FL-25: Dirty tricks will out in dirty campaign against Joe Garcia

This story started last week while I was out of town (Las Vegas, baby) and oblivious to this chapter in the book of dirty tricks that the Republican slime machine is using against Joe Garcia. Now it looks like it's blowing up in the face of Republican candidate David Rivera, with a pertinent ricochet over to the Marco Rubio campaign house. You see -- and this gets really complicated -- the guy behind the slimy mailer is a former staffer for Rubio.

Highly recommended you follow this link to the Miami Herald story and read all the details of this vile thing -- the racist tone to the mailer, the 19-year-old they duped to be the nominal sender, the full creepiness of those who want to represent us in the US House (Rivera) and Senate (Rubio).

I'm curious whether this sort of trick would be possible if the Republicans in the US Senate hadn't blocked the bill to require disclosure of those behind political action committees. Notice that: The Republicans are the villains in this, from the top in Congress down to our local politics here in South Florida. Here's a link to today's NY Times story on that Republican upright finger to the voters of the USA.

And thanks to the Miami Herald for working this story.

p.s. I'm adding Karl Rove to the roster of labels on this post in disgusted tribute to his eminence in dirty tricks.

UPDATE: Let's not forget that Joe Garcia is closely watched nationally and in Florida as a likely winner in this race. The Buzz report shows Joe is worthy of support, and then some. Hint: here's how to do it.

FL-25: A perfect storm for David Rivera

In the political world among the worst things that can happen to a candidate are:

• Having a record of domestic violence revealed;
• Accusation (with documents) of unethical fund-raising;
• Financial difficulty including foreclosure;
• Rebellion in the ranks;
• Sign of hypocrisy in important Cuba policy area;
• All of the above in the space of a couple weeks.

What a run of luck for David Rivera! Is there a Quintifecta for hapless politicos? We were wondering why he had a passle of challengers for the Republican nomination to run in Congressional District 25. Turns out the state representative for District 112 is vying for centipede class in the Feet of Clay competition.

Especially delicious is that the likely Republican US Senate candidate, Marco Rubio, is Rivera's good friend and foreclosure partner.

Go, Joe! I'm planning to spend Sunday afternoon with Joe Garcia, the Democratic candidate in FL-25, watching the World Cup final. You can sign up at this link on Joe Garcia 2010. Your blogger's maternal ancestry is 100 percent Dutch, so I'll be rooting for the Netherlands.

FL-25: Who was in the Drill Baby Drill camp? David Rivera. Pin it on him, Joe

There's a petition to sign at JoeGarcia2010.com to keep offshore oil drilling away from Florida. I've signed. Have you?



Further from your blogger's brainstorming:

We have to accept that the Gulf of Mexico is going to be a disaster for quite a while. It has been a source of much oil for a long long time and there also were a lot of oil spills over the years. We should not be surprised or get desperate when there is a really big oil spill. This was in the cards and we knew it. It's why there was a
debate over whether to drill in more difficult areas such as much deeper water. Obama can win over reasonable people with bold and smart moves. We all have to suck it up, shake our fingers at the whiners, and clean up as fast as possible. BP can go bankrupt and out of business if necessary. Let's put the RISK in risk for big business.

The president should start a fast study on new livelihoods for coastal people who must move to escape unhealthy oily environment and finance the project in a way related to royalty revenue from oil leases.

FL-25: Joe Garcia campaign points out that the opponent is waffling

What does Joe Garcia say? "What's happening in Arizona should never happen here in Florida" -- that's the way he put it in his campaign kickoff the other day.

FL-25: Joe Garcia kicks off campaign for US House

A good rally was held at Kendall Campus of Miami-Dade College.

FL-25: Joe Garcia video from Collier County meeting

Don't forget our chance to celebrate the Joe Garcia campaign on Tuesday. Be there with Joe at the Miami-Dade college Kendall Campus, Room K-412, Tuesday 11:30 a.m.

FL-25: Joe Garcia up against ton of lobbyist money in his unethical opponent

While we’ve been fretting about what Florida’s Teabag state legislature is up to, in fact the Republicans in Tallahassee have just been kicking sand in our eyes so we won’t see David Rivera raising a ton of unethical money to try to ripoff FL-25 from Joe Garcia.

