Ileana Ros-Lehtinen flashback to 1989 - WTVJ-TV video: Ros-Lehtinen wins Special Election to succeed late Rep. Claude Pepper and makes history

Wolfson Archive YouTube Channel video: On what was a Special Election night in August of 1989, WTVJ reporter Ileana Bravo reports on the historic occasion of Florida state Senator Ileana Ros-Lehtinen winning a bruising election for the then-Miami Beach based congressional seat of Claude Pepper, who had died on May 30th at the age of 88, the oldest menber of Congress. She became the first Cuban-American ever elected to Congress and first Hispanic woman elected to the U.S. House. Uploaded July 11, 2013. http://youtu.be/jeC0ZwuB4e0

Future Florida governor Jeb Bush is rather obvious in the news clip, but who else do you recognize? (Suggested title in my YouTube inbox was "Happy Birthday, Madame Congresswoman!" due to her upcoming birthday on July 15th.) 

The other irony of this night, apparent to folks like me who grew-up in South Florida -but then living and working in Washington, D.C., and who knew people on Pepper's staff on The Hill- was that for many campaign cycles in the 1970's, the Republican who ran against longtime incumbent and Democratic icon Pepper was a Cuban-American businessman named Evelio Estrella, who was perhaps most noteworthy for refusing to do any campaigning in English in what was then FL-14, to the great astonishment of nearly everyone who was not Cuban-American, including the local and national news media.

Okay, so that happens once, you think.

Maybe there are no good candidates available and you have to field someone, even if a sacrificial lamb.

But Estrella ran enthusiastically several times!

Now THAT was Miami in the '70's!

Ros-Lehtinen is the current Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, just as the late Dante Fascell was, who represented Miami in Congress and whose CD extended south down to Key West.

I saw much of him over the years after I first moved to Washington in 1988 and became a regular presence at the full committee hearings as well as the European Subcommittee ones in the Rayburn Building, becoming very friendly with several members and the professional staff.

(Sometimes I'd even have lunch back with some friends there in the TV room while they watched either CNN or soap operas.)

That lasted until the GOP takeover in 1994, at which point Lee Hamilton had already succeeded Facell as Chair after he retired and didn't seek re-election in November of 1993.

As I've mentioned previously here on the blog, at various points while I was at IU, Lee Hamilton had been my congressman in Bloomington.

Guess what disgraced know-it-all pol came out from under his rock to sound off on Arizona shooting, in his typically condescending way? Larry Smith

Just when you think the myopic drive-by analysis of last week's shooting in Arizona can't get any worse... 'out from under a bubbling crude" comes disgraced former South Florida congressman Larry Smith, a longtime bête noire of mine and the well-deserved object of ridicule among most of the savvy Floridians I knew in Washington, D.C. for the 15 years I lived there, on and off of Capitol Hill.

Do I even have to ask you to guess which local print reporter propped-up a rock to get the opinion of someone convicted of betraying the public's trust?
Exactly.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Broward Politics blog
Former congressman says heated rhetoric must be tamed By Anthony Man
January 10, 2011 01:59 PM
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2011/01/former_congressman_says_heated.html

My favorite -NOT- part of the above blog post? This insipid nonsense by Smith:

Watching television on Sunday, “I was cheering [Dupnik.] He’s a guy who’s got guts. He’s not attacking the symptoms. He’s telling you what the solution is.”

Oh, right, the partisan sheriff is the hero, even though he's already admitted on Fox News that he has no proof of anything he's said thus far. In most places, even most parts of Florida, THAT would be called reckless, but in Larry Smith's world, that's stand-up and holler.
No wonder Dupnik's in law enforcement with a mind like that!

And did you notice what's NOT mentioned in the Broward Politics blog post?

More recently from my perspective in Hallandale Beach, Larry Smith was dumped as a Tallahassee lobbyist for the City of Hallandale Beach, in part for not being very forthcoming or accessible with information in a timely fashion.

Then-HB Commissioner Bill Julian literally begged his colleagues on the City Commission to give Smith some scraps after tossing him aside.
It was quite an embarrassing spectacle!

