If you go through almost every demographic except the demographic of those aged 65 and older, Florida matches up almost exactly with the country.

So I think so we see in the country, so will be the results in Florida. To reverse that, so goes Florida in this election, likely will go the country.

SWAIN: We have three minutes left. Last question from each.

PARNES: Senator, you chose to support Senator Clinton and I wonder if you could just address why you chose to do that? And what the differences (ph) are between Senator Clinton and Obama? Are they – they say they are quite similar, but can you go over that a little bit?

NELSON: Well, both of them are personal friends of mine. For that matter, John McCain, as well. And I have enormous respect for all of them, including John McCain. My endorsement of Hillary, which by the way, I could not do until after the Florida primary because Hillary couldn't even have a press conference under the party rules since she had to stay out of Florida. My decision to endorse Hillary was very easy for me. That is a 20 year personal friendship between our families. Our daughters have grown up together and I thoroughly enjoyed working with her in the senate over the last eight years. Now, that's nothing to take away from Barack. I love Barack. I think he is terrific. And so, we have got two great candidates.

SILVA: Senator, play campaign manager for the day. Your candidate is in trouble. So many people think that the Clinton candidacy is near it's end. What can she do in the next month or so to get her campaign back on track?

NELSON: Mark, here's what's going to happen. If she scores big in Pennsylvania, which is another month away, and by big, I'm saying 15 point margin or more, and then, if that momentum carries her through doing exceptionally well or better than expected in the remaining states, like North Carolina, Indiana, Kentucky and so forth, then the momentum is with her. And at that point, then it's a jump ball. So, that's what I see playing out.

SWAIN: Senator Bill Nelson, joining Newsmakers this week from Jacksonville, Florida. Senator, thank you very much.

NELSON: It's a pleasure. Thanks. Have a great day.

SWAIN: Can we talk to them before we move on to the next part?

NELSON: By the way, if you all can hear me.

SWAIN: … to the next part.

NELSON: Can you all hear me? OK. Just to let you all know that just right at the end, the echo came back. So if somebody was fiddling with something back in your control room, that might be the source of the problem. It wasn't substantial so that I couldn't override by just trying to ignore it, but it did come back. You all have a great day. See you.

SWAIN: He's on there. He's talking to you. Can you hear me? I just wanted to find out if we fixed the next line or so. He's afraid he still had it at the beginning. All right.

OK.

SILVA: Well.

SWAIN: Now, I know that was hard. Sorry. We have about five minutes for us to talk here.

SILVA: OK. All right.

SWAIN: We don't have to worry about the satellite feed. No, you can just (INAUDIBLE). It will be – you will just hear me through your ear bud. It's just easier to just keep going.

Did he say anything new …

SILVA: No. He just won't commit himself on the super delegate question.

SWAIN: Yes, I know.

SILVA: I mean if you listen to him, he's saying that they've got to go with Obama.

SWAIN: Yes.

SILVA: That's what he's saying.

SWAIN: Yes. Yes. I mean I think the pause there when you came back at him a second time suggested that that's really the only …

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: I mean he was up and he's talking to us, I mean we just didn't have him on the screen there.

SWAIN: Yes. We couldn't hear him. And I could see him – yes. Sorry. We could keep talking but we couldn't hear him …

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: I'm pretty sure I know what his problem was, it was still wasn't on there and …

SWAIN: I had this sense – I don't know if you had it, too, that he was still hearing it at the beginning.

SILVA: I did, too, but he was not – he said at the very end, just at the very end is when he could hear himself and that's when I clicked on my intercom to talk to their camera operator.

(AUDIO GAP)

SWAIN: No. All right.

UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: We're rolling tape. Go ahead. You can go ahead …

SWAIN: OK. We're back and talking to Mark Silva of ‘The Chicago Tribune' and Amie Parnes of ‘The Politico' after 25 minutes with Senator Bill Nelson of Florida on the whole chaos in the – I don't know what else to call it – in the democratic party. What did you learn from that conversation? Even perhaps what people may not have heard the senator say. What – can you tell us a bit about how you're interpreting where he is right now?

SILVA: I took two things away. I learned that Bill Nelson is very worried about the resolution of the democratic delegate problem. He believes that if it's not resolved that Florida is going to be gone from the democrats in November. And I also learned that this Clinton supporter thinks that the super delegates are going to have to shut this contest down in June. And he won't say it, but I think he's suggesting that whoever is leading in the votes is going to have to be the presumptive nominee.

SWAIN: Amie Parnes.

PARNES: I think it just also reinforces that fact that there is just chaos down there and all of this finger pointing and who's to blame? The DNC? The state legislature? The candidates? No one knows. Everyone is just pointing the finger at everyone else and that's just adding to the chaos.