Yep, the moneybags business of a congressional race ran heavily in Rivera’s favor in the first weeks of the session -- even though there’s a state law banning fund-raising while the legislature is in session.

Yep, they’ve got a self-serving legal opinion that says the law doesn’t apply to those running for a federal office -- like District 25 in the US House -- only to people running for state offices. And so David Rivera feels free to ignore finger-waving by former Gov. Jeb Bush, who in the past thought it was unseemly to be doing it.

Yep, that’s the same Jeb Bush who thought it was OK for himself to go to work for Lehman Brothers as a consultant after leaving the governorship and to help sell Florida crappy investments that are worth nothing now. Even with such low standards, Jeb thought it was unseemly for legislators to raise money during session.

So David Rivera’s ethical standards are even lower than that.

Joe Garcia, our former chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, ethically resigned from his high position in the US Department of Energy to run for Congress in District 25, now an open seat. Yep, the Diaz-Balart brothers are doing a double quit -- Lincoln D-B retiring from District 21, and Mario D-B escaping from District 25, where he would lose to Joe Garcia this time, and aiming for the safer-R District 21.

Joe Garcia looks to have a good shot now in his second race in District 25. As Joe put it the other night in a talk to the Democrats of South Dade Club, Mario D-B designed the district for himself when he was in the state legislature (now the teabag legislature). Then in the early 2000’s, District 25 had a big Republican advantage in registration, 42-30 percent. Now the two parties are even at 36 percent, with about 800 more registered Democrats than Republicans. No wonder Mario D-B quit.

No wonder David Rivera is desperate.

He is chair of the committee writing the budget. The unethical game he’s running is that lobbyists are piling money into his federal campaign even though he’s now term-limited as a state representative, and if he were to win and go to the US House, he’d have no vote anymore on state legislation. So this money is purely to influence legislation now before the Florida House, and that’s the spirit and intent of the law and House rules that ban it.

“'The spirit be damned,’ my opponent says,” Joe Garcia told the Democratic club. Still channeling Rivera, he went on, “’We need to raise a lot of money. We need to justify a $2 billion tax increase at the same time Florida had the worst economy in its history.’”

Garcia called Rivera “a very special kind of guy” and predicted: “I’m sure the special interests will pave his way.”

For our part, Democrats will be called on to join the Garcia campaign’s planned grassroots ground drive, and of course to donate as generously as possible, to see that Joe Garcia gets his message out.

“Folks like you will make the difference,” he said to a crowd with a lot of District 25 residents, including many experienced campaigners with a strong dedication to progressive policy.

In the Miami New Times -- Goodness, they even call Rivera a “banana Republican” in their headline -- an article says there were 80 lobbyists and committees backing legislation among Rivera’s donors in the first quarter. He raised a bit over $700,000 and more than half came from the influence-buyers. More detail in the Miami New Times.

This is how low their ethical standards are.

FL-25: Joe Garcia is running!

This is good news! 



FL-25, the Everglades congressional district, now has a chance at intelligent, compassionate, Democratic representation in Washington. It's an open seat, thanks to the quittingness of the Diaz-Balart brothers, who seem to take politics as their personal chess game. It's a formerly safe Republican seat that's now headed for the better column of governance. The eyes of the nation will be on this race. We have a duty to donate, volunteer, think and work for Joe Garcia in this race.

With President Obama coming to Florida and Miami on Thursday,  this has become a fine week in Florida. We are the future once again.

Don't forget to join the throng at Draft Joe Garcia for 2010!

Possible opponent in FL-25 is ally of indicted Ray Sansom. What's new?

The Republican side of Congressional District 25 is shaping up on the slimy side of life.

Who’s running? One of the best allies of a disgraced big shot in the Florida Republican Party. The candidate is David Rivera, who sits in the Florida House of Representatives in a prominent role -- chair of the Budget Committee. You know, the people who do the bidding of the Republican Party to divide up the spoils of and otherwise mismanage one of the biggest states in the USA. Rivera was anointed chairman by Ray Sansom, former speaker of the House, now under criminal indictment.