One I watched with great amusement.
I especially liked the part where Smith acted like he didn't know why he lost the account.
LOL!

Those of you who are pals of this shape-shifting character Smith, don't even bother to waste your time and energy sending me comments about this miscreant, as they will never see the light of day on this blog.

To me, Larry Smith has proven to be the very bad guy I always suspected he was -even before he got caught!

In the minds of many well-informed people I knew in Washington, he'd have kept doing what he was doing if he hadn't been convicted of "tax evasion and lying to election officials about the use of campaign funds to pay gambling debts."

Some of those people include his former staffers, the real people I felt sorry for after the scandal broke.
They had no idea they worked for a crook.

Oh sure, you can argue that if not for him getting prosecuted, South Florida would've been spared the indignity of ever having Peter Deutsch represent part of Broward in Washington, and maybe his golden-haired staffer Debbie Wasserman-Schultz would've had a less public role in society.

Who knows, maybe even one where she actually had to compete on an even playing field instead of from one of the most-gerrymandered congressional districts in Florida, which quite un-necessarily cuts this small city of under three square-miles in half, just so she can get all the residents east of U.S.-1, plus dipping down into Aventura; which really ought to be part of what was the Carrie Meek/Kendrick Meek/Frederica Wilson experiment in democracy with a small "d."

Meanwhile, HB residents who actually live closer to Pembroke Pines are represented by a congressional district based in Liberty City, Overtown and Opa-locka -while Aventura is represented by someone from Pembroke Pines- which is to say, poorly represented, even if it hadn't been the Meek inheritance.

After all, how many times did you ever see Frederica Wilson in Hallandale Beach at a public event before the late August primary?
That's actually a rhetorical question, since nobody I know among the well-informed EVER saw her.
Just her yard signs.

Personally, to me, forcing the obsequious and full-of-himself Peter Deutsch on D.C. was crime enough, though perhaps not an indictable one, as Deutsch did nothing to improve Broward's reputation on Capitol Hill in D.C. for small-minded, myopic devotees for all things reflexively anti-Castro, pro-Israel and pro-well-to-do retirees living upon the generosity of heir grand-children's taxes.
Yes, the home of the worst possible use of the pejorative, 'Condo commandos.'

As I've mentioned here before, Deutsch blew everyone's mind when he hired a college student to be his number one staffer, overseeing all the others.
Not a college grad graduate, mind you, an actual college student.


If you haven't read my prior post on him, you probably wonder what causes my animus towards Larry Smith.

Well, here it is, nice-and-simple: in my opinion, he cost American military personnel their lives because of his over-weaning ego and smugness by refusing to do the right thing when it was necessary.

And I was right there in the congressional room when it all happened, less than three feet from the State Department's representatives, who begged him and others to show some vision and leadership.
Larry Smith wasn't up to the task!

So how do you you like that for an answer?

The particulars of the bill of indictment regarding my animus towards Larry Smith are described pretty well in this mid-May 2010 email re Ron Book I sent out to some very interested parties throughout South Florida and the rest of the state.
Rather than write something new, I'll just go with this:

A few weeks ago, Ron Book's contract was NOT renewed by the City of Hallandale Beach -during the Florida Legislature's annual session no less!

That it was done in a very unprofessional way is par for the course in this very poorly-managed ocean-side city, but to do so during the Legislature's session only proves how truly myopic HB City Hall is.

I was already planning on writing about this subject later this week, but since you have sort of pre-empted me a bit, I will give you a few details.

Book's firm was hired by the city to replace former city lobbyist Larry Smith, the former South Broward congressman, a man I came to loathe after watching him in action up close for years while I lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and was spending LOTS of quality time on Capitol Hill.

(I was even there in the Rayburn Building on a fateful day during the reign of Bush 41, where during a long and torturous Foreign Affairs mark-up, Larry Smith voted against the State Dept.'s plan to sell certain missiles to Kuwait, because State and the Pentagon were afraid that Iraq would invade.

Well, we all know how that ended up, but what you and most South Floridians don't know -because nobody in South Florida's news media ever reported it- was that Larry Smith said that he was against the plan it because he knew the missiles would be used against -wait for it- Israel. Really.

