More than a month has passed, actually now it has been two. In the third week of June, I heard the song in my head for the first time. With each day that passes the volume increases. Friends, family, and familiars were privy to what has been a curiosity for me. Still haunted by what I know needs to be shared farther and wider, today I tell you my tale. The story begins with two Florida Democrats. Each aspires to fill the one open United States Senate seat. The date; June 22, 2010. I was amongst those invited to attend the initial Meek Greene debate. The place? The Palm Beach Post headquarters. The time? Midday. The reality realized and the reason my mind marinated in the melody titled It's About Time, today, Democrats, Progressives are not as they were.
"I don't really want to stop the show,
But I thought that you might like to know," That the choice becomes clearer.
"So let me introduce to you
The one and only" Carole Kaye, Candidate for Florida House District 86
Local Election Days are upon us. For months now candidates for elected office have roamed their regions. Everyday people have had ample opportunity to meet, greet, and yes, even eat a meal with aspirants. Often, one challenger's name is better known. He or she may be an incumbent, or closely associated with one. Consider the Florida House race in District 86. Two very different Democratic candidates Carole Kaye and Lori Berman appear on the ballot. Who are these office seekers? What will they do for my community, commerce, our children, and me? Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, and parts of Boca Raton constituents, who have not made politics their lives, search for answers as they travel to the polls.
Citizens are inundated with "information." Posters dot the landscape. Banners fly on Boulevards. Constituents don pins and place placards on their lawn. Windows and automobile bumpers have not escaped unscathed. Today, the message heard on avenue is "The time is now." Indeed, it is. Early voting began on August 9 and will continue through August 22, 2010. In Florida, while technically Primary Election Day is August 24, 2010, in reality it is today. In Palm Beach County House District 86, Primary Election Day is the final deciding date. Democrats with different styles compete for state House 86 seat. there is no Republican challenger in this race. The winner of the Primary will represent South Palm Beach County communities. Yet, many people do not feel equipped to decide. Whom might I cast a ballot for, the much lauded Lori Berman or the lesser known, highly qualified, Attorney, Educator, and person who for years has shared and cared for my backyard, Carole Penny Kaye.
It is not even close. The worst political campaign run in Florida...maybe ever... has to be that of Jeff Greene. Consider:
1. He is clueless about Florida, the Democratic Party and voting, and is new to each by his own admission.
2. He brags about making money, and lots of it, on the backs of those less fortunate.
3. His campaign ads are so pathetic, they include attacks on his opponents' mother, who, unlike Greene, has been elected and served in public office.
4. He claims he can generate jobs, which is not part of the stated responsibilities of a U.S.Senator, but, even if it were, he has no clue about the federal agencies with whom he must work to create those jobs.
5. As demonstrated on television, he cannot remember if his boat docked in Cuba with him or without -- so, he was a liar, liar, pants on fire.
It is unfortunate that we met under an unfriendly environment. I appreciate your offer to meet with me to discuss ways that Leadership Florida can improve the debate rules so that future statewide campaigns will be more open to ideas and issues than this 2010 U.S. Senate election has been.
I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories. The rules of political engagement in America, however, are degenerating due to the exorbitant influence of money. In the 2010 U.S. Senate Democratic Party campaign, where the exclusion began, in the Annual Meeting in October at Disney World, Florida Chair Karen Thurman and the Florida Democratic Executive Committee, before the end of qualification in April, openly and formally declared themselves in favor of candidate Kendrick Meek. This Florida Democratic Party partiality is against our party’s neutrality regulations. On several occasions, members of the State Committee told me, confidentially, that Ms. Thurman was threatening them with retribution if they broke ranks with her. And so that undemocratic act began the political roller coaster for the 2010 election cycle in Florida.
READER’S NOTE: I’m away on vacation in New York this week, but before I left town, I interviewed Senate candidate Maurice Ferre. He had a lot to say, about the Florida Democratic Party, about his opponents, and about what he says is the press’ complicity in undermining the democratic process. Read on…
The Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate has been brutal. Since Jeff Greene entered the race, Rep. Kendrick Meek has gone from ignored candidate for more than a year, to the protagonist in one of the election season’s bloodiest battles; one that has turned some Democrats off both major candidates. That’s where Maurice Ferre hopes to come in.
United States Senate Candidate Maurice Ferre today announced that his campaign has filed suit against Leadership Florida and the Florida Press Association for deliberately excluding him from its debate. The complaint filed by Miami attorney William Pena Wells states that Leadership Florida and the Florida Press Association deliberately violated their own rules to exclude Ferre as an invited candidate to the debate scheduled for August 10, 2010.