To quote Eric Jotkoff, spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party, “It hasn’t even been a week since disgraced Speaker Ray Sansom resigned under criminal indictment and now his handpicked Budget Chair says he’s running for Congress. Is this an indication of how hard it is to find a Republican candidate in Florida not marked by scandal?”

Right on, Eric.

The Democratic spokesman points out a good question to fire at David Rivera: Tell us about whether you had a Republican Party credit card. And did you use it for personal expenses, like Marco Rubio?



Florida Republicans are in a fine mess, all by themselves. Trouble is, who’s going to call out a thorough investigation of them when the chief law official in the state is Attorney General Bill McCollum, likely the Republican candidate for governor? Where’s the Tea Party when you need them?

Read The Buzz for details on how bad the Republicans are.

We Democrats are waiting for Joe Garcia, former chair of our Miami-Dade County party and now serving in the Obama administration with the Department of Energy, to declare his candidacy.  District 25 is such an important part of Florida, as its two arms in Miami-Dade and Collier counties embrace the Everglades, which has few voters but such vital resources as water, beauty, wildlife and climate control.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Draft Joe Garcia for 2010! page on Facebook.

Joe ran a strong race in 2008 and now the district looks even more winnable as the seat is open (Thank you, Quitter Diaz-Balart brothers!) and the demographics have continued to shift toward the Democratic Party.

Here's a look at the race by CQ Politics.

FL-25 Draft Joe Garcia, sign up here

We have to help Joe Garcia make up his mind about the right thing to do. Draft Joe to run for Congress. Sign up on Facebook, which conveniently has a group called Draft Joe Garcia for 2010!

Joe should go in Congressional District 25, where he ran a strong race in 2008. The winner then was Mario Diaz-Balart, who now is proving himself a quitter like a surprising number of other Republicans including Sarah Palin and Charlie Crist. They think there’s a better place, and they must know their days were numbered.

The past couple months have been a time of heightening suspense for your blogger, who remembers two years ago and four years ago when the end of one odd-numbered year and the beginning of the next even-numbered year were runups to campaigns for Congress. About this time -- February shading into March -- was when good Democrats rose up or were drafted/encouraged to run for supposedly entrenched Republican-held seats. It’s more than just a seat in the US House -- it’s recognizing a new population demographic, it’s the approaching dawn of a better policy on Cuba, it’s cleaner government with a closer grip on reality, it’s capitalizing on the little-realized potential of Barack Obama.

But it wasn’t happening. Good Democrats weren’t raising their hands to run for Congress, and I’ve got to say, my blood pressure was up in anticipation of a curtain that was late in rising.

It rose over on stage far right last week. Lincoln Diaz-Balart announced he’s retiring from his seat in District 21, and his younger brother Mario said he would abandon (my verb, not his) District 25 and run to succeed Lincoln. May he rue the day, that’s my wish. Those two adjoining districts in the western suburbs of Miami, with parts of Broward and Collier counties, are due for better representation. They include the Everglades, which needs more energetic saving than Mario Diaz-Balart could ever muster.

Now Mario Diaz-Balart is a quitter, and we’ve got to help convince Joe Garcia to run again. All he’d have to do is improve by 3.5 percent of the vote, over his 2008 run, to take the seat.

So I’m signing up on Facebook to Draft Joe Garcia for 2010! Pass the word! This is a fast-growing group.

Joe Garcia’s last published word on this can be found at http://joegarciaforcongress.com/ but don’t take that as final. Joe is in a tough spot, having to decide whether to save the world by running for Congress or to save the world by serving the US Department of Energy, as he’s doing now. My vote is for Congress.

UPDATE: A story today on Politico reports that the White House and the DCCC are courting Joe to run for FL-25. Why am I not surprised? There are some smart people in the White House, and they know Joe from his work in the Department of Energy, and this is an opportunity not to be missed. Now, the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has amends to make for its tardy backing of our Democratic candidates for Congress in 2008. I'd guess that Joe Garcia is making sure the DCCC will be in his corner -- and early -- if he decides to run.