So Smith and a couple of other super pro-Israel members of the Foreign Affairs Comm. -back when Dante Fascell was Chairman- voted it down.

FYI: The photo of Dante Fascell at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Fascell is the very painting of him that hangs in the House Foreign Affairs Comm. Chambers.

I used to think about Larry Smith's foolish vote every time I heard about an American casualty during the First Gulf War, which since I lived in Arlington County, meant that I knew lots of people affected by that war.)

A few months ago, Book's firm was planning on sending some pertinent docs down to the city, but when they called, the person on the other end of the phone at HB City Hall said something along the lines of, "Uhh... don't you guys already know?"

Book's firm found out after the fact that WEEKS earlier, the city had decided they were history. Why? That's a very good question.

Perhaps someone in South Florida's professional news media might some day think to ask Mayor Joy Cooper that question, especially now that they know.

I'll have more details on my blog soon, including the name of the person who had to tell Ron Book that he and his firm had been canned during THE most important time of the year in Tallahassee, but had never even been given the courtesy of a personal phone call to get the news.

That's just a snapshot of everyday life in Hallandale Beach under the Joy Cooper and Mike Good regime.

-----

Seriously, how much better-written is this nuanced Herald article below by Paul Anderson than a contemporary version of the same congressional redistricting fight would be by Patricia Mazzei? It's not even close.

When this article was written in 1982, when I was still at IU, the State of Florida had 15 House seats in Congress, with my having grown-up in the 1970's in North Miami Beach, part of the 13th, represented by William Lehman. It was one of the two most-Democratic-leaning seats in the entire country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections_in_Florida,_2010
The state now has 25 House seats and will have a total of 27 for the 2012 congressional elections as a result of the most recent federal census.
-----

Miami Herald

INCUMBENTS DEFEND REDISTRICTING DEAL

By Paul Anderson, Herald Staff Writer
May 30, 1982

In the end, Tom Gustafson was all alone.

For months, Gustafson, the boyish-looking state representative from Fort Lauderdale, had been counted among the leaders of the state House. His opinion was a key element as Broward's new legislative and congressional districts were proposed.

But his House colleagues on the conference committee negotiating the lines of the state's 19 congressional districts had cut a deal with the Senate without Gustafson's approval.

As he angrily described it later: "They gave up Broward for the rest of the state. And we'll have to live with it for the next 10 years."

Gustafson contends that the compromise district ignores the needs of Broward residents and panders to the political interests of incumbent U.S. Reps. E. Clay Shaw, the Fort Lauderdale Republican, and Dan Mica, the West Palm Beach Democrat.

Among other problems, Gustafson complained, the district lines split nine cities, including Coconut Creek, Dania, Hacienda Village, Hollywood, Lauderhill, North Lauderdale, Plantation, Sunrise and Tamarac.

Gustafson tried to make amendments. The committee, meeting in Tallahassee just over a week ago, voted them down time and again.

Gustafson said he didn't know until later that people chuckled at him and made sarcastic comments about his attempts. He insisted it didn't matter. "I was doing what I believe was right," he said.

Right or not, Gustafson simply didn't realize what he was up against.

A series of interviews indicates that Broward's new congressional districts are the product of a three-way deal between incumbents Mica and Shaw, plus Democrat Alan Becker, a hopeful in the new South Broward seat.

Becker and Shaw worked together although they opposed each other in the 1980 general election for Shaw's existing District 12 seat.

During negotiations, Shaw had the support of his longtime friend, state Sen. Jim Scott (R., Fort Lauderdale), chairman of the Broward legislative delegation and minority leader of the Senate.

Becker got Sen. Jack Gordon (D., Miami Beach) working on his side, mainly so that any proposed changes in Broward would not affect the districts of incumbent Dade Congressmen Dante Fascell, William Lehman and Claude Pepper, all Democrats.

With the consent of all involved, a Coral Gables attorney named Mark Deutsch, a good friend of Becker's, drew Broward's final district lines.

It's somewhat ironic that Gustafson disputed Deutsch's work in the end. Earlier this year, Gustafson hired Deutsch to help
draw proposals for new state House and Senate districts.

