Well folks, the votes have been tallied in Florida, and it appears that Senator McCain has won the GOP Primary and Senator Clinton won the Democratic Primary.
As is being reported in several places, due to his less-than-stellar turnout in the only state where he really did any campaigning, former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is expected to withdraw from the race sometime on Wednesday. Those same sources are declaring that Giuliani will be throwing his support behind John McCain. This, in effect, turns the GOP race into a contest between McCain and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, though former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee states that he has no plans for leaving the race any time soon.
The real story for the Democratic Primary is that, much like in the case of Michigan, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) penalized Florida for holding its Primary outside of the proscribed party schedule. Thus, as in the case of Michigan, no candidates receives any delegates, no matter how well they did, meaning that Senator Clinton’s victory is a bit empty. The DNC asked candidates not to do any campaigning in the state because the state party officials violated national party guidelines, a request that Senators Obama and Edwards complied with, but Senator Clinton asked to have lifted.
Thus, we head into Super Tuesday (24 states holding their primaries on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008) with the knowledge that the GOP race has come into sharper focus and the Democratic race is still a contest between Obama and Clinton, though neither of the two have truly staked a claim on the party’s nomination, even with the news that Edwards is dropping out of the race, but hasn’t endorsed either remaining candidate. It should be fun!