FL-25: Joe Garcia on offensive against smear machine

There is a pretty small vocabulary over there in the Diaz-Balart camp. Their favorite words are pathetic and ludicrous. That's when referring to us. This comes from their pretty small emotional range, which seems stuck on contempt. When referring to us. Now they're even using it on a veteran of the Iraq war, who was brave enough to declare alliance with us. And for his pains, he's branded pathetic by the Mario Diaz-Balart camp.

The Garcia camp is properly aroused and asks us all to pull out all stops to spread the word among District 25 voters. Read more about it on Daily Kos. And please take action. My email network is starting to hum.

FL-18: Wasserman Shultz in public endorsement of Annette Taddeo for US House; Closing difficult chapter?

l-r: Annette Taddeo, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Raul Martinez, Kendrick Meek, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Garcia.

This was a long time coming, and so quite choreographed. A rising star among Democratic congresswomen, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, of Florida District 20, stood on a stage in Little Havana Thursday and publicly endorsed the candidacy of the Democratic challenger to one of Wasserman Shultz’ friends in the House.

This is an observation and supposition I’m making without having interviewed her or knowing all the influences that brought her to this new point. I hope it means that she’s decided that Annette Taddeo, a successful businesswoman making her first foray into elective politics, is going to defeat the 19-year veteran, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, in District 18.

District 18 is where I live. I campaign some for Taddeo, whose half-Colombian, half-American background is perfect for this district that spans from Key West in the Florida Keys to Miami Beach and a good bulge of Little Havana and downtown Miami on the mainland. The district is majority Hispanic but not quite as Cuban as before, so Ros-Lehtinen, who’s Cuban American, is fighting hard with a mass of TV ads that fail to mention her links to neo-con misleaders and play up her “service” to the district.

As I try to persuade some brilliantly intelligent people to vote for Taddeo, they often reveal themselves as having been conned by Ros-Lehtinen’s supposed “service.” They ignore or are unaware of her repeated votes for the Iraq war, for torture, against the expansion of children’s health insurance. Hardly anyone seems aware of her hardline position on Iran, and they profess to admire her ability to get the Miami River dredged. (Big deal – some say it’s the shortest river in the USA, at 4 miles. Though it certainly needed dredging. Took forever. Anyway…) Once in a while they can change their minds after hearing her voting record. More have been swayed by her saccharine manner, and if they go to her office in Washington, they get such a nice cup of coffee.

It’s disgusting what dupes we are. How so many of us agree to be bribed by federal dollars. How we vote against our interests. I know, this behavior has been analyzed to hell and gone, and Americans are well established as having a tendency to let their vote be swayed by vague feelings of patriotism or by which candidate presents as a good social pal. Not that we’d ever get close to the snob. But we’ll take our emotional leaning as somehow related to attaining the American Dream, and we throw away our chance to vote for someone who has a solid and intelligent view of our situation. Well, I’m thinking of good old wooden Al Gore there, but he’s not a very good example, since he really won.

Let’s get back to what’s publicly known about Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her many months of reluctance to get on the side of Annette Taddeo and her two fellow strong Democratic challengers, Joe Garcia against Mario Diaz-Balart in District 25 (the outer suburbs and the Everglades) and Raul Martinez against Lincoln Diaz-Balart in District 21 (inner suburbs of Miami).

This came into the public eye in March, started by the Miami Herald’s featuring it on the front page. This blog picked that up pretty quickly (first post on March 9) and the story ran repeatedly on Daily Kos and elsewhere in the blogosphere. Wasserman Schultz was regularly creamed for not using her position of influence in the DCCC – Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – to help the Democrats challenging in her neighboring districts.

At one point I was quietly happy about it, because it got Taddeo, Garcia and Martinez much more publicity locally and nationally than the little-known challengers had two years earlier. I know that too well, as I was nominal campaign manager for Dave Patlak, who didn’t quite get 40 percent against Ros-Lehtinen in the 2006 midterm election. We made her spend over $1 million – so there was some satisfaction for that.

What was Wasserman Schultz’ justification this year? Best guess was some collegial loyalty among fellow members of the U.S. House. They were all in the business of promoting federal bucks for South Florida and had to act together. There may have been some socializing. She told a skeptical audience once that it was a difficult balance. Not convincing. Many of us walked out because she came down on the wrong side of that teeter-totter. A report from March 21 at this link.

