Addition by subtraction: Beth Reinhard leaving Miami Herald, heading to D.C. and The National Journal. Herald readers finally win one!

Per Miami Herald Losing Chief Political Reporter Beth Reinhard To National Journal
Miami NewTimes By Tim Elfrink,
Thursday, September 2 2010 @ 1:39PM
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/09/herald_losing_chief_political.php

It's only my opinion, but from my own perspective and experience, the Miami Herald's Beth Reinhard can't leave South Florida soon enough.

I know that makes some of you laugh because you know I thought THAT was the case years ago, too. Know that I'd have been only too happy to drive her to the train station to split town if people down here actually took trains.
You're right -it's a long time coming.

But long-frustrated Miami Herald readers finally have a reason to cheer.

Reinhard's oh-so predictable and often deadly-dull Conventional Wisdom take on the passing political scene may've been fine for the Quad Cities in 1966, but among other fatal flaws, she seem handcuffed to the "Usual Suspects," forever quoting the same handful of people with motives she never bothered to reveal.

(And yes, I've been to the Quad Cities area in Iowa, too, spending a week there in Davenport, driving over from Chicago for business in 1987. One night, when I couldn't fall asleep in my hotel room, I went for a walk around midnight, eventually crossing the Rock Island Centennial Bridge (U.S.-67) over the Mississippi River from Davenport to Rock Island.

I was NOT expecting that the bridge sidewalk would be mesh-like metal, since that meant I couldn't look down, otherwise it would have caused me to get dizzy over the water.
It was a VERY weird sensation to walk across the bridge at that hour and just stand there in the middle for 15-20 minutes and think of all the history that has gone past you and below you.

I eventually ate at an IHOP or diner in Rock Island and got back to my hotel room in Davenport around 3:30 a.m. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Centennial_Bridge

I also visited the great minor league ballpark there on the River, then called John O'Donnell Stadium when Quad Cities was a Cubs affiliate. It's now called Modern Woodmen Park and home of the Cardinals' farm team, the River Bandits.
Look at the photos! The Marlins would be lucky to have a view like the one over first base.
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/team1/page.jsp?ymd=20080606&content_id=410802&vkey=team1_t565&fext=.jsp&sid=t565)

It's no wonder that seasoned political reporters and columnists from outside of Florida, including some I know, were always mystified when they came down here and got a chance to read more than one example of the Reinhard Method, or to hear her talk on TV or radio.

It's not like they expected a patrician David Broder clone or an intellectual David Frum-type would be the leading political reporter at the Herald, since this is Miami, after all, the anti-wonk capital, but they were in no way prepared to see that things were just -as bad- as I had described in phone calls or emails about how little respect or column inches Broward County rated.
They thought I'd always been exaggerating.
Nope.

Earlier this year, after one such reporter friend had visited South Florida and had absorbed some sun and digested some bon mots de Reinhard, and returned home, she emailed me that she's sure that Reinhard probably has some special talent that we're just not privy to.

I replied that could be true but that her writing speaks for itself -mediocre and uninspiring.

Try hard to think of a column or article of her's that questioned the South Florida version of CW, or tried to get to the heart of a matter thru an unconventional approach.
Or even the last time you cut one of her article/columns out of the paper?

You can't, and like 99% of all Herald readers, once you saw the headline of one of her stories, and even more so, of one of her columns, you knew exactly what to expect.

The whole thing was telegraphed because you know she has such a small bag of tricks in her arsenal.
Plus, she never ever surprises you.

Thus, Reinhard never ever veered from her connect-the-dots script, including her failed attempts to seem like a self-effacing Tina Fey at times when it wasn't called for and only served to distract.

Reinhard was too easily pacified and seduced by CW and too often seemed pleased with herself for peddling the mundane.
She was like a slightly less-mean-spirited Tracy Flick, but failed to see the truly compelling stories all around us down here because then she'd have had to leave her comfort zone.
She didn't want to.

That so many people wouldn't return her phone calls, as she recently wrote about Marco Rubio, whom I like and will vote for but who clearly is not without his flaws, may, in fact, not be a result of their not liking what she wrote and actually be something simpler: people feeling that far too often, Reinhard had burned them.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/13/1775520/reinhard-rich-political-novices.html

That she called with the article already written in her head, and wasn't open to actually listening to their side or perspective and perhaps re-questioning her original aim with a story.
Facts should matter at least once in a while, shouldn't they?

Seriously, why would you call someone back, much less a reporter, if they won't listen to what you say, and just want to steamroll you about some topic, regardless of what it is?
You doubtless do it all the time with friends and relatives -I know I do.
Why should others be any different?

