Absentee Ballots Key To Florida GOP Primary

The attention may be focused on the Republican presidential contests around the corner in Iowa and New Hampshire, but the candidates ignore what’s under way in Florida at their peril.

More Florida Republicans — about 370,000 — already have requested absentee ballots for the Jan. 31 primary than the number of Republicans who voted in the 2008 Iowa and New Hampshire contests combined.

The ever-growing volume of votes cast before Election Day in Florida is one of the factors that make the state a very different challenge from the earliest elections in Iowa Jan. 3, New Hampshire Jan. 10 and South Carolina Jan. 21. Candidates not only have to grapple with the sheer size and diversity of Florida, but they must prepare for a contest where half the votes or more are in well before Election Day.

“Under the old model in Florida, a campaign would work toward a 72-hour program going into Election Day,’’ said Republican strategist Brett Doster, who is leading Mitt Romney’s Florida effort.

Now, ballots come in right after the start of the new year, followed by a lull, then more absentees, then early voting, then Election Day.

In theory, that means a successful statewide campaign in Florida requires a formidable campaign apparatus to chase absentee ballots to bank as many votes as possible. But there’s a little secret that most professional campaign operatives in Florida prefer not to acknowledge: It’s not at all clear the ground game matters much in a presidential election.

Florida’s GOP primary results will be driven much more by national momentum — the results in Iowa and New Hampshire and what’s being broadcast on Fox News — than by campaign get out the vote efforts.

John McCain mounted a minimal field campaign in Florida four years ago and still won the primary with 36 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Romney. McCain did benefit, though, from an aggressive absentee ballot program mounted by supporters of the “Save Our Homes” property tax initiative as well as by targeting moderate Republicans in South Florida.

This year, it appears that Romney has the campaign operation best equipped to compete in Florida. He has not only campaign professionals and a grass roots operation built up over seven years, but the financial resources to campaign in a vast state with 10 major television markets.

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