Trump's VP Options Crashing On the Shoals of Florida

Florida has a history of being a crucial state on the road to the White House peaking in 2000 when George W Bush and Al Gore’s close election resulted in an army of lawyers, hanging chads and a Supreme Court decision.  Since then, the Sunshine State has become more consistently Republican, but its thirty Electoral College votes are still crucial for victory.

President Trump moved to Florida when he left the White House because his pre-presidency home of New York had devolved into a high crime, high tax, progressive nightmare that saw countless other successful people and businesses flee the state.

We all know that Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Byron Donalds are on the short list for Vice President with the prospective nominee Donald Trump. There is only one small problem with that: the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution.*

The Amendment, to fix a flaw in the original US Constitution which allowed two men of opposing parties to be elected president and vice president, thus producing quarreling and fractured government.  Which is precisely what happened when John Adams was elected president in in 1796 and 2nd place Thomas Jefferson became vice president.  The two Founding Fathers had ideological differences that made governing difficult.

Part of the 12th Amendment that has some in the media and liberal academia reads, “…The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.”

It is a throwback from our early founding when small states feared the larger and more powerful states would have too much control over the federal government.

For a brief time, in 1980, Ronald Reagan considered putting former president Gerald Ford on the ticket with him. Ford had been a congressman from Michigan, but later moved to California, Reagan’s adopted state. For Ford to have gone on the ticket, he would have had to change his residency. In the end, Ford was not picked, and George Bush of Texas went on the ticket instead.

The clause, although archaic is a simple fix.  In 2000 when Texas Governor George Bush chose Dick Cheney for Vice President he had been living and working in Texas.  Cheney sold his Dallas home and listed his Wyoming house as his primary residence.  The two men went on to serve two terms successfully.

Twenty-four years later, some pundits are feigning that Trump will cause a constitutional crisis by selecting another Floridian to join his ticket.  Those same scholars, who seem to forget the 2nd Amendment exist, fail to mention the law states electors cannot vote for BOTH president and vice president from the same state.  Which means at the Electoral College, Florida electors can still give President Trump its 30 votes.

The bigger crisis is that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both live in the same state.  The state of confusion.

*Another Floridian, Dr. Ben Carson, is also rumored to be in the mix as well.

Author Craig Shirley is the author of eleven best-selling books including six on Ronald Reagan and two on World War II as well as the definitive biography of Mary Bell Washington, George Washington’s mother. His latest book is, The Search for Reagan.

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