Reinhard's worst sins in my book was her low-hanging fruit sense of journalism and consistent lack of curiosity, as she failed over-and-over to give readers the sort of insight into some pol or official's motives and outlook that would be helpful to readers in understanding them, and what was going on policy-wise in anti-wonk South Florida.

It was sometimes like she was the daughter of the Beacon Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the Knight Foundation, and only wanted to please already-powerful people.
She'd tut-tut them, perhaps, but always like a loving daughter reproaching her father for something he's wearing that embarrasses her.

I didn't need every article of her's to be like a fascinating Vanity Fair profile from the early-to-mid 1990's under Clinton, but one every few YEARS might've been nice!

(Or maybe I was just spoiled by 15 years of daily reading the WaPo's Style section from 1988-2003. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/print/style/)

Seriously, after all this time, do Herald readers now have any added insight from her into why Meek, Crist or Rubio are the way they are and do what they do?

No, which is why out-of-town/national reporters so consistently seem to get to the heart of a local matter, general sense of mood or pierce a local/state political personality's facade when they drop in, yet she's always... what exactly?

(Compare anything of hers to Tim Padgett's fabulous TIME article exactly one year ago on the State of Florida, Behind Florida's Exodus: Rising Taxes, Political Ineptitude

There are many things public officials probably shouldn't do during a severe recession, but no one seems to have told the leaders in Florida about them. One thing, for instance, would be giving a dozen top aides hefty raises while urging a rise in property taxes, as the mayor of Miami-Dade County recently did. Or jacking up already exorbitant hurricane-insurance premiums, as Florida's government-run property insurer just did. Or sending an army of highly paid lobbyists to push for a steep hike in electricity rates, as South Florida's public utility is doing.

And you wonder why the Sunshine State is experiencing its first net emigration of people since World War II.

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1919916,00.html Though Hoosier-born Tim lives in Miami as Bureau Chief, it's the same principle.)

Rubio and Meek are both from South Florida, but despite all this proximity, Reinhard has added zero to the mix in our understanding of them or what they might do.

As I've written numerous on my blog about the media coverage of the FL-17 congressional race,
her writing about it was perhaps the best example of her lack of curiosity and imagination: dreadful writing of the sort that you'd expect from a mediocre Junior College newspaper you pick up out of boredom while waiting around for your pick-up order at a Kinko's.

The one congressional seat in South Florida that we knew last year would result in sending a 'new face' to Washington would seem like a great opportunity to re-examine some longstanding ideas about this area, and the CD that stretches from Liberty City to Hollywood, including where I live in Hallandale Beach, not far from Gulfstream Park Race Track.

Instead, there was hardly any reasonable coverage of it to speak of until a week before the election, and by then, it was written not by Reinhard but Patricia Mazzei, who's what, five years out of college?
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/17/1778997/9-seek-rare-house-seat-replacing.html

Why is the least-experienced reporter writing about THE most important local congressional race in greater Miami?

That's why it's the Herald.

Poor Maurice Ferre - He never imagined his political career would end with him losing to the likes of a no-talent like Kendrick Meek; The lasting ethical lessons of the late Bill Sadowski, the FL pol who might've fundamentally changed FL for the better if he'd ever been elected Governor

Above, August 24, 2010 photo of Maurice Ferre for U.S. Senate poster on A1A in Hollywood, FL by South Beach Hoosier.At some point over the past three days, Maurice Ferre must've surely wondered to himself: "How did it happen that my political career ended losing to the likes of a no-talent like Kendrick Meek?"

How could he not?

Once upon a time, if you has asked "the experts" around the Sunshine State which Hispanic-surnamed Florida politician was most-likely to get elected to the U.S. Senate first, the vast majority of them would have said Maurice Ferre, hands down, even if they didn't like that prospect personally.

Mel Martinez?
Who the hell is that?

But fate, circumstances and reality intervene and... well, things don't always work out the way you thought they would, and many people who thought it would happen for Ferre at least twenty-five years ago now see it will never happen.

I got to wondering about that not long after I'd voted on Tuesday in the Florida Democratic primary over at the Hallandale Beach Cultural Center, and was on my way up to Hollywood to see what was going on up at Hollywood Beach, since it was so dead outside the polls in HB.

In a just a few minutes I was up at the Hollywood Cultural and Community Center on State RoadA1A/South Ocean Drive and Azalea Terrace, which is connected to a Broward County Library Reading Room, un mignon of a library.
(Extra credit if you're reading this now and recall that "Mignon" was the name of Lisa Douglas's dog the first year she and Oliver lived in Hooterville in the fabulous "Green Acres," one of my all-time favorite TV shows.)

