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: What a pair are Rubio and Rivera! Can they get away with this?

The Florida Democratic Party has the questions right on this odd business from Marco Rubio and David Rivera. Except that your blogger would like to know when the Republican Party will retrieve its purportedly high ethical standards and send this pair back down to lobbying? What are they doing as candidates for high federal office? Your blogger would like to know.

Here's what the Joe Garcia (my choice for election to the US House in Florida District 25) campaign is pointing out, in the words of the Florida Democratic Party:

From the Department of You Can Make This Up:  Miami Lobbyists Marco Rubio and David Rivera are holding a fundraiser together today in Washington, DC.


Last week, it was reported that Rubio and his self proclaimed “disciple” David Rivera purchased a house together and then defaulted on the payments, allowing the property to fall into foreclosure.

The pair of ethically challenged Republican politicians have now unwittingly opened up a can of worms when their embarrassing financial tactics were made public.

Some Questions That Need To Be Answered:

Did Rubio and Rivera willfully withhold mortgage payments that were owed based on their mortgage contract?

Did this tactic of withholding payments allow them to renegotiate or offer the house as a short sale?

In either case did they have to disclose their income and assets? If so, what are they?

What did their stalling and negotiating tactics cost the government in lost property values or tax write-off for themselves or the banks?

And is this whole mess just another example of Marco Rubio getting another sweetheart mortgage deal from his political allies?

FL-25: Joe Garcia rips David Rivera on offshore oil drilling

"Imagine if David Rivera had his way."

That's a little quote from Joe Garcia in a news conference yesterday about the BP oil spill. Check out the whole story on the Joe Garcia blog, which should be on your favorites menu.

You see, Rivera, who's the likely Republican candidate against Joe Garcia in US House District FL-25, was eager to have drilling for oil three miles from Florida's beaches. So, yes, stretch your mind and imagine a rig blowup and the oil hitting the beach in a few hours. Right here. Or over in Fort Myers where Aunt Molly retired, or Pensacola where your nephew is in the Navy. And anywhere in Florida where your economic future is vulnerable to globs of oil.

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: Crist switch gets the Republican name-callers into high gear

OK, the headline is a little premature. So far I've only got one Republican name-caller, but I'm sure there will be more.

The first out of the blocks is David Rivera, known on this blog as the Republican likely to be Joe Garcia's opponent for the US House in District 25. Last time we wrote about him, his ethical standards were quite low -- way behind even Jeb Bush in the ethical arena -- and now he's very high in the name-calling arena.

Read it on Naked Politics, the Herald's political blog, where Rivera says that what Crist is doing is the biggest betrayal in US history since Benedict Arnold. Wow! That's really big. Like almost sinking the American Revolution, George Washington and all. And what's Crist's offense? Dropping the ID of the party that has already dropped him -- that's what Crist is doing.

Now let's start looking for all the photos of David Rivera and Charlie Crist in fond embrace.

And while we may be distracted for a day or two by Crist's maneuver, remember that we will have to get back to listening to what Rivera says and searching for fact and meaning.

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.

Barack Obama in Miami -- fixing problems, getting laughs, calling our candidates' names

Tucked in my box of campaign memories from 2008 is an event at the University of Miami, when candidate Barack Obama gave what seemed a mild shout-out to our Democratic challengers to the incumbent Republicans in the US House of Representatives. That may not be an accurate or full picture of what happened. But since we were struggling to get media coverage, endorsements, donations -- anything! -- it was always disappointing when the result didn’t seem whole-hearted.

Well, this was not the problem Thursday evening in Miami when Barack Obama, who buzzes in on Air Force One now, started his speech at the Adrienne Arsht Center with full-voiced shout-outs to:

• Alex Sink, running for governor
• Loranne Ausley, running for chief financial officer
• Kendrick Meek, running for the open seat in the US Senate
• Joe Garcia, running for open Florida District 25 in the US House
• Scott Maddox, running for commissioner of agriculture and consumer affairs
• Suzanne Kosmas, seeking re-election in Florida District 24 in the US House.

