DEC elections Wednesday

Time for a reminder:

We Miami-Dade Democrats are electing new officers to four-year terms.

• When: Wednesday Dec. 3, 6 p.m. for sign-in, 7 p.m. to start.
• Bring a photo ID, especially if you're a newly elected member.
  
• Where: Miami Association of Firefighters Local 587, 2980 NW South River Drive in Miami
• Google Maps link: 2980 nw s river drive miami fl - Google Search
• What: Elect officers of our Democratic Executive Committee, the Miami-Dade party leadership.

This blog is remaining neutral and will only list the offices and names of those who have said they are contending. Since the first post on this last week, several names have emerged as candidates, and this may not be the final list. Nominations are open until the last minute, and someone who loses an early contest can be nominated for a later contest.

Several offices have more than two people planning to run, so there may be runoffs. Be prepared for a long and lively night with your Democratic friends.

Here are the positions and candidates as known to this blog Monday afternoon:

For Chair:

--BJ Chiszar

--Eric Copeland

--Dave Patlak

For First Vice Chair

--Daisy Black

--Bess McElroy

For State Committeeman

--Bret Berlin

--Brad Brown

--Dr. Thomas Pinder

For State Committeewoman

--Ann-Lynn Denker

--Verna Lewis Edington

--Teresa Gevalda

--Millie Herrera

Secretary

--Charlotte Klieman

--Fanny Olmo

Treasurer

--Paul Barthole

For Program Vice Chair

--Elizabeth Collins

For Outreach Vice Chair

--Henry Crespo Sr.

A resource for the rules: The Bylaws, on MiamiDadeDemocrats.com.

This may be risky but I’m going to suggest also that candidates can post platform info by adding a comment to this blog post. To get started on a comment, click on the hotlink at the end of the post where it says "0 comment" or "1 comment," etc. The editor reserves the power to remove and stop comments.

Good luck to all!

Candidates’ forum for Miami-Dade Democrats’ elections

UPDATE: An updated post on this topic went up on Monday Dec. 1, at this link.

Dec. 3 is the date of our elections for officers in the Miami-Dade Democratic Party. The location is the Miami Association of Firefighters Local 587 at 2980 NW South River Drive in Miami, a balmy location on the lovely Miami River. Here's a Google Maps link to the address: 2980 nw s river drive miami fl - Google Search

Be there at 6 p.m. on Wednesday Dec. 3 for a careful sign-in procedure to make sure you’re a voting member of the DEC, our Democratic Executive Committee, and to receive ballots.

At stake are all the officers’ slots for the next four years: the chairman (only men are running this year), the first vice chair (who must be opposite gender of the chair, and thus only women are running), the state committeeman and state committeewoman, the vice chair for programs, the vice chair for outreach, the secretary and the treasurer.

A candidates’ forum was held Tuesday night at the American Legion hall in Miami, with some 50 people attending to hear candidates state their platforms and respond to written questions moderated by Wendy Sejour, president of Democracy for America Miami-Dade.

The forum will happen again on election night, so if you missed the first one, it’ll be on again, sort of like the presidential debates but with no ending time ordained by TV schedules. Bring a snack.

Your blogger is remaining neutral in this contest, so I’ll just name the candidates in alphabetical order and not try to avoid misquoting their campaign speeches by not quoting them at all.

FOR CHAIRMAN:

--BJ Chiszar

--Eric Copeland

For First Vice Chair

--Daisy Black

--Bess McElroy

For State Committeeman

--Bret Berlin

--Dr. Thomas Pinder

For State Committeewoman

--Ann-Lynn Denker

--Teresa Gevalda

--Millie Herrera

Secretary

--Charlotte Klieman

--Fanny Olmo

For Program Vice Chair

--Elizabeth Collins

For Outreach Vice Chair

--Henry Crespo Sr.

