FL-25: Garcia campaign hits one-note incumbents

Check out this video that recently surfaced on YouTube:

UPDATE: This is also up on Naked Politics now, and you're welcome to run over there and post a comment.

Dear friends: Open your wallets for Joe Garcia

Two great choices:

• His website http://www.JoeGarcia08.com/GotheDistance
• His ActBlue page http://actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/18930

Please take action by midnight. This is the deadline for reporting donations in the first quarter. You can make a difference, and Joe will thank you.

Joe Trippi joins Joe Garcia campaign

Our campaigns for Congress in South Florida are not just for their districts, important as they are. They are for Florida and the United States and the wider world, and we’re getting confirmation of this day by day.

Monday’s news: Joe Trippi joining the Joe Garcia campaign as senior media adviser. This is a development with national punch. We now have one of the top campaign people in the United States. I like to think of Joe Garcia as inhabiting the same rank: campaign thinker of national impact, due to his work with NDN directing its Hispanic Strategy Center, so this is a pairing that should be a multiplier of effectiveness.

We will still have to think small from time to time – the detail of a district campaign is where the votes are won – while also working on national momentum to contribute to a Democratic landslide in November.

Joe Trippi ran Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004 and was widely acclaimed for innovative use of the Internet. And he was named a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In 2006 he was consultant to John Hall’s winning campaign for New York’s 19^th Congressional District and for Jerry Brown’s winning bid to be California attorney general. He was senior adviser to John Edward’s presidential campaign this year.

UPDATE: Trippi had a diary on DailyKos recently, and here's the link.

And I forgot to say: Statement of interest: I'm on the Garcia media team.

The Garcia campaign statement said:

"Our campaign is proud to count with the experience and support of someone as talented and committed as Joe Trippi," said Joe Garcia. He went on to add that "this campaign is gaining both local and national attention because we are talking about the issues that all Americans care about like revitalizing our economy, greater access to affordable healthcare and confronting the challenges of global climate change."

Last week we had more national attention as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced strong support for Joe Garcia in FL-25, for Annette Taddeo in FL-18 and Raul Martinez in FL-21. This came in the form of letters to the three campaigns signed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and four of her DCCC leaders.

At the same time, the DCCC put the three candidates on the list of 90 races of top national priority, another indication that these districts – so often in the past forgotten by the Democratic Party leadership – are in play and winnable.

The full DCCC list can be seen at Swing State Project along with some useful comment.

For starters, let’s note that Florida has a total of eight targeted races on the offensive side, meaning that we see ways to take away half of the Republicans’ current 16 seats in the U.S. House. In addition to our three in South Florida, the DCCC targets Ric Keller (FL-08), Gus Bilirakis (FL-09), Vern Buchanan (FL-13, in “Red to Blue” status), the open seat in FL-15, and Tom Feeney (FL-24, also in the “Red to Blue” category).

On the defensive side, Florida has two Democratic seats on the DCCC list, Tim Mahoney in FL-16 and Ron Klein in FL-22, both seats won in 2006. Nationally, there are 32 seats on the defense list, 58 on the offensive list.

Let’s say the 2008 election has a result like the 2006 election. What was that? Democrats gained 31 seats in the U.S. House, to a total of 233, while not losing a single House seat to Republican challengers. Let’s do that again, up 30-40 seats – impossible? Why not? Is Republican leadership getting more popular?

In case your Republican friends say the Dems are losers, you can mention the fact above about the U.S. House, and also cite the fine 2006 gains on the state level, where there now are 28 Democratic governors against 22 Republicans, and many more state legislatures have moved to the D side, too. Look it up in Wikipedia, wikipedia.org, and navigate to U.S. general elections.

One of the Swing State Project commenters noted that Texas doesn't have a single seat on the DCCC targeted list and opined that this shows a Democratic party in poor shape. In Florida, we have half the Republicans on the targeted list; this looks pretty strong to me, but what kind of a picture do we get from local media? Well, Monday’s Miami Herald, for instance, has a p.1 headline “Democrats unable to agree on do-over.” Well, is that quite it – unable to agree? Us? It was a Republican legislature and Republican governor that put us in this pickle. Maybe they should be asked to agree on something, too, huh?

