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: 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.

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.

Worrying about the "institutional gravities of Congress"

This explained something for me. To give it a little context, it’s from a radio program featuring a story about U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, and why he was – unaccountably – in favor of military spending even though he had been against it.

For Rep. Lewis, the institutional gravities of Congress and the corporate-sponsored Democratic party were stronger than the living will of his constituents and the memory of the Freedom Movement combined. So the question for Black America now is, if a black congressman near the end of his career with a safe seat and the historical stature of a John Lewis could not speak and would not vote for truth against power in the Bush era, what can we expect from elected black Democrats now that a black face is in the White House?

This came to my attention in a daily email from opednews.com, a valuable aggregator website that prowls for news and comment useful to us progressive thinkers. You can sign up for it too.

As I said at the top, this explained something for me. One of the mysteries of political observing in South Florida is why our two Democratic members of the U.S. House, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) and Kendrick Meek (FL-17), fall so neatly in line with their local Republican colleagues, the Diaz-Balart brothers (FL-21 and FL-25) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18), on Cuba issues such as the travel ban. This shows up in these days of changes in Cuba policy when both Meek and Wasserman Schultz are dubious about the modest changes ordered by Barack Obama. While the Diaz-Balarts put out a statement calling it a “serious mistake,” outgoing Republican Sen. Mel Martinez curiously was a little milder, at least in his recognition that the policy change would be good for Cuban families now permitted more contact between their branches in Cuba and the United States.

The two phrases – “the institutional gravities of Congress” and “the corporate-sponsored Democratic Party” – were apt and evocative in describing what we constituents are up against in the wishes we beam to our members of Congress. They sit up there stewing in the same office buildings and dining halls and debate chambers and grow away from their constituents, and then they go party with the lobbyists and big corporate donors and grow even further away from us. As John Lewis grows away from his anti-war constituents.

We need some help to break through these lines of thought that live in the minds of our members of Congress. These are issues of framing, how to word arguments. We’re not too far from the start of campaigning for the 2010 Congressional elections, which will be bigger than ever in Florida with an open Senate seat (Mel Martinez’) and the possibility of wholesale change in state government if Charlie Crist goes for Senate rather than re-election as governor. Time to be thinking not only of who will run but also how to help shape the candidates’ platforms, and how to reduce the importance of money in campaigning – now that we’re all so much poorer.

Will you have as much money to give to political candidates next year as you did in 2008? Not I.

Cuba policy loosened a little

Finally, the Obama administration has unleashed its modest changes in Cuba policy. Yes, let’s have Cuban Americans be our grassroots diplomats. I nominate Joe Garcia to lead the soft invasion. Joe, are you going? Well, you might not be welcome to the leadership over there.

The Miami Herald was ready for this. Its website already has travel tips (Carry lots of cash!), plus a place for people to upload their videos of trips to see their family. Reminds me that I have a Cuba video up, though it was taken here in Miami almost two years ago, when Barack Obama made a speech declaring his Cuba policy changes.
Here it is, from Aug. 25, 2007:

Policy in this country moves at glacial speed. This should have been done long ago.
UPDATE: Click here for the White House fact sheet on this policy shift.

Meanwhile, I, too, was preparing for this and have some stuff ready to amaze you. Weeks ago I started wondering what we were supposed to make of all the Cuba stuff in the news.

On April 8 the front page of the Miami Herald reported a federal indictment linking the aged Luis Posada Carriles to tourist-site bombings in Cuba in 1997. Didn’t say he did it. No, they say he lied when he denied being part of it. Such weasely indictments have plagued the American machinery of justice at least since Al Capone was run up for tax evasion rather than murder and mayhem. But I guess we will take what we get.

The timing, however, was what intrigued your blogger. This Posada is one of the most prominent bugaboos of the Castro regime, and for the U.S. to indict him could be seen as a gesture to the Cuban government. Or maybe it’s just the result of the slow grind of the wheel of justice.

Still, it emerged as President Obama was preparing to relax Cuba policy at least a little bit in advance of the Summit of the Americas to be held in Trinidad April 17-19. All we’ve been led to expect is that Cuban Americans will be able to make family visits to Cuba more easily and to send remittances more often – that is, to remove harsh rules imposed by George W. Bush at urging of the old guard Miami exiles. But much more is possible, and there’s the usual crescendo in Congress of talk about a more general easing of the Cuba embargo.

To declare an interest, your blogger reveals ownership of a sailboat – small but Havana-capable – as well as a strong belief that his human rights include travel anywhere. And not a speck of Cuba in my family background (though I do have a shirt inscribed Democrata Cubano – Y que?)

The Cuba travel bug hit a couple weeks ago with several news stories about the Havana Biennial:
It was on the front page of the Miami Herald, along with a riveting video showing Cubans yelling for freedom as part of an art happening. That’s what I want to go to Havana to see. Spare me the cigars and rum, get me some politics!