It was while walking around the center and looking for something interesting to shoot besides the sweating campaign workers milling around that I first spotted the Maurice Ferre campaign sign taped to a post, the first time I'd seen one anywhere in Southeast Broward County.
Which is telling of how things have gone.

And it was then and there that it hit me how Ferre must feel after all his years in politics and that famous line of T.S. Elliot finally crashing down upon him: Not with a bang but a whimper.


All August 24th, 2010 photos below by South Beach Hoosier.









Sometimes, when I see how clueless everyone in Tallahassee seems to be to the reality of the bleak economic circumstances of this state and the lack of strong articulate leadership, some of it a direct result of their ill-informed and backwards policies, I think about what if... Bill Sadowski hadn't died in that plane crash in 1992, and was governor now?

Instead, we have in Gov. Charlie Crist, the most self-involved and selfish governor since my family moved to this state in 1968, a person for whom ambition is, for now, a substitute for a well-developed personality, though in that regard, as we all know to our regret, he has much in common with far too many elected officials in South Florida, who long ago gave up the ghost for serving others before themselves, as well as many who now seek to gain office locally.

The myopic political hacks with their palms out-stretched who are like kudzu to our civic dreams and responsibilities, forever getting themselves entwined in places they don't belong.
In my mind, none of Crist's wannabe replacements are half the caliber of a Bill Sadowski.
Instead, we have myopic, self-involved, genuflecting, flawed mental midgets as far as the eye can see.
Quel dommage!

St. Petersburg Times
The legacy of Bill Sadowski
By Martin Dyckman
March 21, 2004

TALLAHASSEE - Whenever someone writes about how much lobbyists spend to influence the Legislature - as my colleague Lucy Morgan did this month - the winers and diners plaintively insist that they don't discuss actual legislation over good food and drink. It's only about getting to know one another, they say.

That's probably true. But it misses the point.

As the lobbyist and legislator perfect their friendship, it's awfully easy for both of them to forget who's not at the table. You have to suspend belief in human nature to accept the notion that this doesn't matter when the time comes to vote.

Not a workday goes by during a session without at least one major lobby hosting a luncheon, cocktail reception or dinner. The biggest by far is the grand garden party Associated Industries stages at its palace just a few doors from the governor's mansion on the evening before the Legislature convenes. Thousands of people go to see and be seen, and to take note of which lobbies are paying for it.

The late Frank Trippett, this newspaper's first bureau chief in Tallahassee, captured the significance in his 1967 book, The States: United They Fell:

"By providing and financing lavish entertainment (liquor, women, breakfasts, lunches, dinners, banquets, balls) the true constituency establishes itself as the host at the state Capitol. It dramatizes its position as the well-spring of bounty and power and affluence, and by casting the Legislature in the role of guest it dramatizes through the social charade the command which it exercises over the Legislature in other substantial ways . . . By accepting the role of guest the Legislature similarly dramatizes its actual role as an intimate and affectionately subservient adjunct of the true constituency."

Once in a while there are legislators who don't play the role. One of the best of them was Bill Sadowski of Miami, who served in the House from 1976 to 1982, when he chose to leave so that he could watch his children grow up, and who died in a plane crash in 1992 while serving as Gov. Lawton Chiles' secretary of community affairs. He was only 48.

He had never allowed the lobbyists to buy him meals or drinks, but that didn't mean he disrespected them. To the contrary, he wrote a 16-point creed for legislative service in which respect for the right to lobby was high on the list.

Lobbyists were perfectly welcome in his office but he thought it was better for everyone if they kept the relationship at arm's length. He brought his family to Tallahassee every session and went home to them instead of to the party circuit. Invited to the home of an old friend who had become a lobbyist, he refused to go until his wife, Jean, persuaded him that taking a bottle of Grand Marnier would set it right.

"He felt like there's a place for lobbyists, but you don't have to do wining and dining," she explained the other day.

If you were to ask the veteran lobbyists, I think they'd tell you they never met a legislator they respected more than Bill Sadowski.

And here's an encouraging sign about the future of your Florida House of Representatives. On the second day of the session, Majority Leader Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, put on every member's desk a copy of the 16 principles that Bill wrote in 1982 for freshman members of the Miami-Dade delegation.

These are some of them: "Always respect another person's right to hold their own views . . . Avoid taking a position on an issue until you have talked to persons on both sides of the issue . . . Do not rely on others to adequately educate you on an issue. They will frequently have a bias . . . Public office is a public trust, both legally and conceptually. Never violate that trust . . . Your family is a source of strength and a point of real world contact. Preserve and protect that strength at all costs . . . You have two constituencies: one that elects you and one that you serve. The one that you serve consists of all the citizens of Florida . . . You are a politician in a democracy. Take pride in that. Use your office to generate public debate on important issues of the day."