Gustafson paid Deutsch $1,500 out of his own pocket, he said, "because he's the best numbers man around ... But I only used his House and Senate maps. The congressional ones were obviously gerrymandered."

Deutsch won't trade charges with Gustafson for the record. He'll only discuss the details of the districts as he drew them and the House and Senate eventually approved them:

* District 14, with Mica as the incumbent, is shared with southern Palm Beach County. In Broward, it includes the cities of Coral Springs, Margate and Parkland; North Lauderdale and Tamarac west of Florida's Turnpike; Coconut Creek west of Lyons Road and north of Sample Road; and Lauderhill and Sunrise north of the Middle River Canal.

That section of Broward is marginally Democratic but considered safe for Mica, who tends to vote conservatively. There was a deliberate effort to move at least two major bastions of liberalism, Century Village in Deerfield Beach and Wynmoor Village in Coconut Creek, into Shaw's district, where they'll be swallowed and won't give Mica trouble with a more liberal primary opponent.

* District 15, with Shaw as the incumbent, is the only district fully within Broward. It contains the cities of Deerfield Beach, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Lauderdale Lakes, Lighthouse Point, Oakland Park, Pompano Beach, Sea Ranch Lakes, Fort Lauderdale and Wilton Manors; the easterly portions of Coconut Creek, Hacienda Village, Lauderhill, North Lauderdale and Tamarac; Sunrise east of University Drive; Dania and Hollywood north of the Dania Cut-Off Canal, and about a third of Plantation. Conservative district

The district is slightly more Democratic than Republican by party registration, but it is considered generally conservative and an easy one for Shaw to keep.

It also was deliberately drawn to include Port Everglades and three of Broward's four airports -- Pompano, Executive and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International -- because Shaw serves on the House Public Works and Transportation Committee.

Gustafson pointed out that the southern boundary also conveniently picked up Shaw's Dania Farm Nursery, a wholesale operation where Shaw has a family home that he uses while visiting the district.

* District 16, which has no incumbent, is shared with about 140,000 residents of northwest Dade County. In Broward, it includes the cities of Cooper City, Davie, Hallandale , Miramar, Pembroke Park and Pembroke Pines; Hollywood and Dania south of the Dania Cut-Off Canal; and Plantation and Sunrise west of University Drive and south of the Middle River Canal.

The district is overwhelmingly Democratic. Deutsch said it has fewer blacks than any other congressional district in the state -- less than 5 per cent -- and has the second highest concentration of Jewish voters.

Each district, following the mandate created by the 1980 census, contains slightly more than 512,000 people.

Shaw's role

Shaw, who had an aide in Tallahassee to represent him during the final hectic hours of negotiations, described his role as "providing encouragement where it was needed."

He dismissed Gustafson's arguments as "silly fights" and said he was "very pleased with the results of the process."

Shaw added: "Broward was, I think, shortchanged in that we have the population to justify almost two complete congressional districts ... But given the set of circumstances that we had to share the South Broward district with nearly 150,000 people from Dade, I think the Legislature did a terrific job."

If nothing else, Shaw and others -- including state Rep. Larry Smith (D., Hollywood), who is running against Becker -- are glad the House and Senate were able to settle the districts after five months of bickering.

By law, if the Legislature hadn't been able to draw the congressional districts, the task would have fallen to the court system and political considerations would have disappeared.

Broward's lines, which had been one of the chief obstacles in the state, no longer were an issue after a meeting early that Friday afternoon in Scott's office in the Senate Office Building. Gordon and Shaw's aide met with Scott while Deutsch waited outside -- anxious until he saw smiles as they emerged from a conference room.

Smith and his closest allies, including state Sen. Ken Jenne (D., Hollywood), signed off on the Becker-Mica-Shaw plan later when they became convinced that it was the only way to get a map out of the Legislature. Original lines Smith had pushed for Gustafson's original lines for the South Broward district, which basically used State Road 84 as the main northern boundary. The key, to Smith, was that both Becker and announced-Republican challenger Maurice Berkowitz live north of State Road 84 in Plantation.

Deutsch's plan moved the boundary.