The debate organizers publicly stated that they would invite candidates based on the results of a Mason-Dixon poll conducted within a narrow time period, 45-50 days prior to the Primary date. Rather than abide by that, the organizers never commissioned a poll and instead invited some candidates while excluding Ferre. Questioned by the Ferre campaign, the organizers amended the rules and quickly held a poll which was released on August 3, 2010 justifying the exclusion. The Ferre campaign gave the debate sponsors an opportunity to include him prior to filing suit, but they declined.
According to Maurice Ferre, "The press is the fourth power that keeps us a free country. How can you exclude someone and say that is serving the public?"
Florida Dem Senate Candidate Ferre Questions Nomination Vetting Process
Fairness of Party Leaders & Palm Beach Post Questioned
By Cal Colgan CapitalWirePR 202 662 7242 cal@ediversity.net T.L. Oliver contributed to this article.
Politics Wed, August 04, 2010 10:42 AM
Washington, DC - Florida Democratic senatorial candidate Maurice Ferre doesn’t feel included in the democratic process. The former mayor of Miami said he has not been getting enough attention from the mainstream press or the Democratic establishment in the party’s 2010 senate race.
In an email to CapitalWirePR, Ferre, 75, said that top Democratic officials endorsed Congressman Kendrick Meek, one of Ferre’s primary opponents in the race, over the former mayor. “The exclusion began with pressure from (former president) Bill Clinton to preclude me from funding,” Ferre wrote in the email. Ferre said that “the whole Democratic establishment” eventually endorsed Meek, including President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez.
In doing so, Ferre said, these top Democratic officials skirted Democratic Party rules. In a phone interview with CapitalWirePR, Ferre said, “The official Democratic Party rules (state) . . . if there is more than one Democrat, the party (does not endorse a candidate).”
Much like his Democratic peers, Ferre said the press has also joined in the exclusion process. The former mayor was not allowed to participate in the June 22ndDemocratic candidate debate monitored by the Palm Beach Post between Meek and Jeff Greene. Why? Because Ferre only garnered 3 percent favorability amongst Democratic voters in a poll by Quinnipiac University released earlier in the month.
Floridians might need a lantern when looking for an honest candidate for the U.S. Senate this year, according to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).
The bright Florida sunlight might not be enough to find one.
It's been awhile since the fraud case against former Florida GOP chairman, Jim Greer, came to light. He is indicted for grand theft, money laundering and running an organized scheme to defraud that could land him in jail for 75 years.
He pled not guilty, but it's clear that Florida's Republican voters don't care. Well, that's not exactly true, I can't find any conservatives or independents who know anything about it.
I asked one conservative if they thought the RPOF AMEX scandal would influence their vote.
3 of 4 major Fl Senate candidates make 'crooked list' by Beth Reinhard Naked Politics
Florida voters should be swelling with pride. The state has the dubious distinction of having three of its four major Senate candidates — ex-Republican Charlie Crist, Republican Marco Rubio andDemocrat Kendrick Meek – make a national list of the most “crooked candidates.”
The list was compiled by the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group that blew the whistle on former Republican Rep. Mark Foley.
Also on the list: Republican upstart candidate Allen West, who is trying to take out Democratic Rep. Ron Klein. Florida really outdid itself, providing more than one-third of the names for a list of 11 people.
The forced resignation of Shirley Sherrod from the U.S. Department of Agriculture is disgraceful because it is so Un-American!
That Fox News takes information and purposefully distorts truth to serve its and owner Rupert Murdoch's right wing agenda, is not new. What is so bothersome is that biased “news” and the insertion of opinion for fact is becoming a daily pattern in many news outlets, including in Florida.
The disregard of two of the four Democrats running for the U.S. Senate is a distortion of the truth. Not permitting Glen Burkett and me to be a part of a series of debates is denying Florida voters access to all of the facts. Further, purposefully not covering our campaign is a disservice to Florida voters.
Fox News knew that by not giving full information (that the tape was from 1986 and that the poor white farmers from Georgia, Mr. and Mrs. Spooner did get help from Ms. Sherrod, thus saving their farm) deliberately did not permit the audience to get the full story. That's against the principles of our Democracy.
The saddest part of the Sherrod resignation is that the Obama administration did not do a full investigation, and thus added to the injustice. Shirley Sherrod should never have been asked to resign. We expect a lack of fact-checking from some news sources, but not from our highest officer in the Department of Agriculture.
