Former Clinton Administration Figures Head Panel That Could Rule On Florida Delegates

Thu, March 13, 2008 - 11:59 AM

The three people selected to head the Democratic Convention credentials committee that could have a final say on Florida’s presidential-delegate controversy are all former Clinton administration employees.

As Democrats in Florida and elsewhere continued Thursday to debate setting a mail-in revote in the state’s presidential primary, there still remained a likelihood that the controversy might not be resolved in that way.

And if a compromise is not reached by July, the issue of what to do with Florida’s Jan. 29 primary results would then be brought before the Democratic convention’s standing committee on credentials.

But if comes down to a decision of that committee, questions of fairness are sure to be raised.

That’s because the three co-chairs of that panel chosen by DNC chairman Howard Dean are Alexis Herman, former secretary of labor under former President Bill Clinton, and James Roosevelt Jr., a former associate commissioner in the Social Security Administration under Clinton, and Eliseo Roques-Arroyo, a White House Consultant on Presidential Travel and Advance from 1998 to 2000.

Both Herman and Roosevelt also played central roles in helping to spark the Florida-delegate controversy that they may eventually be called on to resolve. They are the co-chairs of the Democratic National Committee Rules Committee, the panel that moved to strip Florida of its delegates last fall, in the first place.

Only 22 other members of that 186-member committee have so far been chosen, also selected by Dean. The remaining 161 seats on the panel will be divvied up among delegates from states, most of whom have not been selected.

But Herman’s, Roosevelt’s and Roques-Arroyo’s previous ties to former President Clinton could represent yet a hurdle to any efforts by the party to resolve the controversy through – without holding a mail-in revote – without charges that the credentials committee was not acting impartially.

The credentials committee does not have a set date for its first meeting, but is expected to gather some time in July.

-- Billy House