This affair caused me to think a lot about our political predicament. And it’s not just South Florida. This is all over our beloved country: the invulnerable incumbent. Their districts are so gerrymandered that they worry little about re-election. Wasserman Schultz and her Democratic colleague, Kendrick Meek of District 17, do not even get Republican opponents. Their districts are 70-percent safe Democratic.

They don’t benefit from the American tonic of competition. (Remedy: there’s a petition circulating to amend the Florida state constitution to ban political considerations in laying new district boundaries. This must be a priority after this election.)

If the two Democrats are invulnerable, the three Republican incumbents have less of a built-in advantage nowadays, though they started out with more solidly Republican districts. Demographic changes have put them in danger, and their three challengers, with strong campaign staffs and decent financing, are evidence that all three Republicans are seen as vulnerable, like their fellows most everywhere in the last months of George W. Bush.

Yet it still took forever for Wasserman Schultz to be more open in backing first Martinez, then Garcia and finally Taddeo. She wasted a lot of time being unnecessarily tenacious in backing Hillary Clinton. Then she spoke in favor of Taddeo at a meeting of Florida delegates at the Denver convention, where she somehow also cadged a slot to second Barack Obama’s nomination. Now it’s the last lap before election day, early voting is already under way, and finally Wasserman Schultz is in public at home in Florida before the TV cameras. And not alone.

Before I name her companions, here’s the quote:

“We need to make sure that we have leaders in the Congress who will stand up and be your voice. To make sure that the middle class ... that they have members of Congress who are in Washington fighting for them. And these three candidates, Raul Martinez, Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo, are the people that we need to elect so that we can make sure that they do that…

“This is the most important election of our lives. We are at a turning point in the United States of America. The wealthy have had their leaders in Washington. The wealthy have been taken care of for a long time. It is time to elect these three candidates to Congress so that we can have a voice for people who have not had one for a very long time.”

You can see from her words that all three Democratic challengers were in the room with her, Annette Taddeo, Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia, along with Rep. Kendrick Meek. The star in the room was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who for months has been trooping to South Florida doing fund-raisers for Garcia and Martinez. This was her first for Taddeo, I believe, and she also did fundraisers for Garcia and Martinez during a busy day.

Taddeo stood beside Wasserman Schultz and served as interpreter for the largely Cuban audience in the Little Havana Center for Activities and Nutrition, a senior center. Joe Garcia handled interpretation duty for Nancy Pelosi, who gave ringing endorsements of all three Democratic challengers, touting Taddeo’s strong business background, Garcia’s work in community organizing and Martinez for his long public service as mayor of Hialeah.

It’s time to say Thank You, Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz. I fervently hope you’re right in guessing that Annette Taddeo is going to win.

One last question, though. Those ads that the DCCC is running on TV here … the ones that criticize the Diaz-Balart brothers for their rotten votes in Congress. Why don’t they also mention Ileana Ros-Lehtinen? After all, she voted the same way as the rubber-stamp brothers. The ads run in the very same TV market that serves potential voters for Annette Taddeo. You’re a big wheel in the DCCC. Why, O why, don’t the ads also mention the third rubber-stamper, and maybe give your fellow Democrat a little boost? Why?

FL-21, FL-25: Miami New Times writes off the Diaz-Balart brothers

Here's a long and good read about victory around the corner for Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez, and oblivion for the Diaz-Balart slime machine and the two brothers who dishonor their elected office in the U.S. House of Representatives.

See the post just before this for one of the examples of dirty politics the brothers practice -- a TV ad intended to boost the fortunes of Mario Diaz-Balart. But Mario, how are you going to explain this at the Pearly Gates? What about the Commandment to Bear No False Witness? His elder brother Lincoln Diaz-Balart has been almost as bad in his noir TV ads against Raul Martinez.

Thanks goodness that the Miami New Times has seen its way through all that crap to write that this year is the "end of the dynasty" for the Diaz-Balarts. Would that the Miami Herald had been equally perceptive.

Anyway, please make a cup of coffee and sit down for a lengthy read through the thinking that will put at least two more Democrats in the U.S. House from South Florida.