Jenne said he was called in by House leaders to speak to the different factions after the conference committee approved its compromise map that afternoon and, once he saw it and talked to the major players, became convinced there was little that could be done.

"I told Larry that he should be satisfied. 'You can still win the district, and you want a map, so let it go,' I said," Jenne recalled.

Jenne disagrees with Gustafson's argument that Democrats gave Shaw an easy district.

The compromise "gives Democrats five out of six Gold Coast congressmen for certain, and I think that's a pretty good arrangement," he said. "And I think that we can win the 15th -Shaw's new district- with a strong enough candidate."

Two Democrats, Clerk of Courts Robert Lockwood and former U.S. Rep. Edward Stack, have said they will challenge Shaw this fall, but neither are particularly pleased with the way the 15th District looks.

Probably the most pleased with the whole arrangement is Becker, who kicked off his campaign in his tailor-made district in a big way last week.

Taking advantage of the makeup of his district, he sent out 20,000 letters with a strong pro-Isreal message soliciting funds from active Jewish voters.

It includes a letter of endorsement from former U.S. Sen. Richard Stone and a pamphlet that shows pictures of Becker on a recent trip to Israel.-

------

Twenty-eight years later... there's exactly ONE competitive congressional district in all of South Florida, the one that Allen West won, which is why the House reps are largely on automatic-pilot, and don't really care what you think, esp. DWS, which makes it easy for her to be away from the district so much, working on enhancing her party position elsewhere in the country, doing fundraising and glad-handing favors for other Dem incumbents.

Until the two constitutional amendments passed in November, the House members knew that it was their seat indefinitely unless something queer happened.
Now it has.

Recent news about South Florida super-lobbyist Ron Book you may not have heard about yet

Late Tuesday night while checking the Dashboard function of my Blogger.com blog, a place where all the other blogs I follow have their most recent posts sequenced for me to read in chronological order, I spotted a particularly interesting one about South Florda super-lobbyist Ron Book -father of Broward School Board candidate Lauren Book-Lim- over at Eye on Miami.

Titled Who is Ron Book Lobbying for in 2010? By geniusofdespair, it raised many questions that have often come up about in any discussion about him, a man that a lot of people swear by and many others swear about.
(You can find my previous posts on Ron Book by doing a search for him on the blog.)

Though I was pretty tired, I manged to stay awake long enough to share a thought or two that you might find of interest.
Or maybe not.
In any case, if you care to see what sort of anecdotal insight I added to one of Florida's most popular blogs, as well as a current list of whom he represents, here it is:
http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/2010/05/who-is-ron-book-lobbying-for-in-2010-by.html

I hope to see many of you in person on Wednesday at 3 p.m. and later at 7:30 p.m. at Hallandale Beach City Hall re agenda item #12-C:, the motion to terminate City Manager Mike Good.
http://www.hallandalebeachfl.gov/files/2010-05-19/Agenda%20Outline%20for%202010-05-19.htm
It should prove to be quite an interesting day, filled with lots of fireworks and histrionics, and perhaps, dare I say it, maybe even some long-overdue public accountability.

Below are my words of wisdom, such as they are.

----------

Dear Genius:
A correction to your list.

A few weeks ago, Ron Book's contract was NOT renewed by the City of Hallandale Beach -during the Florida Legislature's annual session no less!

That it was done in a very unprofessional way is par for the course in this very poorly-managed ocean-side city, but to do so during the Legislature's session only proves how truly myopic HB City Hall is.

I was already planning on writing about this subject later this week, but since you have sort of pre-empted me a bit, I will give you a few details.

Book's firm was hired by the city to replace former city lobbyist Larry Smith, the former South Broward congressman, a man I came to loathe after watching him in action up close for years while I lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and was spending LOTS of quality time on Capitol Hill.

(I was even there in the Rayburn Building on a fateful day during the reign of Bush 41, where during a long and torturous Foreign Affairs mark-up, Larry Smith voted against the State Dept.'s plan to sell certain missiles to Kuwait, because State and the Pentagon were afraid that Iraq would invade.
Well, we all know how that ended up, but what you and most South Floridians don't know -because nobody in South Florida's news media ever reported it- was that Larry Smith said that he was against the plan it because he knew the missiles would be used against -wait for it- Israel. Really.
So Smith and a couple of other super pro-Israel members of the Foreign Affairs Comm. -back when Dante Fascell was Chairman- voted it down.