SWAIN: Well, it's selling a lot of newspapers and certainly the television – commercial television networks are seeing big upticks in their audiences, but at what point does the public say enough?

SILVA: Well, I think the public is starting to wear thin already. The public isn't accustomed to this kind of campaign. And when you think about it, this is not really that long. And the first caucuses were in January and we're in March, it's not that long a period of time. But people aren't used to that. People are used to an instant overnight result sort of primary election and so, they're just going to have to bear with it through June, I think, at least.

SWAIN: We keep hearing illusions and I maybe should look this direction for this question, the Chicago 68, even though you're not that old, you're at least a little closer than Amie is. Talk about the concerns about this all the way to the convention floor.

SILVA: Well, two things the democrats don't want, a disruptive, riotous convention which rivets everyone's attention on the evening news, a party in disarray and two, a background deal, a candidate who is anointed, maybe even pulled out of the woodwork, somebody who hasn't even been in the primary process, like Al Gore. The democratic party does not want a broker convention and they don't want a disruptive convention.

SWAIN: How can the republicans exploit this? Mark, what do you think?

SILVA: Oh, I think they're already there. I think John McCain is on the air now with a new campaign ad running against, if one looks at it closely, Barack Obama. And the democrats – the republicans exploit this by the fact that they've got a free reign. They can raise money, they can work on the base, they can travel, they can – John McCain's going to take a bus tour to his touchstone states and the campaign is underway. And for them, it's started and for the democrats, it hasn't.

SWAIN: How – turning to the senator's electoral reform, including the electoral college reform. How much appetite do you sense in Washington for tackling that?

PARNES: I don't think it's there. I just – everyone I've spoken to yesterday basically indicates that it's DOA and Senator Nelson maybe has the support of one or two of his colleagues and that's about it. I don't see that going anywhere.

SWAIN: Even if November becomes another challenge?

PARNES: Absolutely. I think you have the four main states and they're going to fight like heck until they want to secure their spots as being the first states.

SWAIN: So, having been through this cycle a few times, how is this all looking to you?

SILVA: It's looking like a good spirited campaign and it's not looking like the campaign that the candidates want it to be. Barack Obama talks about a campaign of hope and of positiveness and Senator Hillary Clinton talks about a campaign of leadership and she's seen on TV contradicting very television images of her own travels abroad. So it's not what the candidates want it to be, it's not playing out along their scripts. Sometimes life gets in the way.

SWAIN: How about overlaying the presidential race with the contest for congress itself? How does all of what's happening at the national level affect the congressional candidates with the balance and control, again, on the docket? You want to take that?

PARNES: That' funny.

SWAIN: Do you think there's …

SILVA: Well, I …

SWAIN: Do you think that it will play over into the congressional elections?

PARNES: I do think so. I mean I think that people are – the people I've spoken to, anyway, are kind of tired of the same old thing and change has become a popular word among people everywhere really.

SWAIN: But it's democrats in control of both houses. What does the desire for change mean then with congressional elections?

SILVA: Well, I think there's a great disappointment among the democratic voting public that they did change the congress and nothing changed in Iraq, for instance. And so, I think there's a certain doubt among the democrats that they feel like this is their season, this is their time, the polls would suggest that more people are identifying themselves as democrats than republican, in greater numbers. And there's a disappointment, too, in the congress for not acting. So I think if the presidential election campaign is not going well, people will stop and have second thoughts about congress, as well.

SWAIN: And then, you asked the question about the economy and we're talking to a state with one of the most difficult challenges in the whole real estate market. But the economy is seems to be trumping even the war, what does that mean for November?

SILVA: Well, it means that somebody is going to have to provide the confidence that they have a solution. It probably means that the question of taxes will be very potent. John McCain says he won't raise taxes as president. We've heard that before. Barack Obama is talking about a higher tax on the higher income and I think the question of taxes, jobs, those will be foremost in people's minds in November, if we're in a recession at that point.

SWAIN: And once there is a nominee on the democratic side, all discussion about who the appropriate running mate will be because of these economic questions?

SILVA: I think we have the potential for some really interesting running mates this year. John McCain is in a position of needing someone really interesting and both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, if either one of them is nominated, will have a certain dynamic there who offsets their liabilities or weaknesses. So I think we're going to see a couple of real interesting running mates.

SWAIN: Well, thanks to both of you for bringing your Florida experience to bear in our conversation with Senator Nelson. And as the campaign progresses, we'll be coming back and talk to you about that vice presidential pick. Thanks, again.

PARNES: Thank you.

SILVA: Thank you.

END