William E. Gibson, the Sun-Sentinel's Washington bureau chief for 25 years, says that Meek's “only real Democrat” message ignores formerMiami Mayor Maurice Ferre, very much a Democrat who also is in the race.
Watch the video and read William Gibson's comments here:
Good afternoon Florida voters. Do you know that you can vote from home? This method is known as an absentee or mail-in ballot. We, at florida4ferre, have realized that many registered voters within Florida are away on vacation, business trips, or just too busy to wait in long lines to get their voice out. It is actually an easier way than going to the polls. ANYONE can vote from home, just simply register for it. Here is a link on how to vote from home.
Twenty-five years ago, near the end of his 12-year reign as mayor of Miami, Maurice Ferre compared himself to a surfer, a politician skilled enough to navigate a continually shifting wave. “You’ve got to shift your weight at the right time or you get wiped out,” he said back then.
If we can spend $1 Trillion in two useless wars, we can certainly spend $1 Trillion in overhauling and upgrading our transportation systems over the next ten years.
Welcome to the dog days of summer here in the Magic City- where something about the dead heat of summer makes people say bold and honest things (like the quote above). Take the case of aspiring democratic Senate candidate Maurice Ferré, whose speech before the Floridians for Better Transportation Conference today (excepted below) was a refreshingly bold statement about the changes that need to be made to Federal Transportation Policy. I think he hits on important points and outlines a progressive policy for transit expansion in the US. It is especially refreshing to hear a candidate for the United States Senate cite smart growth as a transportation priority for Florida. I wonder if any of the other candidates for Florida’s Senate seat - Republican, Independent or Democrat alike – are willing to establish a similarly progressive position on this important issue?
It's been a week since Kendrick Meek and Jeff Greene, the two Democratic front-runners for Florida's open U.S. Senate seat, went toe-to-toe in their first debate. Left out of the debate were a number of candidates for the seat, including Maurice Ferre, a former six-term mayor of Miami. Ferre has been out of politics for 15 years, and he's polling at under five percent. But his candidacy has garnered a lot of interest in South Florida, his political home. Ferre tells WLRN's Christine DiMattei why he's running.
My campaign took me to Central Florida on Saturday June 26, so instead of joining my fellow Miamians on South Beach, I showed up at 10:30 AM at Lori Wilson Park on Cocoa Beach for Hands Across the Sand.
Tony Sasso, Amy Tidd, members of the Sierra Club and Surfrider Foundation and hundreds of caring Americans held hands for ten minutes, joining thousands along other beaches in Florida with a simple, firm, clear message: NO, to offshore oil drilling; YES, to clean energy.
Charlie Crist (R) is not running for reelection so Alex Sink (D) and Bill McCollum (R) are running for his seat. Sink is the current CFO for Florida and she won with 53% of the vote in 2006. McCollum is the Attorney General of Florida (who supports repealing the healthcare bill which prevents companies from denying people with preexisting conditions) and he was elected with 52% of the vote in 2006. A recent poll showed McCollum leading by 9. This looks like a big lead for McCollum but a month before, the same firm showed McCollum leading by 15. Sink will have to win without high turnout like Obama had in 2008 but she is more popular in rural areas so margins there may make up for lost young and minority votes. It is even possible that McCollum will not the primary but the baselines are done assuming he does.
Sink's background: she worked with Bank of America until Governor Lawton Chiles (D) appointed her for the state education comission. She then ran for CFO in 2006 and defeated Tom Lee (R)
McCollum's background: he was a congressman from Orlando from 1980 to 2001, representing Disney World at one point. He ran for Senate in 2000 losing 51%-46% to Bill Nelson who prevented McCollum from having large margins in rural areas. In 2006, McCollum ran for Attorney General and won, winning large margins in the I-4 Corridor.
How I did the baselines: I added the percentages of each county from the 2006 CFO election, 2006 Attorney General election and 2008 Presidential election and divided the result by three. I then subtracted 1 point from Sink. The percentages below show how the Gubernatorial election will look if the race ties. Also, I am very sorry the baselines are not in one straight line. Here are some helpful links: For 2006 CFO election: http://election.dos.state.fl.u...