FYI: The photo of Fascell at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Fascell is the very painting that hangs in the House Foreign Affairs Comm. Chambers.

I used to think about Larry Smith's foolish vote every time I heard about an American casualty during the First Gulf War, which since I lived in Arlington County, meant that I knew lots of people affected by that war.)

A few months ago, Book's firm was planning on sending some pertinent docs down to the city, but when they called, the person on the other end of the phone at HB City Hall said something along the lines of, "Uhh... don't you guys already know?"

Book's firm found out after the fact that WEEKS earlier, the city had decided they were history. Why?
That's a very good question.
Perhaps someone in South Florida's professional news media might some day think to ask Mayor Joy Cooper that question, especially now that they know.

I'll have more details on my blog soon, including the name of the person who had to tell Ron Book that he and his firm had been canned during THE most important time of the year in Tallahassee, but had never even been given the courtesy of a personal phone call to get the news.

That's just a snapshot of everyday life in Hallandale Beach under the Joy Cooper and Mike Good regime.

Know anyone who'd make a good City Manager?
I ask because well be looking for one very, very soon.

The FL-17 Congressional race the South Florida news media ignores

My comments follow this pointless Jan. 30th, 2010
Beth Reinhard column on Jeb Bush that didn't
need to be written and which, fortuitously, seems
to have been completely ignored by readers.

Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/1454784.html
Jeb Bush is back, and some think he's looking presidential
Beth Reinhard
January 30, 2010

MIAMI — When Jeb Bush left office four years ago, his public appearances were as scarce as bi-partisan man hugs.

He didn't want to upstage his successor in the governor's mansion nor his brother in the White House. Instead, he quietly cashed in by joining corporate boards and an elite speakers bureau, penned policy essays and gave infrequent interviews to conservative media.

But in recent months, as the Republican Party of Florida has grappled with a leadership vacuum, Bush's political profile has grown as fast as the national deficit.

He headlined a fundraiser for Bill McCollum's gubernatorial campaign, starred in a YouTube video touting Jeff Atwater's campaign for state chief financial officer and helped install state Sen. John Thrasher as the state party's heir apparent -- all the while looming on the sidelines of the fierce Republican Senate primary between Gov. Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio.

The capper came Thursday when, at the top of the 7 o'clock hour, right after Vice President Joe Biden, Bush made a rare network television appearance on NBC's Today Show. The intensely private Bush's interview with the overly familiar Matt Lauer rattled Florida political circles.

Was this the beginning of a Jeb juggernaut that would culminate in a 2012 presidential bid?

"My wife called me immediately and said he looked presidential,'' said Thrasher, who as the former House speaker helped Bush lay down his agenda. "I said, `Who knows? We'll see.' I'm ready to go to Iowa any time he's ready.''

Bush's comments about Crist's support for President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan got the most attention, but his call for Democrats and Republicans to work together was the biggest clue to his national ambitions.

"I think that leaders on both sides of the aisle need to figure out where there is common ground and at least focus on that,'' he said. "It's one thing to give a good speech. The other thing is to invite people that don't agree exactly with your point of view to build consensus.''

This from the governor who presided over some of Florida's most hyper-partisan battles of the last decade? Who helped declare his brother the winner of the 2000 presidential recount, threw out affirmative action with the "One Florida'' program, made the FCAT the end-all be-all of the public schools and insisted on getting in between brain-damaged Terri Schiavo and her husband?

But Bush's front-page days are long gone. Lady Gaga could learn a thing or two from the ex-governor, who has stayed relevant without killing us with overexposure. He picks and chooses candidates to support and the causes that matter most to him. He recently made a rare appearance in the Capitol to promote education reforms and helped launch a national group to elect Republican state lawmakers.

Though he hasn't given an endorsement, Bush has been an undeniable presence in the Crist-Rubio race. Consider: His well-placed compliments for Rubio and subtle digs at Crist. The involvement of his family's longtime fundraiser, Ann Herberger, in the Rubio campaign. The reception co-hosted by sons George P. and Jeb Jr. that raised $100,000 for Rubio.