No, though the lead story in the Monday Herald features the Republican plight: “Sinking bank rescued in sale to a rival.” There’s typical Republican performance: corporate welfare on a scale most vast.

Or how about the NY Times’ lead story on Sunday: “For Democrats, increased fears of a long fight.” Wait, I thought that fear was a Bushite monopoly, but no, here’s the Times trying to inject fear into an election contest between two strong candidates. You can read the whole nine yards of that story and look in vain for someone who actually fears what’s going on. Be brave, my friends. We can deal with this.

Garcia the bulldozer

The first smashing political cartoon of this season has shown up -- in el Nuevo Herald. It shows Joe Garcia driving a steamroller on the trail of a nervously sweating Mario Diaz-Balart. I haven't found a link to make it appear here, but you can see it here.

Video of Joe Garcia's speech launching candidacy

Here's Joe Garcia's speech announcing his run for Congress in FL-25.

Florida Congressional District 18: famous squatting

Thanks for the tip! Sorry to be late catching up with this one.

Some terrible people in Washington are making fun of my representative in the U.S. House. Darn, what is that Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18) doing to make them snarky?

She’s got all this influence, you know, from her zillion years in the House, so what’s wrong with her “squatting” there in the House so that she can get a little extra time with the Commander in Chief?

Wait, maybe it’s not exactly extra time. Maybe this is the only time she gets with Bush. So she squats there trying for a spot on the aisle so she can have a second or two with him. Then she goes home and flashes the photo – See! Me and the President having a chat!

Sorry, that’s it. All she got this year was three or four seats in from the aisle – maybe a wave or a fingertip brush – and that’s it for the last year of a presidential term.

And – people were watching and writing it up on blogs. Some with impolite terms of reference, which you may see if you Google “Ileana Ros Lehtinen squatting.”

Here’s part of Politico’s writeup:

Lawmakers like Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Todd R. Platts (R-Pa.), Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), Mary Bono (R-Calif.), Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) are so-called State of the Union Day squatters.

Bachmann, you may recall, drew headlines last year after she kept her hand on Bush’s shoulder for a record 30 seconds and then reached in for a smooch.

...

“Being there, in that place, on that night,” Ros-Lehtinen echoed, “it’s just thrilling.”

The day of waiting, however, is not, the congresswomen said. Ros-Lehtinen always brings a “mountain of paperwork” to the chamber to kill time.

....

If Capito has to walk away, she always leaves the stack of paperwork on her seat, a signal to her colleagues that someone has already reserved that spot — or if she has to go far or use the facilities, she has Ros-Lehtinen hold her place for her.

“She watches my back and I watch hers,” Ros-Lehtinen confirmed.

But being on the aisle only goes so far. One must stand out in a room of black, steel gray and navy blue, the lawmakers said.

Despite her best efforts, Ros-Lehtinen couldn’t secure a seat soon enough. She and Capito had to settle for spots three and four seats away from the aisle.

“I’m not too disappointed,” Ros-Lehtinen said Monday evening. “I’ll still reach over and talk to the president about the [Florida] primary tomorrow.”

Next time we send someone to Washington from FL-18, how about a little depth? A person who will win influence? Not a fawner? We are so ready for change.

Joe Garcia vs Mario Diaz-Balart, coming soon

We’re close to the time, folks. Our future congressional delegation from Miami-Dade County will come closer to focus in the coming week. Yes, we have to get past the Super Bowl, past Super Tuesday. Finally, after these cosmic events, we can get back to local politics and think LANDSLIDE in the U.S. Congress.


We have to thank a chain of unknown people for sending this notice that our chairman, Joe Garcia, was talking about it the other day on Spanish-language TV. Here’s Mambiwatch’s take on it.

I searched around and discovered that the video is available in Spanish, and from having listened, I can say that Joe Garcia managed to get more than a few words in edgewise against the formidable Maria Elvira. Check it out. You also can vote there for Raul Martinez over Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

This approaching focus on congressional races will raise my morale after a couple weeks of defeat, a combination of walking pneumonia and John Edwards’ decision to drop out of the race. I’ll still try to be impartial in this blog until we have a presidential nominee, but let me just point you to Paul Krugman’s column of praise for Edwards in leading the way. If we’re the party of better ideas – and we are – John Edwards must be given credit for doing the early thinking and for hammering the drum.