Now finally the baselines: County name Sink McCollum Other Alachua 59% 40% 1% Baker 27% 72% 1% Bay 32% 67% 1% Bradford 35% 64% 1% Brevard 45% 54% 1% Broward 66% 33% 1% Calhoun 42% 57% 1% Charlotte 44% 55% 1% Citrus 44% 55% 1% Clay 28% 71% 1% Collier 35% 64% 1% Columbia 39% 60% 1% DeSoto 43% 56% 1% Dixie 42% 57% 1% Duval 44% 55% 1% Escambia 38% 61% 1% Flager 49% 50% 1% Franklin 47% 52% 1% Gadsden 72% 27% 1% Gilchrest 39% 60% 1% Glades 47% 52% 1% Gulf 43% 56% 1% Hamilton 51% 48% 1% Hardee 36% 63% 1% Hendry 45% 54% 1% Hernando 47% 52% 1% Highlands 41% 58% 1% Hillsborough 48% 51% 1% Holmes 31% 68% 1% Indian River 40% 59% 1% Jackson 43% 56% 1% Jefferson 60% 39% 1% Lafayette 38% 61% 1% Lake 41% 58% 1% Lee 41% 58% 1% Leon 63% 36% 1% Levy 44% 55% 1% Liberty 45% 54% 1% Madison 56% 43% 1% Manatee 45% 54% 1% Marion 44% 55% 1% Martin 42% 57% 1% Miami-Dade 56% 43% 1% Monroe 52% 47% 1% Nassau 31% 68% 1% Okaloosa 26% 73% 1% Okeechobee 46% 53% 1% Orange 53% 46% 1% Osceola 52% 47% 1% Palm Beach 62% 37% 1% Pasco 46% 53% 1% Pinellas 51% 48% 1% Polk 44% 55% 1% Putnam 44% 55% 1% Santa Rosa 27% 72% 1% Sarasota 48% 51% 1% Seminole 43% 56% 1% St. Johns 34% 65% 1% St. Lucie 53% 46% 1% Sumter 37% 62% 1% Suwanee 38% 61% 1% Taylor 44% 55% 1% Union 35% 64% 1% Volusia 51% 48% 1% Wakulla 50% 49% 1% Walton 30% 69% 1% Washington 34% 65% 1%
Now for those of us (like me) who like visual aides, here is a map of the county percentages.
Dark Red: McCollum 65%+ Red: McCollum 60%-64% Lighter Red: McCollum 55%-59% Even Lighter Red: McCollum 50%-54% Turquoise: Sink 50%-54% Blue: Sink 55%-59% Dark Blue: Sink 60%-64% Even Darker Blue: Sink 65%+
A little more analysis:
The map shows Sink doing well along the Gold Coast, the Tallahassee area while winning a few counties in the I-4 corridor. McCollum does well in the rest of the state, winning the Jacksonville area, the whiter retiree communities in the north and south as well as the Pensacola area. To nitpick, Sink did very well in the rural counties around Tallahassee in 2006 but since they are trending rightward, the maps show her winning much less than she did in 2006. Also, McCollum is from Orange County so this should help reduce Sink's margin there (McCollum won 55% in Orange County in 2006) but Orange County's leftward shift should give Sink a small margin, as shown in the map.
Overall, the counties colored blue appear to not match Obama's coalition which produced big margins in Orange County but not around Tallahassee. The results should be similar to a close Florida election without the Obama effect.
Another note: this is my first post here and I am not too familiar with this blog so if this post does not fit what you discuss, please let me know. Thanks.
Most of the world will be focused on St. Petersburg today...not in the U.S.S.R., but Florida. But the departing Governor is only one story--the other being the incoming Governor of Florida. It is almost like a big secret. It is not like we don't not have experienced and known candidates--two Cabinet members, a recognized state senator and a multi-millionaire businessman, at a minimum. Their selection of running mates hopefully will generate some interest in the race.
If not, this writer predicts that you may see a name not heard of yet enter the race. Maybe more than one. Stay tuned.
Florida has been hit especially hard by the recession, shedding the highest number of jobs across the country – nearly 17,000 – last November, making it one of the worst-hit states in the nation.
As of 8/21/10: We're fooling around with Tumblr; any suggestions? Check out this book.
Immediately below, in the "Candidates" section, are links to select candidates' Twitter, Facebook and contribution pages.
These are not paid ads.
The campaign web sites of select candidates; click on "FB" to check them out on FaceBook, "T" to follow them on twitter, and "$" to donate. These are not paid ads.
- At "After All, He Is Black", we look at the inability of Florida "conservatives" to deal with racial issues.
- "Take this job ..." is a compendium of some of the things Florida employers are permitted to do to their employees.
Please leave comments or e-mail us with additional material for these projects.
About Our Feeds
Our collection of RSS feeds includes our selection of continuously updated Florida Netroots posts and Florida newspaper company "blog" posts, as well as a "Crist Watch" feed.