Sorry I didn’t get my Flip camera running quickly enough to get Obama calling Alex Sink’s name and her happy wave in response, but the others can be seen in tiny images -- Hey, the Flip only has a two-power zoom.

It was also super to hear the president thank the brilliant Esperanza Spalding, who thrilled the house with three jazz numbers before the political speeches. If you haven’t heard of her, check out the long profile of her in the New Yorker. Think the rare woman playing bass, think lovely singing, think beautiful. She was a treat.


Let me note that the president called Joe Garcia “a great friend of mine.” Joe has just left his high position with the Department of Energy to run for the open congressional seat in District 25, and we should be on track to a win.

Also on stage with the president were our own US Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, FL-20, a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and DNC Chair Tim Kaine, former governor of Virginia.

Kaine noted that the pundits predict the president’s party loses 28 House seats in the typical mid-term election. “They under-estimate us,” he countered. “We’ve got a great president.” There’s a major health law that will look better and better, Kaine went on, and we Democrats have enough fine candidates that we’re going after some Republican seats -- not merely defending. Hey, there’s Joe Garcia again, running for the seat long misrepresented by Mario Diaz-Balart, who’s escaping to FL-21, vacated by his retiring brother Lincoln. (What is it with these Republican quitters?)

And as the president declared in his humor-laced speech, “We’ve begun to fix the problems” -- chiefly health care to this point (long applause there), but coming soon is financial reform (long applause again for levying fees on banks to recoup all that bailout money).

Obama reminded us that the recovery act included a lot of tax cuts for the middle class, and said he was “amused” that rallies were being held on this Tax Deadline Day to protest supposedly high taxes. “You would think they’d be saying, ‘Thank you,’” he said, drawing one of a string of big laughs.

From this very pleasant time at the Arsht Center (well worth the money), your blogger is predicting that the president will be using his charm and gentle wit to cut the Party of No down to the Party of Nothing in the coming months.

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: A "Democratic beachhead "-- Let's go, Joe Garcia!

Pop over to the Huffington Post and read the 10-point rule for how Democrats can remain on top of the political world even in this difficult year of mid-term elections.

Part of author Robert Creamer's Rule #1 (which concentrates on keeping control of both houses of Congress) says we have to "take beachheads for Democratic power." It specifically mentions only two examples in this huge country, and one of them is our own US House District 25, which former Miami-Dade Democratic Chairman Joe Garcia has on his plate for a run.

Yes, we won Florida for Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and just as big a mission awaits Miami-Dade Democrats in 2010. FL-25 is an open seat with the Diaz-Balart brothers both quitting their seats (Lincoln leaving FL-21 for retirement, and Mario quitting FL-25 to try for FL-21). Your blogger is ready to work for Joe Garcia, when he decides to run, and I hear many enthusiastic voices in agreement.

As the HuffPo piece points out, a victory in FL-25 would help Democrats "continue to woo young Cuban Americans away from their traditional Republican roost."

This is a goal we can all agree on, for the long run, as well as for this tremendously important mid-term election.

Meanwhile, don't forget to sign up on Facebook to Draft Joe Garcia for 2010.

Love those statistics, Take it away, TED

This came to me via Facebook and the Draft Joe Garcia page. On this alone, Joe should be elected to Congress by acclamation.

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.

Joe Garcia for Congress? A dream of the past, but Mel Martinez may have made it possible again

We're hearing a Republican rumor that Gov. Charlie Crist may appoint US Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart to the US Senate seat being vacated by Mel Martinez before his time is up. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, not known as senatorial material among reasonable people, would be a caretaker rather than someone to bother Crist's own ambition to become senator, according to this rumor.

UPDATE: Diaz-Balart took himself out of consideration late Monday. Here's a link to the Miami Herald story on it. Since this is in flux, I'll let the rest of this post stand for at least a while. Who knows what will bubble up next? END UPDATE.