And while we’re thinking about these big races, don’t forget the DEC meeting on Monday Feb. 11th, 7 pm at the American Legion off Biscayne Blvd, 6445 NE 7th Ave., Miami.

South Florida in the next U.S. House of Representatives

I don’t like calling this the Battle of the Titans. It inflates Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

Raul Martinez? Well, titan fits him just fine. I’m glad he’s finally in the race, though he will have to endure the slings and arrows of his tiny foe. Just stay calm, and come November, all will be well. Congressional District 21 will be part of a landslide sweep for the Democrats, and we can start to get out of Iraq, enact civilized health care and steer the economy into a green and fair mode. We’ll re-engage with the world community on an honorable basis and forge security alliances based on watchful peace and cooperation.

Let’s pause to bring in Districts 18 and 25, to complete the picture for Miami-Dade County. District 25 will see Joe Garcia, our Democratic Party chairman, running against and defeating Mario Diaz-Balart. In District 18 a new name has emerged, Annette Taddeo, Colombia-born and a successful businesswoman, to take on the ineffective Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo have yet to announce their candidacies, so let’s pause here to have a short talk on the telephone with Annette Taddeo.

First, she’s not announcing. “I am keeping all my options open,” she said.

She loves the district, to which she was brought by Hurricane Andrew. Her parents’ Cutler Ridge home was wrecked by that storm in August 1992. At the time, she had finished college and was planning to start work as an editor in the Spanish language. Instead, she bought a motor home in Alabama, drove it to Miami and parked it in front of her parents’ wrecked home. “We all lived in it for the next six months and I worked to rebuild their house. It was the first home to be finished there.”

Already, I like my new congresswoman. She gets things done. She does not sound like a rubber-stamp representative – that is, NOT like the incumbent.

I’m tempted to ask Annette Taddeo if she’ll be like Ros-Lehtinen and constantly send me franked mail seeking my praise for her exertions on my behalf: She got me $490,000 for Miami Beach pedestrian and bicycle access ways. Yes, but she also voted for torture, for the war in Iraq, for Bush’s vetoes and against SCHIP – all wrong on all the stuff that’s important!

But no, that would be asking Annette Taddeo if she’s running for Congress, and that’s premature to answer.

It’s just as well now to steer away from the telephone transcript and say that I approve of the broad strategy that the Democratic gods are on the verge of using in our county. We’re up against three Cuban American rubber-stamp, hard-line politicians, and what are we about to deploy?

· For District 21: Raul Martinez is an accomplished local leader who was mayor of Hialeah for 24 years, thanks to many Republican voters who love him.

· For District 25: like Martinez, Joe Garcia is Cuban-American; he has a national reputation as a Hispanic political strategist.

· For District 18: Annette Taddeo is President and CEO of LanguageSpeak, Inc, a comprehensive provider of language services, a winner of awards and a civic leader. Check out her official bio (from which I nipped her portrait).

The Republicans are three rubber-stampers; our candidates are a local political genius, a national political genius and a brilliant businesswoman. This is Democratic Party diversity.

Just to depart from South Florida electoral politics for a minute: Today’s NY Times piece on the national mood says that the CBS News/New York Times poll shows we Democrats are so far ahead of the Republicans that it’s beyond funny. That is, if people are asked which party’s presidential candidate they’re likely to vote for in the November election, the results for 2000 and this year are as follows:

· In 2000, “respondents were evenly divided.” (Do you remember how that election turned out?)

· In 2008, “they favored the Democrats by 18 percentage points.”

For some months now I’ve brought up the idea of historic landslide a number of times, always coupled with the admonition that we’ll have to work and donate to make it possible. This 18-point lead is, of course, a national reading and it may not be so strong here in South Florida. Still, what if it’s only a 12-point lead? Does this sweep all our Republican members of the U.S. House out? How hard will we have to concentrate and work to make it happen?

