The Florida Democratic Party is facing blowback over its decision to submit a single candidate for the state's Democratic presidential nominee.
Democratic candidates running for 2024 are expressing their outrage over the state party's decision to only put President Joe Biden on Florida's primary ballot. The three Democrats running against Biden for the party's nomination have criticized the decision, calling it "undemocratic manipulation," comparing it to the political struggle in the Islamic Republic of Iran and threatening lawsuits.
"Americans would expect the absence of democracy in Tehran, not Tallahassee," Representative Dean Phillips said in a Thursday statement. "The intentional disenfranchisement of voters runs counter to everything for which our Democratic Party and country stand. Our mission as Democrats is to defeat authoritarians, not become them."
Newsweek reached out to the Florida Democratic Party via inquiry form for comment.
Author Marianne Williamson and The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur, who are also running to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee, will hold a joint press conference on the news from Florida, which they labeled an "attempt to circumvent democracy," on Friday afternoon. Uygur, who is ineligible for the presidency because he is a naturalized citizen who immigrated from Turkey in 1978, has raised more than $250,000 since launching his campaign in October.
In a press release announcing the briefing, Williamson's campaign said the action violated the rules of the Democratic National Committee and laid out her intentions to "seek every legal recourse to oppose this undemocratic manipulation."
Under state law, parties are the ones to decide who makes the primary ballot. Parties were required to submit a list of approved candidates to state election officials by Thursday, but the Florida Democratic Party sent their notice early on November 1, telling that state that Biden would be the only primary candidate. At the time, Phillips had only been in the race a few days and Ugyur a couple of weeks, but Williamson had been campaigning since February.
"The Florida Party is engaging in the politburo politics of places like Cuba or the old Soviet Union. Communist Party insiders make the decision instead of the people," Phillips' senior advisor Jeff Weaver, who worked on Senator Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, said. Sanders' campaign previously claimed that the primary process was rigged against him.
Weaver continued, "After all that has been done to erode confidence in the democratic process since 2020, does our Party really want the legitimacy of our nominee to be put in question by this corrupt, rigged process?"