Then Lincoln's brother Mario Diaz-Balart, currently representing District 25 in the US House, would move to Lincoln's more strongly Republican District 21 and save his own hide from defeat by a Democrat in the 2010 election. Lincoln would cease seeking federal office, and the bothersome Marco Rubio, former speaker of the Florida House who's contending for the US Senate nomination against Charlie Crist, would run for the US House instead. So goes this convoluted reddish rumor.

Where's Joe Garcia in this? He won't stand for it. Gonna stick his strong Democratic candidacy into these machinations somewhere if the Republicans continue along these lines. This corner speculates that Garcia, with impeccable Cuban American credentials from his years as executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, would run again in District 25, where he ran strongly against Mario Diaz-Balart in 2008, losing only 52-48. The district's Democratic Party numbers have constantly grown since then and Mario faces the end in 2010 -- especially if Joe Garcia is the Democratic candidate.

In the past few months it appeared that Garcia was bowing out of any run for federal office as he was nominated by President Obama to be director of the office of minority economic impact in the Department of Energy. He still needs US Senate confirmation for that post but has been approved at the committee level. Interestingly, Sen. Mel Martinez gave an introductory speech for Garcia at the hearing of the Energy Committee, praising Garcia's past work on refugee resettlement and on the Florida Public Service Commission.

One question that arises is why the great state of Florida should have a mere caretaker senator like Lincoln Diaz-Balart for the next year and a half of crucial legislation on health care, energy and environment, immigration, financial reform and other burning issues left from the George Bush era of maladministration. Which is why none of this may arise -- but anyway, then why is the Republican rumor machine running with this?

For the uninitiated, these two congressional districts cover the western reaches of Miami-Dade County and over the Everglades to part of Collier County and a bit of Broward, too. It's a part of our world that deserves better representation than it has had from the Diaz-Balart brothers. For instance, let's get real about saving the Everglades.

Follow the link for the Miami Herald's take on some of this -- especially Florida's loss of punch if a caretaker is in the Senate. The Herald and most everyone else neglect the fact that the 17th amendment to the US Constitution says there should be an election to fill a Senate vacancy, and an appointment is given second place. If only our elections weren't so cumbersome and expensive.

Wheels starting to turn in US House Districts 18 and 25

I think there were two developments on Tuesday in the coming races for the US House of Representatives from Miami-Dade County, involving Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo, the Democratic candidates who waged strong campaigns in 2008 but lost in FL-25 and FL-18, respectively.

I’m guessing that Joe Garcia took himself out of the House race in 2010 by accepting a nomination for a job in the Obama administration, and Annette Taddeo declared, once again, that she’s mad at the incumbent Republican, and she squashed talk that she’d run for chief financial officer of Florida.

Taddeo’s stump speech in her brave battle to unseat Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in 2008 always included the story of her decision to run. It was because Ros-Lehtinen had voted repeatedly against expanding children’s health insurance coverage. Taddeo would bring tears to her listeners’ eyes by recalling her many surgeries to repair a cleft lip, and she would say this experience convinced her to challenge Ros-Lehtinen, who’s been in the US House now for 20 years.

Now the issue is the environment, Taddeo said in a statement ruling out a run to succeed Alex Sink as Florida’s CFO. She didn’t declare outright for Congress, but it sure sounds like the next thing in her sights.

Here’s most of what she said:

I have taken time to seriously examine this [CFO] opportunity and to confer with family, friends and supporters. I’ve had an opportunity to do some soul searching about my future and I’ve come to some clear realizations. I am most passionate about my family, my business and public service. I’ve dedicated my entire life to family, while dedicating my professional life to building and growing my company, LanguageSpeak. Through my service on a variety of public boards and groups and then my run for Congress, I have been able to follow my passion for public service.

The Chief Financial Officer position is very appealing to me. I believe my background as the owner and active CEO of a small business gives me the skills I would need to serve the people of Florida in this position. As I examined the opportunity, I felt confident I could raise the money to be competitive and that I could do the job well and with vision.

But something was missing.