I can only say how pleased I was to walk up to the center of Hialeah Tuesday morning and see a forest of TV-broadcast towers and trucks at City Hall – formally, the Raul L. Martinez Government Center. The lavish media coverage of Raul Martinez’ announcement and the hysterical Republican responses are in stunning contrast with the non-coverage that the media gave to the Democratic candidates in 2006. We’ve come a long way, baby.

Video on Raul Martinez announcing

http://video.ap.org/v/default.aspx?f=flmih&g=c5ef8d3c-8b41-4206-9dc3-ed4c37a8052b&mk=en-ap&fg=svip_article_copy

Overheard: Raul Martinez announcing candidacy Tuesday in Hialeah

Keep those ears open, folks. I heard today that Raul Martinez will announce his candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday morning in Hialeah. Venue: city hall.

This will start a heavy ball rolling in Florida politics, like the powerful inevitability in those Indiana Jones movies when the huge rock starts rolling down the chute. Look out, Republicans! It’s the time of the new broom.

The first to be swept will be Lincoln Diaz-Balart, currently misrepresenting Congressional District 21. The wave will rise out of Hialeah, where Raul Martinez was mayor for many terms – a Democrat beloved by Republican voters – and Lincoln will be sent to retirement.

Then, soon but I don’t know when, Joe Garcia, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, will announce for Congressional District 25, and incumbent Mario Diaz-Balart will hear the knell of electoral doom.

And then, I don’t know when and haven’t heard who, someone with a lady’s name and a Latino background will announce for District 18, and we’ll see the end of too many terms in Congress for Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

This will be South Florida’s contribution to the landslide in Congress that will support the Democrat who will be elected president in November. We can look forward to – well, I’d like to say it will be Paradise, but I’m afraid it will be Hell for a couple years trying to unstick us from the war in Iraq, to reapply for honorable membership in the world community and to wrench the economy over onto a track that benefits all while cleaning up the environment.

There’s a mission statement.

Herald: Diaz-Balart may face challenger

It's tempting to rip into the Miami Herald for the headline above. Hey, that's perceptive. But no, let's look at the content.

There’s a sophomoric debating tactic called “the straw man.” The debater attempts to destroy the opponent’s argument by describing it as something different from what it really is, and defeating that (the fallacious straw man) rather than what the opponent actually argues.

We see this in Wednesday’s Miami Herald, back in the local section, where U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21) declares that the Democrats want to defeat him and his two cohorts in order to “improve relations with Cuba,” especially to get rid of the embargo.

Oh yeah? What about torture? The war in Iraq? SCHIP? We want someone with political courage to represent us in Washington, not a rubber-stamp. Someone intelligent and wise and future-oriented, not stuck in the past. Someone with true compassion, not the conservative lip-serving compassion. Someone who would complain about “signing statements” that eviscerate legislation. Someone who would save our environment, not pave it over. Yes, let’s have a reasonable Cuba policy, but that’s somewhere down in the lower half of our long list of complaints.

So, Mr. Congressman, your straw man is laid bare. And by the way, you confirmed our suspicions as to how you will campaign: with sophomoric debating tactics. Thank you for telegraphing your punch, which is a sophomoric boxing tactic.

We’ll assume that Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18) and your brother Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25) will be using the same tactics.

Why we need new members of Congress

Traveling lets you learn stuff. One way I try to accomplish that is by buying the local newspaper when I’m on the road and stopping for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sometimes I get hit by a stab of envy when I see that the other town has a better deal going than my town.

This happened the other day when I pulled off I-65 in Bowling Green, Kentucky, found a motel and a restaurant, and I perused the Louisville Courier-Journal over a meal.

Front-page headline: “Bridges’ finance plan OK’d.”

First paragraph: “The federal government has approved a plan to pay for the $4.1 billion Ohio River Bridges Project, clearing the way for Kentucky and Indiana to start construction this year.”

Stab of envy arose: I have closely followed the Everglades Skyway Project to build one measly bridge on a part of the Tamiami Trail and thereby help restore natural water flow in the Everglades. This eminently fine idea is going nowhere because there’s supposedly no money in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers budget to build it.