--Dave Patlak

Nominations remain open until the voting, so this list is not complete. No one spoke up for treasurer, for instance. The election process is fluid and someone who loses an early contest can run for an office contested later on election night. This is your hint to read the Bylaws, which are on the MiamiDadeDemocrats.com website.

Voting members of the DEC are hearing from some of the candidates by phone, mail and email. Those who weren’t at the candidates’ forum and don’t know the candidates may email this blog, and I’ll try to put them in touch with the candidates directly.

This may be risky but I’m going to suggest also that candidates can post platform info by adding a comment to this blog post. Please limit comments to 250 words. To get started on a comment, click on the hotlink at the end of the post where it says "0 comment" or "1 comment," etc. The editor reserves the power to remove and stop comments.

Good luck to all!

Meet a new voter who's for Obama

You hear these stories about the newly registered voter who’s not going to vote. Or those who don’t pay attention. Or they don’t feel up to the challenges of our democracy.

So it was good to meet Martha Lozano, an immigrant from Colombia some years ago who only became a U.S. citizen last year, and now she’s about as eager to vote as a person can be.

How so? Well, she started off leaning toward the Republicans because that’s what her husband was, but at some point she began to think she should know about the candidates herself.

“I began to listen to them. I like Mr. Obama’s attitude toward immigrants. And I like that he belongs to a minority group, like me.”

She finds the Republicans too old-fashioned on some issues like gay marriage.

“Mr. Obama is better on health care, and on foreign policy, also on how to improve the economy. He’s a smart person with an open mind.”

Does she worry about the rumors? They’re not effective with her. “All human beings make mistakes.”

She watches the debates, and the news on TV. Now she’s off to help a friend find early-voting sites in Palm Beach County.

Welcome, New Voter Martha Lozano!

How bad things are, and what needs to be done

The following is from an editorial in the NY Times, emailed by a friend, and it summarizes pretty well why I'm politically active these days (in frozen Iowa trying to get a new Democrat into the presidency):

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country.
Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some
of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of
prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes
of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of
the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the
Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we've felt this horror, this
sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has
become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened
by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there
is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot
that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals,
that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals
are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America's position
of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and
treaties, sullied America's global image, and trampled on the constitutional
pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and
challenging times. These policies have fed the world's anger and alienation and
have not made any of us safer.

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually
humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been
punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen
mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen
the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own
citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping
phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government's top lawyers huddled in
secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to
circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial
review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow
Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to
abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for
abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn't go just a bit too
far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national
unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more
power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time
fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others
determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they
could.

Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq,
were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could
claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with
no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence
and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not
permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American
jailers.

In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where "high-value detainees" were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that "experts" could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.

The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush's two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

Hispanic strategy looks promising

Here's good news for those of us using the Hispanic strategy for at least part of our electoral campaign planning: The NY Times last week reported a Pew Hispanic Center survey showing "a strong preference for the Democratic Party" among Hispanic voters.

This is a reversal of the Republicans' strong showing among Hispanics in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

Identified as strategic states are -- Guess who? -- Florida, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. All were carried by George W. Bush with narrow margins in 2004.

Here's a link to the Pew Hispanic Center report itself.

Vote in Biscayne Park on Tuesday

Our executive director, John Hornbuckle, is among the candidates running in Tuesday's election in the village of Biscayne Park. Brief coverage in Friday's Miami Herald.

Hialeah runoff early voting Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Early voting in the runoff for one remaining seat in Hialeah's city council will be held Friday through Sunday, Nov. 16-18. The polling place is the John F. Kennedy Library, 190 W. 49th St, in Hialeah, and it will be open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Check it out at this link.

Early voting Saturday and Sunday in Miami Beach runoff

There are two places to vote early in the Miami Beach runoff election for mayor and city commission group 4: City Hall and the North Shore Branch Library on Collins Avenue at 75th St.

Only two days: Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 17-18, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The Miami-Dade Democratic Party has endorsed Deede Weithorn for city commission group 4.