If the race goes down to the wire, or if Crist launches a full-scale attack against Rubio, some Republicans predict Bush will speak out.

"If Jeb is going to publicly support Marco, it's better to keep the suspense building and do it closer to the election when voters are paying attention,'' said Rubio supporter Ana Navarro.
"Jeb Bush stumping through Florida for a Republican candidate makes a difference. Jeb Bush knows that. Marco Rubio knows that. And I suspect Charlie Crist fears that.''


Presidential?
No sane, well-informed person thinks that

Above, a perfect example of the longstanding
problem at the Miami Herald: the non-story
that crowds out the more deserving.

It's been an epidemic over there since I first
returned to South Florida from the Washington, D.C.
area in late 2003, after 15 years of reading
at least 5-6 newspapers most days,
plus countless journals and weekly magazines
covering all aspects of public policy.
Not bragging, mind you, just stating the facts
so you know where I'm coming from.

When I first started to write a few quick thoughts
about this particular Beth Reinhard column last
Wednesday night, February 3rd at about 9:35 p.m.,
more than three full days after it was published,
this column had elicited zero "recommends"
from readers and zero reader comments.
Like it was never seen... a ghost.
And like a ghost, lighter-than-air.

That's very amusing to me because when I first
saw it shortly after it was posted online, I was
initially tempted to leave a biting maybe even
snarky comment about what I thought this
column really shows -contempt for the
diminishing number of Herald readers.

But since as we all know, the Herald's online
comment site allows readers less space to
comment than almost any Florida newspaper
or media site around, and I have an infinite
amount of space here at Home Sweet Blog,
once again I wrote myself a note about this,
and resolved to return to it a few days later.
In this case, I've waited to see how it all
turned-out.

(Someone finally wrote a comment last
Thursday afternoon on the Herald's site
for the Saturday morning column
-five long days of invisibility.)

That it was ignored for so long pleases me
to no end, since it only serves to confirm
once again what I've thought for a long time
about the Herald's downward spiral in
quality and sense of purpose.

To illustrate this, let me bring up something
that will be before us for months this year,

Consider the fact that though we've known
since last summer that South Florida's
FL-17 would have a new face come this
November, rather than take advantage
of that and show local readers and viewers
what's going on, the local media's abysmal
coverage of that congressional campaign
thus far has consisted largely of five
sentences from Beth Reinhard of the
Herald, one of which was a list of candidates
names.
Talk about underwhelming!

The story had all the electricity of a list
of Honorable Mention winners at the
County Youth Fair being read on a
scratchy elementary school PA system.

If you doubt me, here's the proof.
Read it for yourself and try to explain
it away.


Miami Herald
CONGRESS
11 seeking Meek's seat BETH REINHARD
December 2, 2010

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek's campaign for the Senate has unleashed a torrent of candidates vying for his Miami-Dade congressional seat in 2010.

Eleven candidates -- 10 of them Democrats -- are running in the predominantly black district.

Haitian businessman and civic activist Rudy Moise announced he was running in October, held a press conference Tuesday in Liberty City.

The other Democratic candidates are Leroy Adam, Marleine Bastien, former state Rep. Phillip Brutus, state Rep. James Bush III, Miami Gardens Mayor Shirley Gibson, state Rep. Yolly Roberson, Roderick Vereen, Miami Gardens Councilman André Williams, and state Sen. Frederica Wilson.

The only Republican candidate is Corey Poitier.

-----

Satisfied?
More than two full months later, that's still
IT.
That's the sum of the Herald's coverage
of FL-17.



So, in a year full of dynamic and interesting
possibilities, where we've already seen the
unexpected occur in Massachusetts, despite
the D.C. and Boston political chattering class
poo-pooh Scott Brown's chances of being
elected to the U.S. Senate, pronouncements
which the people of Massachusetts promptly
and overwhelmingly ignored, rather than
getting pro-actively engaged and follow the
eleven announced candidates themselves
as they to forge coalitions locally and see
how their their opinions and ideas evolve
-or not-on a whole range of issues,
like health care, Cap & Trade, etc.,
what has the Herald and the rest of the
South Florida news media done?