Just over a week ago, the House of Representatives passed landmark legislation to attack climate change and to address our dependence on foreign oil and the deadly greenhouse gasses that fossil fuels spew into our environment. I followed that debate with rapt attention and realize the legislation isn’t perfect. However, in spite of the science, in spite of the clear and present danger climate change presents to the future of Florida, my own member of Congress voted against the bill.

I realized at that moment what was missing as I considered the CFO race. I just wasn’t passionate about it at this time. I am passionate about climate change and health care and restoring our economy. I am passionate about economic development and job creation and making sure America is on the forefront of innovation for the future. I feel we are being let down, once again, by political leaders who can’t see beyond the next election.

Therefore, I have decided not to be a candidate for CFO or any other office at this time. I hope and believe that I will run for public office again in the near future. I have decided to keep my focus on my family, my business and to engage in public policy from the perspective of a wife, mother, business owner and activist for now. Thank You.

A month ago, at the Jefferson-Jackson Day event in Miami Beach, she said she wouldn’t run for Congress again without the full backing of the Democratic Party, as she had to do in 2008. Well we remember the thrashing and gnashing that went on as we in the grassroots begged and yelled for our incumbent Democrats in the US House, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) and Kendrick Meek (FL-17), to get behind the strong Democratic candidates challenging the three Republicans in our county’s US House delegation. It was like the poor Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the impossible mountain.

In the end, Taddeo lost 42 percent to 58 percent – the same margin that Democrat Raul Martinez lost to Lincoln Diaz-Balart in FL-21.

Joe Garcia did considerably better against Mario Diaz-Balart in FL-25, losing 47 percent to 53 percent.

Not long ago I heard Joe Garcia speak at a Democracy For America-Miami-Dade chapter meeting, and he clearly was leaving the door open to a new run for the US House. The demographics are getting more and more favorable for a Democrat in this district that includes Miami’s southwestern suburbs and through the Everglades to the eastern part of Collier County.

But now Garcia is taking an interesting chance in Washington, and I think this rules out a run for the US House. It’s already July of 2009, and within six months he’d had to have a campaign up for the November 2010 election. Somehow Joe Garcia doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d put the citizenry through the agony of confirmation hearings and then a few months later quit and run for some other position.

Yes, confirmation hearings – that’s what the Miami Herald says on the Naked Politics blog.
Click on that and you'll see that the White House said of Garcia:

"Joe Garcia's dynamic public service career spans over 20 years and consists of a diverse body of work in the fields of energy, foreign policy and human rights. As a law student, Mr. Garcia directed the Exodus Project, a non-profit refugee resettlement program that reunited over 10,000 families at no cost to American tax-payers. In 1992, the late Governor Lawton Chiles appointed Joe Garcia to the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC), where he fought for lower utility bills for the people of Florida. In 1998, Mr. Garcia's fellow commissioners elected him as chairman of the PSC. As PSC Chairman, Joe Garcia worked across party lines to pass the largest energy rate cut in Florida's history, saving Florida's families more than $1 billion. In 2001, Mr. Garcia was named as the Executive Director of the Cuban American National Foundation, where he served as a tireless proponent of freedom and improved human rights conditions in Cuba and throughout the Americas. In 2004, Mr. Garcia was named Executive Vice President and Director of the Hispanic Project for NDN, a policy research institute in Washington D.C. Joe Garcia earned his Bachelor of Arts and Juris Doctorate degrees from the University of Miami."

Oh, yeah. The job is director of the Office of Minority Economic Impact at the Department of Energy.

The Republican way of talking has gone completely uncivilized. Y'all know how Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity go wild at the slightest provocation. They're paid entertainers but still will have to pay the price when they get to the Pearly Gates. But why should one of our local Reps go over the top while talking about a modest change in Cuba policy?



You get that? "Bowing down to dictators." It's like Chamberlain capitulating to Hitler. Is there any sense of proportion in their brains?

Thanks goodness we have a reasonable guy like Joe Garcia to represent Miami Democrats.

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.