It has made no endorsement for mayor, since both candidates are Democrats: Matti Herrera Bower and Simon Cruz.

At the Miami Beach web site www.miamibeachfl.gov you can navigate to election results and candidates' statements if you get lucky, or just click here and go direct to the schedule for their broadcasts on Channel 77 on cable.

Election snafus

This link to the NY Times on-line service takes you to a roundup of foulups on the recent election day, around the country. Florida is cited as a leader in getting things in disorder.

Election stuff from around Florida

At this link the wonderful Jennifer of Florida Netroots has rounded up election news from around Florida.

Cost per vote goes to stratosphere -- $130.55

I live on Miami Beach. It has a high cost of living, but I’m trying to avoid always paying the max, so I’m not going to run for office.

Add up what the candidates spent to compete in Tuesday’s election: $1,301,763.61. That’s for mayor and three of the five seats on the city commission.

It doesn't include the two minor candidates for mayor. Their reports would have skewed the totals wildly, since one of them, Raphael Herman, reports over $5 million in expenditures himself, though almost all of that was money he lent the campaign and then paid it back to himself (I’ve read). I don’t want to disparage Mr. Herman (I’ve read that he’s a former Israeli commando – Kadima!), so I’ll just say that this sort of thing comes with the territory.

That aside, remember that it’s not over yet. There will be runoffs for mayor and one city commission seat. Vote again on Nov. 20, Miami Beachians, and prepare for even more robo-calls and nasty or up-beat mailers.

My mailbox filled up with them some days, and there’s a pile of 47 mailers now on my dining table – probably $50 there in money spent on me. I told one of the candidates to take me off the list, since he had my vote wrapped up. Too much trouble, so in fact I got dupes of most items from him – musta been on two of his lists.

What’s the bottom line on this? The number of people who voted was 9,971, so it cost $130.55 per vote. All the churning and campaigning attained turnout of 25.15 percent.

Isn’t that kind of high, my friends? What can we do about this in a land of free speech -- where the Supreme Court has ruled that money has freedom of speech?

If we aim for public financing of elections, what would that mean to the industry of clever people who lead and mislead voters to choose their candidates? If we cut the legs out from under the next Karl Rove by nixing his career, will free speech survive? Would we be better off without Karl Rove AND free speech?

Elections lead to dangerous thoughts.

This link takes you to the Miami Beach city clerk's site with campaign treasurers' reports.

UPDATE: And this one is the SunPost's exhaustive report on election night events all over the Beach.

EVEN MORE: Now the Miami Herald's p.1 story asking why we don't have all the elections at the same time, instead of all over the calendar.

Progressive landslide in '06

Paul Krugman's new blog, announced a couple posts ago (i.e. yesterday), has a juicy item that may help explain why we are so disappointed that this Congress has not ended the war and accomplished a lot of other progressive goals.

It reminds us that the popular vote in 2006 was a landslide victory for the Democrats. This was only 10 months ago -- we remember; it has not been dumped from folk memory. We also remember how we thought it would add up to a lot of change, which hasn't materialized.

Krugman's short post compares the 2006 result with the Republicans' sweep in 1994, which the media made out to be a tidal wave. The Democrats' popular vote for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006 had a margin almost 2 percentage points higher than that 1994 result, but the media didn't play it up so strongly, for some reason.

Here's the link to the Krugman piece.

Do we remember how we felt going up to the 2006 election? A little apprehensive, maybe? Uncertain how well the Democrats would do? Some confidence, but not a lot? Now, how do we feel about the approaching 2008 election? Trying to avoid over-confidence, I'd say.

Miami Beach City Commission

The Sun Post devotes two pages in its April 12 issue to the crowded field running for mayor and city commission in Miami Beach. See the story.

More than enough people already for a football team, and we know of others thinking of running. This is for the November election, so there's time still to think about it. You too could run.

Now, who are the Democrats among them? We'll work on that for a future post.