They've chosen to ignore the one new
Congressperson that all of South Florida
knows we'll have, and instead, given much
more political attention to what, exactly?

To Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's phony
anti-democratic Tele-Town Halls, which had
all the excitement of day-old bagels served cold?

No, the Herald and Company completely
downplayed her inability to appear before any
crowd that wasn't pre-selected and staged.

In fact, the Herald's Editorial Board and
the local TV political reporters didn't even feel
the need to go after low-hanging fruit that was
positively begging for some mention.

Even when Town Halls were front page
news stories all over the country, and a small
reminder of what we were all taught was the
cornerstone of participatory democracy,
they resisted the urge to sagely mention that
DWS' aloof, robotic manner and lack of humility
and unwillingness to publicly meet her
constituents -and opponents- when she's
a certified gerrymandered shoo-in, makes it
much harder for labels like DEMAGOGUE
not to stick to her like glue -forever.

Despite all the media kisses and kid-glove
treatment she's received over the years locally,
as well as the likes of MSNBC's Chris Matthews,
and the silly talk of bigger office in store for her,
DEMAGOGUES like her rarely if ever rise in
Washington beyond a certain level.
I saw it on Capitol Hill for myself, year-after-year.

Regardless of how liberal or conservative someone
may be when they vote on Capitol Hill, personality
traits still count for a lot, and Members of Congress
do NOT usually vote for people to fill party leadership
posts who actually irritate or annoy them too much
to be trusted with power.
Nancy Pelosi is the exception to the rule.

It's also why if the GOP ever takes over in the next
few years, it's more likely than not that Mike Pence
of Indiana will be the Speaker of the House, not
current House Minority leader John Boehner,
from Ohio, who rubs a lot of Republican members
the wrong way, and whom many do not personally
find either savvy or trustworthy enough to be Speaker.
(You'll see.)

That's why I wrote years ago on my blog that unlike
was often the case with congressmen who have
represented me over the years, like Dante Fascell,
Frank McCloskey and Lee Hamilton,
two of whom I saw on a weekly basis for years
while I lived in the Washington area, no Member
of Congress would ever think to ask DWS what
she thinks in order to help them make up their
mind on a tough approaching vote.
DWS is a cog in a machine, like The Borg.

Free will does not compute with her.

Her use of pre-selected crowds at her Tele-Town
Halls, in a district where she is guaranteed
re-election, is but the latest and most obvious
proof of that.
I almost feel sorry for her, except for the fact
that she has consciously chosen to go the route
she's gone, so whatever happens to her,
it's her own fault.

Now, with an election to decide the FL-17 seat
in less than nine months, in a year when the
GOP could/may take back 40 House seats,
NONE of the announced candidates has publicly
campaigned in the Broward County portion
of this district, which as it happens, includes
my own part of Hallandale Beach.

Personally, I've never voted for someone
for Congress whom I have not met or
spoken to.
I'm not about to start.

So here's a question.
What would happen if an articulate, well-informed
moderate Anglo candidate were to jump into the
FL-17 congressional race against what is now an
all African-American, all Miami-Dade County group
that doesn't or won't campaign in Broward County?

Would it take something like that for the South Florida
news media to finally pay attention to the campaign
race?

Perhaps not, but at least then some real issues
would finally be raised and discussed publicly,
and the self-evident weaknesses of so many
of the announced candidates could be properly
exposed to voter's scrutiny, and a well-qualified
candidate could actually emerge who represents
the WHOLE congressional district, not just part
of it.

That is NOT happening now.

Something to think about.

In future posts here, I'll have some good
probing questions for you to ask FL-17
candidates, especially if they want to get
votes from the well-informed people I know
and speak to regularly.





Broward County Ethics Committee meets on
Wednesday mrning at County HQ on Andrews
Avenue, Room 430, 8:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m.

See my previous article on South Florida news
media ignoring the FL-17 race, here. from
Sunday, November 8, 2009
South Florida media blows easy lay-up on health care reform -what else is new?
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/south-florida-media-blows-easy-lay-up.html