Hello, Michael Putney, meet the Democrat running for Congress in District 18

It was pretty funny to hear the tremendously well-informed Michael Putney say to US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen that she was running unopposed for Congress. Oh. no, replied the ever-alert member of the US House. I have an opponent. This was on live TV (I'm guessing it was live) Sunday mid-day, WPLG Local 10.

Well, here's the well-informed Democrat running to unseat the vastly incumbent Ms Ros. He's Rolando Banciella, born in Cuba, resident in South Florida since age 10.

If you look at his specs on http://banciella2010.info/, you'll see that his background is in real estate, and unlike the rich Democrat running for the US Senate, Banciella (click on the Who/Why link) didn't try to make a billion betting against home-owners and the banks but rather suggests that the government bail out the people with mortgages.

Sounds reasonable. He also has ideas for how to bring Social Security back to good health. Not to kill it, like Ms. Ros's party -- to bring it back to good health. And it sounds reasonable.

So, Michael Putney, how about retrieving your fumble on the Congressional races in your bailiwick, and inviting Rolando Banciella up for a talk. You've given his opponent a ton of time. Now's the time for fair.

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: Joe Garcia kicks off campaign for US House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No wonder David Rivera is desperate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is how low their ethical standards are.

FL-25: Joe Garcia is running!

This is good news! 



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right on, Eric.

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

FL-25: 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.

House health bill provisions that take effect in 2010

A couple posts back I put up a link to the full text of the House health bill -- 1,990 pages. Here's something more digestible: Speaker Pelosi's summary of the provisions that take effect in the first year.

Link to the House bill on health care

The House bill on health care: you can read it. It's a pdf file.

Only 1,990 pages. Did I read that right?

New Sen. LeMieux rakes in $1.6 million from his law firm

Our new senator, George LeMieux, should not be tempted into corruption in the short time he says he’ll be in office. For most of us the pay of a US senator would be a big raise – it’s $174,000 a year. LeMieux, though, would be taking a pay cut if he gave up his other job – running the law firm of Guenster Yoakley & Stewart – and tried to go for US senator, long-term.

At the law firm he’s paid $1,651,578 a year. So he reports to the US Senate on his financial disclosure report.  Pretty cushy, huh? Certainly no temptation is left to put a hand in the public treasury.
 

Thanks to the Miami Herald Naked Politics blog for putting this out. Now, what to make of it?

Donate TODAY to stop Florida gerrymandering

Today, Wednesday Sept. 9, 2009, is the day we've all agreed -- We have, haven't we? -- to donate to Fair Districts Florida to support the petition drive to stop gerrymandering.

Here's the link: http://www.fairdistrictsflorida.org/home.php

The logic is simple and direct. A big reason for Florida's political jungle is the fact that gerrymandering leads to gross misrepresentation in the state legislature and our congressional delegation. Even though there are many more registered Democrats than Republicans in Florida, the legislature lately has been almost three-fourths Republican and the Congressional delegation almost two-thirds Republican.

The petition that your donations support will put a referendum question on the ballot next year to ban political considerations in drawing district lines. We're all doing this on 9/9/09 to make an impact. Please do it before midnight Wednesday.

I just made my donation. I feel victory coming on already.

Miami-Dade Democrats favor universal health plan

Candidates for the Democratic nomination for US Congressional District 17, from the left: Yolly Roberson, Phillip J. Brutus, Shirley Gibson, Roderick Vereen.

A good Democratic Party meeting Monday night, and a fine setting at Florida Memorial University’s up-to-date auditorium.

A lot of new members of the Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee were sworn in, more than I could count with confidence. Almost 20, I think, a good sign that people are coming aboard even in the summer doldrums. Chairman BJ Chiszar said DEC membership was very close to his interim goal of 300.

Main events were three:

· We passed a resolution urging Congress to go for universal care in health reform. There was spirited debate as to whether it was good to go against President Obama’s plan that would add a public option to a wide modification of the present system.

· Candidates for the state legislature had the opportunity to speak from the stage and make themselves known. Seven Democratic challengers in open seats were featured, along with two incumbent reps, Oscar Braynon of Miami Gardens (District 103) and Ron Saunders of Key West, whose District 120 includes a chunk of Miami-Dade as well as Monroe County.

· Four of the Democrats vying to succeed US Rep. Kendrick Meek in FL-17 (he’s running for US Senate) were on stage for a candidates’ forum, making statements and responding to questions. The four were former state Rep. Phillip J. Brutus, Miami Gardens Mayor Shirley Gibson, state Rep. Yolly Roberson and attorney/activist Roderick D. Vereen. Also among Democratic candidates in FL-17, according to the Florida Division of Elections, are Haitian activist Marliene M. Bastien and state Rep. Frederica S. Wilson.

All three of these agenda items were well worth the drive to Miami Gardens, and the meeting remained lively until after 10 p.m.

State Rep. Ron Saunders, who is slated to be leader of the Democratic minority in the state House in 2010, described the statewide strategy to build the number of Democratic winners in next year’s election. The Democrats are specially targeting 34 of the 76 seats the Republicans now hold in the 120-seat House. The criterion for choosing them, he said, was to identify districts in which Alex Sink got 48 percent or more of the vote in her run for Florida chief financial officer in 2006.

Sink, now running for governor, is the only Democrat in the state cabinet. She won with 53.5 percent in 2006, meaning there must have been plenty of state House districts where she captured otherwise Republican voters.

And here's a three-hour event compressed to 40 seconds:

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FL-18: Annette Taddeo campaigns with big sign

Annette Taddeo with a supporter and TV reporter in front of giant sign on wheels.



My favorite congressional candidate, Annette Taddeo, campaigned Sunday evening with a lively party at Kaffe Krystal in Kendall. At the end, clipboards were passed around and quite a few people signed up to be Taddeo Troopers -- volunteers for the final push to election day.

Regular readers will know that I live in FL-18, which Taddeo is fighting to wrest from the rubber-stamp Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. If you, too, live in FL-18, look for this sign being towed around your neighborhood.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign chimed in for Annette today, sending an email to some of us in District 18 urging that we help her campaign.


The email said:
You can change politics in this country at every level -- up and down the ballot.

Our records show that you live in Florida's 18th district.

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Annette Taddeo for Congress:
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FL-25: A Diaz-Balart raver catches TV attention

Hey, Mario, you forgot to take your pills.



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

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

FL-18: Annette Taddeo instructs incumbent on Social Security

This was a telling moment in this week's forum for congressional candidates. The question was about the future of Social Security. Democratic challenger Annette Taddeo defended it with passion and logic. Then incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen hopped up and asked the audience if they were happy with their return from Social Security.

Surprise!



How out of touch can she be? This was on a day when the stock market tanked after tanking the day before. Big headlines. No hint that Ros-Lehtinen saw the foot heading for her mouth, even though it was hers.

One of Annette Taddeo's top qualifications for Congress is that she's not a politician, but rather a successful owner of a thriving business providing language services. More of her sort of expertise is badly needed in the U.S. House, and out with the unthinking rubber-stamps who need to look at their scripts to know what to say.

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.