So, I ask, how is it that Kentucky and Indiana raise a ton of federal money for their dang bridges? When they seem to have little plan for how to raise their share? And how is it that we here in South Florida, with the only Everglades in the known universe, have spent a lot of state money on restoring the Everglades but can’t get federal money?

Answer: We have feeble members of Congress, who may say they love the Everglades, but they’re not delivering. I’m referring, of course, to the infamous Republican trio of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21), and Mario Diaz-Balart (FK-25), who were in the majority in the U.S. House from 1994 until recently but haven’t done jack when it comes down to important stuff for the ages.

Solution: New members of Congress. Brilliant.

Here are links to the Courier-Journal's articles of last Friday Jan 4 and Sunday Jan 6. For good measure, here's one on Sen. Mitch McConnell's re-election campaign treasury of $11 million. Finally, here's one on a Democrat announcing to run against an incumbent Republican member of Congress -- in Kentucky, unfortunately.

Yes to Torture, say Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balarts

Our three Republican members of the U.S. House have voted for torture. Yes, let’s reaffirm that: Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21), and Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25) voted Thursday with 186 other Republicans on the Nay side of a measure that the Democratic majority put forward to bar CIA agents from using waterboarding while questioning suspected terrorists.

Thank goodness that the Republicans no longer are in the majority in the House – the measure passed in a 222-199 vote. Let it not be said that the Democrats are worthless in Washington.

That said, we don’t know what will happen when this measure hits the Senate with its lovely rules and scant Democratic majority.

Here’s the story on DailyKos with a link therein to the full vote tally. A puzzle to me was why Dennis Kucinich was on the Nay side with most Republicans. I looked at his campaign web site and U.S. House web site and saw no explanation. Kendrick Meek was on the Aye side, while Debbie Wasserman Schultz was not voting.

Iran protest at Ros-Lehtinen office

Part of the group of 10 who
left a petition Thursday at
U.S. Rep. Ros-Lehtinen's office.



















No war over Iran. That was the message as protesters working under the MoveOn umbrella left petitions at the Miami offices of two Republican menbers of the U.S. House.

Targets were Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, FL-18, and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, FL-25.

New DailyKos post on Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez

Here's a new entry, Blue Cubano, for the list of bloggers talking about Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez running for the U.S. House of Representative. Blue's diary went up Tuesday evening with a lot of close analysis of opinion in the two districts, 25 and 21, respectively. I added a comment with details of the web sites backing Garcia and Martinez.

Good roundup on U.S. House races in Florida

Kudos to Progressive Florida for a comprehensive roundup of races for the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida. It's posted on FLA Politics, and the link is here.

This young blogger, Progressive Florida, sticks his neck out a bit on FL-24, where Tom Feeney is the ethically challenged incumbent, and only mentions Suzanne Kosmas as a Democratic challenger. Quickly riposting were several backers of Clint Curtis, also running as a Democrat in the district: There will be a primary! Not to forget Gaurav Bhola, also contending to run against Feeney. Lively comments ensued.

Good post. This is the kind of coverage the blogosphere aspires to provide in Florida. Something the Miami Herald won't do until the week before the election and the TV never will do. We actually are interested.

GOP expects to lose more House seats: Politico

And here's why they're on the way out (aside from a thousand other problems they face) -- they are against children's health. Count our South Florida Republicans among the child-hostile sitting ducks. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen all voted against legislation that would add millions of children to the SCHIP program. It passed the House with some Republican support but not enough to be veto-proof.

So there are two headlines on Politico tonight:

GOP expects to lose more House seats

GOP S-CHIP tactics leave opening for Dems

Enjoy.

Footnote: all three of our South Florida Democrats in the House voted for the legislation, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Ron Klein and Kendrick Meek.

DCCC said to target 5 U.S. House seats in FL

This item is not going to spread joy among us in Miami-Dade County, but the 2008 election is still a long way off and things may change. An AP story from Tallahassee said the national level of the
Democratic Party is targeting five U.S. House seats in Florida, none of them down here in the south. Here's the AP story.

This came to my attention via the Florida netroots, by the way. You, too, can join this Yahoo group and widen your horizon. Here's the link.