DEC and OFA get new directors for 2010 elections

In six months when we’re chalking up now-unexpected victories in our difficult local electoral world, Monday May 24 may be a date we Miami-Dade Democrats look back at as a milestone in our rise to a successful political operation.

On this day two personnel shifts were presented to us. The Miami-Dade Democratic Party took on a new executive director, Ric Herrero, who appeared at a meeting of the party’s Steering Committee. And the new regional field director for Organizing For America, Marcelo Marco Ramirez, was introduced to an enthusiastic group of OFA activists as replacement for the highly esteemed Brad Schenck, who’s destined for something more national in scope (details later, we hope).

Your blogger had the pleasure of being at both events, even though they both started at 7 p.m. several miles apart in downtown Miami. Got to confess that when I burst into the OFA event at 8:15, people started yelling at Marcelo Ramirez that he’d have to start over again. It got a big laugh, so I imagine that I wasn’t the only one who’d arrived after the new field director started describing his mission.

R U ready? June 5 , less than two weeks away, is the day the OFA will start its nationally featured drive for the November midterm election: Contacting people who voted for the first time in 2008. Make them vote again this year, by hook or … No, only legal stuff is permitted. If you have not signed up to do something, now’s the time to drop in to MyBarackObama.com and pledge yourself to the fun of campaigning again, meeting fellow citizens on their doorsteps or on the phone, and talking politics with them. Saturday June 5 is when we launch again. Be there with OFA. You may already have received this invitation from David Plouffe.

The Miami-Dade Democratic Party is further energized by having the decade of political experience that Ric Herrero brings to the post of executive director, which had been unfilled for over a year.  The party aims to concentrate on gathering in as many Cuban Americans as possible, as well as working to register new voters and to sign people up to vote absentee – vote at home, where you can think about the issues and candidates at your leisure.

Here are a couple of photos (unequal quality, I’m afraid, as I shifted from the simple Flip to a flashy Nikon Coolpix model in the middle of this story) to show the players.

First is Marcelo Ramirez of OFA with some of his activists.

Now a snap of Ric Herrero during the most recent meeting of the Democratic Executive Committee.

And a bonus: as the Steering Committee was about to meet, Chairman Richard Lydecker’s new name partner in his Brickell law firm, former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, dropped in to say hello to the committee. Your blogger jumped up with the new Nikon and said there should be a photo for the blog, and this is it.

Miami-Dade Democrats March Meeting: Volunteers needed, sign up now

Here's a short video from our March meeting, held in a new venue, the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens.

The main message from this meeting was a call for volunteers to help staff the new office of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party -- in the Terranova Building at 801 Arthur Godfrey Drive in Miami Beach. Call 305 477-4994 or email info@miamidadedemocrats.com.

And welcome to a nice group of new members!

A little video from the Miami-Dade Democrats' holiday party

We called it Florida Blue and had some fun.



Looking forward to a powerful year of campaigning for the 2010 midterm election. We have a lot of good candidates and a new chairman, Richard Lydecker, who promises the party will be a valuable partner in getting Democrats elected.

New chairman meets party members informally

It was a pleasure to meet our new Miami-Dade County chairman, Richard Lydecker, and hear his aims for moving ahead. We are a group that needs moving ahead, if only from the unfortunate reputation of being dysfunctional. I’ll grant that meetings of our Democratic Executive Committee can be tiresome, but we are the people who made a big contribution last year to electing Barack Obama president and this year we have helped Democrats gain local office. This is a lot more than dysfunctional, and before Richard Lydecker was named to chair the DEC, there was considerable agitation to fire up the nucleus of the highly effective campaign arms of 2008.


Your blogger is not going to retell the individual stories that led to the decision by state party Chair Karen Thurman to replace BJ Chiszar as county chairman. It happened. By the luck of my surgeon’s schedule, I was under anesthesia when BJ was ousted and for most of the next week I was on my back with icepacks on the incision where my hernia was repaired, and so the temptation to mix it up, blogwise, was lost on me and my pain pills. Just as well. I have not wanted this blog to dwell on personal matters but rather on issues. On local matters, especially, I try to avoid gossip. The blog is open to Democratic candidates at any level, but I hope those who take up the offer will not attack Democratic primary opponents on these electrons. For the general election, all gloves may be taken off.

That said, it was a pretty happy group that got together Monday evening in the ground-floor restaurants where Lydecker has his law offices on Brickell Avenue in downtown Miami. The Steering Committee was the vehicle for the meeting but close to 40 people attended, as many activists had also been invited. No formal meeting ever happened; instead, people talked in groups, ate, drank, acted like Democrats and introduced themselves and their hobbyhorse issues to Lydecker individually. Finally, someone convinced him to talk to the group.

His main job, he said, was to develop a plan to go forward. He wants to help Democratic candidates gain office, to elect Florida’s first woman governor (Alex Sink), to elect the state’s first African-American US senator (Kendrick Meek), to elect a Democratic attorney general and thus control the state cabinet. And he wants to have good DEC meetings to draw out the membership and let them see leading Democratic candidates. His official message can be found on the DEC Website.

On the topic of more functional, Lydecker said the DEC office would be moved to Miami Beach to be a neighbor of the national Democratic campaign arm, Organizing for America, and the party should be able to provide tools like buses and polls to make things happen.

First up is the mid-December gala, Florida Blue Celebration, in a little more than two weeks. Let’s get up a big turnout for this event and launch ourselves to the election year of 2010. As first vice chair Daisy Black said, “I want to go into 2010 on a united front.”

One place for this to start is at the gala: Firefighters Memorial Building, 800 NW 21st Street, Doral FL 33122, 7 pm Friday Dec. 18. Sign up here.

UPDATE: From the content of this little blog post, it seems as if the elusive Blue in Miami blogger was at the same event I attended with Lydecker.