FL-25: A Diaz-Balart raver catches TV attention

Hey, Mario, you forgot to take your pills.



Narration by Michael Putney, senior reporter for ABC Channel 10 in Miami.

Now I wonder if the editorial board over at the Miami Herald might reconsider their failure to endorse our calm and collected Joe Garcia for the US House in District 25.

Vote for Joe Garcia -- now!

There's a poll on Daily Kos where you can vote for Joe Garcia. Check it out.

Congressional candidates finally talk; Dems are superb

I haven’t heard Dave Patlak so revved-up since he was just back from Camp Obama.

“I’ve finally realized my dream!” he shouted down the phone.

What was it? A “debate forum” that brought together the three rubber-stamp Republican members of Congress from South Florida with their Democratic challengers. The format was so restricted that the designated moderator, Michael Putney of ABC Channel 10, withdrew and wrote in Wednesday’s Miami Herald that it “promises to be little more than a dumb show – a play done in pantomime, Kabuki theater.”

Someone among the candidates – no one would confess to it – had demanded that the sponsoring Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce reveal the questions beforehand, otherwise no show. Putney said he suspected one of the Republican campaigns for making the demand.

So there was a certain “canned” atmosphere, but the encounter itself was enough to give Dave Patlak chills down his spine, since when he ran for the District 18 seat in 2006, incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wouldn’t even touch the idea of a debate with a 10-foot pole. Now Democratic challenger Annette Taddeo is running a powerful and well-financed campaign against Ros-Lehtinen, and Patlak said she spoke with wonderful heart and directly demanded that Ros-Lehtinen explain her votes against expanding children’s health insurance.

And Patlak had ringing praise for Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez, who are challenging the Diaz-Balart brothers in Districts 25 and 21, respectively. Patlak said Joe Garcia was “presidential” in his remarks against Mario Diaz-Balart and Martinez was “dominating” against Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Alas, no one took the trouble to spread the word that the forum was being broadcast live on NBC6.net, so it could have been watched as it was under way. Channel 6 assures me that it’s being processed and uploaded, and should be available Wednesday evening on their archives website.

The Diaz-Balarts, Patlak reported, repeatedly tried to joke their way out of tough corners, and Ros-Lehtinen pranced around like a cheerleader to disguise her weak positions. I hope for more detail from Dave later, amid his constant work on the Obama campaign – he was off to deliver yard signs.

Meanwhile, here’s some word from Joe Garcia about a forum where he and Mario Diaz-Balart appeared earlier this week.

Not once did he offer a plan as to how we're going to get our economy moving again. He also never spoke about how we're going to make health care more affordable for the 1 out of 3 people in South Florida that don't have any.

Here's what he did do: He lied, attacked me, played partisan politics and made jokes.

There's nothing funny about thousands of struggling middle-class families losing their homes, or teachers getting laid off in places like Kendall and West Miami-Dade. The fact that Mario Diaz-Balart has voted over 90% of the time with the failed economic policies of George W. Bush is no laughing matter.

It's no surprise now why Mario Diaz-Balart insists on having questions given to him ahead of time.

This is what politicians do when they've only passed one bill after six years in Washington.

This is why we need change.

Our campaign is different. It's about finding solutions to the problems we face, like fixing our broken economy.

The stakes couldn't be higher. Get involved and let's make history.

Thank you so much for being there for us,

Being there means helping. You will find these links useful in getting to a place where you can help. Annette Taddeo. Raul Martinez. Joe Garcia.

“Awesome numbers” for Joe Garcia, and look at Barack: Up 22 points

This one on DailyKos slipped by the other day, so some of you may already have memorized this good news. It was referred to in yesterday’s post here about the two races that Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez are mounting against the Diaz-Balart rubber-stamp brothers.

Kos himself looks at the polling for FL-25 and called it “awesome numbers” for Garcia – awesome in that Mario Diaz-Balart is well under 50 percent. He’s polling 45 to Garcia’s 41, which means stepping on the gas for these final five weeks, right, Joe?.

A key factor, Kos says, is that Barack Obama’s campaign is accelerating, too, and while the Democratic presidential candidate may be well behind in the congressional district, he has surged to a 22-point lead in Southeast Florida, from 12 points up in an earlier poll.