Also, in the NY Times was an arts-section story on all the artists and gallery people who can traipse over to Havana – while I can’t. WTF? At Havana Biennial, Chelsea Takes a Field Trip to Cuba - NYTimes.com

As I say, so much is going on that it must make our Republican members of the U.S. House dizzy with despair. They are so yesterday.

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.

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.

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.

SoFla House races plagued by false TV spots from Republicans

The Diaz-Balart brothers have won a race, of sorts. Their TV ads have won the quickest condemnation as FALSE I’ve ever seen.

I’d like to hear from other congressional races around the country. How fast have your local media managed to examine and produce condemnations of TV spots run by your Republican incumbents?

Not that I could say exactly how many days and hours it took our brilliant Miami ABC outlet, Channel 10, to pronounce these ads as false. I hadn’t even seen the spot running against Raul Martinez, the Democratic challenger against Lincoln Diaz-Balart in FL-21, and here’s the condemnation already. And it was maybe a week from when I saw the spot run by Mario Diaz-Balart against Democratic challenger Joe Garcia in FL-25 to when it had been exposed as false. In both cases, it was pretty fast, and highly commendable of Channel 10 to have acted openly and forthrightly against the two Republican representatives of the supposedly invulnerable Miami Cuban exile hard-liners.

Here’s what Channel 10 reported on the ad against Raul Martinez:



As Channel 10 said, some of the charges were sort of accurate, since Raul Martinez had a long run of legal troubles two decades ago – political prosecutions similar to what took former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman into prison on dubious charges. Siegelman has been freed, and we’d oh so like to have Karl Rove reveal his role in this affair but he refuses to testify before a House committee.

House, you say? That’s the body we’re trying to elect Raul Martinez, Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo to join and help set it right.

And thank you, Channel 10, for pointing out who’s the only convicted person in that story: Lincoln Diaz-Balart, convicted and fined $30,000 for taking excessive campaign contributions.

It should be noted that the prosecutor who launched against Raul Martinez, Dexter Lehtinen, is the husband of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who soon thereafter was elected to the U.S. House seat that Martinez had planned to run for. Talk about sleazy politics.

Now we turn to what Channel 10 has reported on the whoppers told by Mario Diaz-Balart’s campaign ad against Joe Garcia.



I remember my reaction to seeing this spot a few weekends ago. It was shown among the Sunday morning talk shows, and I erupted in wild guffaws to see it claim that Joe Garcia was some creature of Enron. What a wild-hare story!

Thanks again, Channel 10, for wrapping it up so neatly. False, False, False.

Where in our wonderful system of government and society are the sanctions for putting such crap on the public airwaves?

While we’re thinking about these South Florida congressional races, anyone for a debate? Not if you’re a Republican. They have ducked and dodged, set some dates and then demurred, making the media mad and frustrating their Democratic opponents.

It behooves us to donate to the challengers, because they’ll need more money to run ads themselves to get their names before the public. Annette Taddeo, running against Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in FL-18, has her first TV spot now running, and there must be more to help voters realize there’s a strong challenge to the FL-18 incumbent.

So please unhinge your Act Blue or other political donation mechanism, and give to Annette Taddeo, Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez.

Cry foul: Lincoln Diaz-Balart won't debate Raul Martinez

Sorry, little mistake in the headline. Replace the word foul with fowl, for chicken. That's should be the modifier for Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who's not up to the challenge of meeting his challenger in the debate arena.

Close readers of this blog may remember back on Sept. 10 when there was a post reporting at least two debates scheduled between the rubber-stamp incumbent and the Democratic contender for FL-21's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The post quoted from the Miami Herald column by Channel 10's respected political reporter Michael Putney, who was himself to be moderator or co-moderator of two debates between Martinez and L. Diaz-Balart.

Sorry to report now that the Martinez campaign says it's all off. As I suspected back on Sept. 10. Too good to be true. The Diaz-Balarts never have the fortitude to meet a challenger.

Last night I was at a fundraiser for Annette Taddeo, challenging Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in FL-18, and a welcome guest was Joe Garcia, who's running against Mario Diaz-Balart in FL-25. No surprise to hear both Annette and Joe report no luck in enticing their opponents to debate. They may hint at this date or that, only to pull back.

Why do they do this? My guess is that they may fool some few voters who will approvingly remember the little news story saying the Republicans had agreed to debate, but not see the one reporting the debate had been called off.

Thanks to the Raul Martinez campaign for rounding up links to various news stories about the "debates," as follows:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/692549.html

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2008/09/get-ready-to-ru.html

http://www.local10.com/editorials/17503337/detail.html

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2008/09/channel-10-miam.html