Some of the details are available on the Survey USA website, for those who want to know how Aunt Augusta responded.

FL-21, FL-25: Good news for Martinez and Garcia campaigns

Here we are at five weeks to election day – meaning three weeks to start of early voting – and the momentum looks positive for the Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia challenges to the Diaz-Balart rubber-stamps.

Very proud, the Martinez campaign announced a promotion by one of the handicappers on Tuesday. No longer “lean Republican” to the Rothenberg Political Report, this race in FL-21 now is “Pure Toss-Up.”

” The race's inclusion as one of only ten races in the country ranked as ‘Pure Toss-Up’ signifies that this race is more competitive than ever,” the Martinez campaign said.

That doesn’t make it easy. Incumbent Lincoln Diaz-Balart has run an ad about as sleazy as they come, and Raul Martinez is asking donors to help in the stretch to Election Day. You can see how Miami’s Channel 10 skewered the ad in a post a few days ago on this blog.

And at Joe Garcia’s shop – also contending with gross distortions from Mario Diaz-Balart’s ads – they’re announcing good news from another of the handicappers, Real Clear Politics, which is calling the race in FL-25 one of the most competitive House races in the country.

This race, according to the Rothenberg Political Report (linked above), is still in the “lean Republican” category. But there’s yet another piece of good news for Joe Garcia. Mario DB is polling below 50%, which is a classic sign of trouble for incumbent members of Congress. If I recall correctly, this has been true for several months, so the incumbent has not done himself any good with his crummy ads (also linked in the same post as for Raul Martinez).

Here’s part of a statement from the Joe Garcia campaign:

A poll that was conducted by a non-partisan firm was recently released that shows Mario Diaz-Balart is only getting 45% support, and that Joe Garcia is polling within the margin of error. As you know, “polling under 50 percent generally spells trouble for incumbents.” [Rasmussen Reports, 9/22/2008].

This explains why MDB is running scared and has resorted to lying about Joe Garcia's record of fighting for Florida's families. The fact that a career politician like Mario Diaz-Balart is polling below 50% provides proof that South Florida is ready for a change. The poll also states that Joe Garcia's favorability is higher than Mario Diaz-Balart’s.

Don’t forget that Joe needs money, too.

Speaking of momentum, my favorite Congressional candidate, Annette Taddeo in FL-18 where I live, is advertising on radio and TV, so I expect her to start taking big bites out of incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Taddeo is getting help from the national Democratic Party establishment, having been promoted to the Red to Blue list of top Democratic challengers, and her internal polls have shown for months that the incumbent has meager support. Once voters see and hear the ads for Taddeo, they will realize there’s a powerful challenge and bid Ros-Lehtinen an unfond farewell.

Taddeo has been getting coverage in the Miami Herald and in the Florida Keys, so the word is getting out. Now it’s time to step on the gas, and that’s what the campaign is doing. You can pitch in with money and time. Sign up at Annette2008.com.

Bailout vote: Joe Garcia would have voted yes, Raul Martinez and Annette Taddeo no

An interesting split among our three Democratic challengers for the U.S. House in South Florida.

For starters, all three Republican rubber-stamp incumbents voted no on the bailout bill, which failed with both parties split bigtime. The vote was 228-205. Voting no were 133 Republicans and 95 Democrats. Yes were 140 Democrats and 65 Republicans.

UPDATE: Let's pause and read what the Obama campaign said about this trainwreck:

“This is a moment of national crisis, and today’s inaction in Congress as well as the angry and hyper-partisan statement released by the McCain campaign are exactly why the American people are disgusted with Washington. Now is the time for Democrats and Republicans to join together and act in a way that prevents an economic catastrophe. Every American should be outraged that an era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and Washington has led us to this point, but now that we are here, the stability of our entire economy depends on us taking immediate action to ease this crisis,” said Obama-Biden campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Both Annette Taddeo, challenging Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in FL-18, and Raul Martinez, challenging Lincoln Diaz-Balart in FL-21, issued statements before the vote saying they opposed the bill before Congress.

Joe Garcia, running against Mario Diaz-Balart in FL-25, told this blogger he was reluctantly in favor of the bill that failed.

“I thought it was a bad bill but I would have voted for it. I think there will be a better bill when it comes back,” he said.

“The Democrats did the hard thing, and we’re going to get nailed for it.” Asked about the many Democrats who voted against the bill, he said, “They’re scared. They didn’t create this, and are asked to pay for it.”

Again, on all the Republican no votes, Garcia said, “They’re not willing to pay for the mess they created. They broke it but are not willing to buy it.”

Garcia noted that all three Republican incumbents in South Florida voted against the bill, and called it a failure of leadership. The real estate crunch was evident in South Florida months ago, he said. “But the Republicans hid and took the easy route.”

Annette Taddeo’s statement was featured on DailyKos Monday morning and I quote it here.

MIAMI, FL – Annette Taddeo, candidate for Congress in Florida's 18th district, this morning released the following statement expressing opposition to the bailout legislation moving through Congress:

"We must protect homeowners and taxpayers. This bill fails to address the collapsing housing market, the root cause of the crisis. I do not support spending $700 billion in taxpayer money on a flawed bill. I call on Democrats in Congress and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to draft legislation that protects the people and families of South Florida."

"While the proposed bill is a start, it is not complete until homeowners and taxpayers are protected, and there are mechanisms in place to assure proper oversight so this does not happen again."

"As a small-businesswoman and Past-Chair of the Coalition of Greater Miami-Dade Chambers of Commerce, I know what our economy needs to right itself. Congress should send President Bush a bill that includes real protections for homeowners and taxpayers."

Raul Martinez issued this statement:

"The Diaz-Balart/Bush economic policies have failed and the country is worse off. The same people who rushed us to war in Iraq and rushed us into a stimulus bill that has not worked are trying to rush us into another bad idea.

"The proposed ‘bailout’ by the Bush Administration to be voted on today in Congress does not do enough to ensure that the middle class, the people who are truly being hit hard by tough economic times, will be sufficiently helped by this legislation. Hard-working South Floridians, many who are struggling to escape home foreclosure, have not received enough support from Congress to help them stay in their homes. The mortgage crisis is the root cause of this problem and it has not been addressed sufficiently.

"Any bailout should be directly targeted at homeowners, have strict accountability, conflict-of-interest, regulatory and oversight rules attached, including a hard cap on executive compensation and stock warrants for the rescuing taxpayers."

"The Bush Administration is seeking an unprecedented power grab to address the mess that they created. The Treasury Secretary would be largely unrestricted in his ability to spend $700 billion of taxpayer money at a cost of about $2,300 to every man, woman and child in America."

Mayor Martinez proposed the following suggestions:
• Work directly with people that were affected and lost their homes. Not with people that committed fraud, but individuals that got swept into the craze of owning their own home.
• Prevent more foreclosures by negotiating with owners and banks to buy those loans at a discount (the actual value of their homes).
• Require that the net gain of any sale or transfer of the property within the next 10 years, for those homeowners who are being helped, be shared with the government 50/50.
• Create public works jobs so these people will be able to pay for their mortgages.
• Place a cap on the amount of the mortgage.
• Only those people who live on the property will be allowed to participate (Homesteaded properties only).
• Interest rate for new loans will have to carry a low interest rate of about 4-5%.
• People that need to refinance to avoid problems in the future can participate.
• Homes that have been foreclosed could be bought by a first time homebuyer who can participate in the program. Also, any new buyer could obtain a property as long as a new appraisal is done.
• Do away with predatory lending.
• Bring back tight regulations for banks and investment houses
• Regulate hedge funds to make sure that the leverage financing is controlled.
• Stop short selling in the stock market.
• Prohibit speculation on oil.

For the record, your blogger was somewhere around Joe Garcia’s position. I figured the bill was flawed (aren’t all bills flawed?) but was pretty well convinced that something had to be done. What, exactly? That question is above my pay grade.

DailyKos features Annette Taddeo, Joe Garcia in Act Blue donations appeal

This post up late Sunday on DailyKos, by Kos himself, urges all to donate to a handful of featured US House races across the country, including Annette Taddeo in FL-18 and Joe Garcia in FL-25.

Pop on over to DailyKos and plop down a few bucks, please.