Rubio, who never met Sadowski, said he was impressed by the creed because "They're great ideas." This matters because Rubio, 34, is in line to be House speaker for the two years beginning November 2007. He couldn't find better advice on how to use that power.

Though he supports term limits, he acknowledges that "one of the things you lose is access to mentors . . . to individuals who are grounded in the system." He particularly regrets that few legislators seem to take the time to know each other as people before they find themselves doing battle across a committee table. Sadowski's creed speaks to all that.

Because of term limits, there are no House members and only four senators who were here when Florida's affordable housing act was named for him, posthumously, in honor of his efforts to enact it. Let's hope his creed guides them as they vote on whether to let the governor kill the trust fund and siphon off the money.

Scott Galvin's myopic FL-17 campaign never did the things it needed most to win: a persuasive/strategic outreach to Broward voters early this year

The Scott Galvin direct mail campaign literature in question.



Though it may look like it's rural Alabama or Georgia as you zoom past it on AMTRAK, that sign actually says "Welcome to Broward County." Above, August 20, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier of northbound W. Dixie Highway as it approaches the Broward and Miami-Dade county line, with unincorporated M-D to the south and Hallandale Beach to the north. This is part of the Florida 17th congressional district that has its primary on Tuesday.

"Know your universe" is the number-one rule of politics that I learned over many years of working on and being a high-ranking official of a successful national political campaign, after years of working on state and local campaigns and seeing what works and what doesn't work -and why- including in Dade County, as I've previously written here.

Trust me, all the hard work and faith of your volunteers and friends is completely wasted if you as a candidate don't have the heart to stick to a demanding strategy that puts real expectations on you to get out of your 'comfort zone,' and thereby force your opponent(s) to have to work much harder than they ever imagined.

Going the unconventional route, which, counter-intuitively in South Florida, means a campaign plan that emphasizes you projecting internal logic and common sense reasoning in your answers to questions, while you draw a contrast with your opponents continuing to make expensive empty promises, is one way to break out of the pack and draw attention.

When I first heard that North Miami city council member Scott Galvin was planning on running for the FL-17 congressional seat being vacated by Kendrick Meek due to what I saw as Meek's nonsensical long-shot effort to be elected to the U.S. Senate, I must admit that I was intrigued.

More accurately, I was intrigued at the prospect that someone whom I'd generally heard pretty good things about when I asked some usually well-informed people, might actually be that rare South Florida candidate with the smarts to know that in order to win in a congressional district of its peculiar shape and all-over-the-map voter demographics, with him very much in the middle of a pack of nearly a dozen candidates, he'd have to throw the traditional cookie-cutter political campaign out and go unconventional.

Not Robert Redford's Bill McKay unconventional in Michael Ritchie's 1972 The Candidate, obviously, but whatever it's 21st-Century South Florida lower-key congressional equivalent might be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K78U6XsHsg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkGhplApYt4



Especially when running against so many candidates of middling-to-little accomplishment or talent, none of whom physically looked like him, as he has been constantly been reminded of, over-and-over again by the South Florida news media, on those rare occasions this summer when they deigned to leave the cocoon of their air-conditioned offices and mix it up with the vox populi in the sweltering heat.

(Was there ever a summer in South Florida where so many political stories were written while never leaving an air-conditioned office, and done almost entirely by telephone? Discuss.)

No, in order to win in this environment, Galvin would have to run a campaign that was by turns compelling to voters and the news media, based on his unconventional campaign that took more than the average number of calculated chances, since the alternative was to simply play-by-the-book and lose.

He would also have to be entirely comfortable taking the attack to them, which in this race, would mean telling the entire truth about his opponents while waging an offensive campaign as the only White candidate in a majority minority CD, spelling out the specifics of what would make him the best representative of this crazy-quilt district, which will hopefully be changed a lot after re-districting so that NE Miami-Dade is part of it and Broward is not.

How many times have we heard that the best defense is a good offense?

But it's true for a reason and if you can recognize the organizational and structural weaknesses of your opponents -i.e. they're being completely unknowns in Broward County- and carve-out spheres of influence for yourself in Broward, bulwarks if you will, that force the other candidates to expend a disproportionate amount of time and resources battling for those areas, your initial investment of time and energy can pay dividends later in the race while you work on the undecideds.

After all, it's not a two-way race, it's a ten-way race, and you aren't going to go from unknown to 50.1% overnight.
Know your universe.

One of the ways you do that now, of course, is to take the initiative and try to find out what non-elected officials are looked upon by the community as straight-shooters whose advice people generally listen to.

What you don't do is talk to the area's sorry collection of poverty pimps and the usual suspects with connection to the Steve Clark M-D Building in downtown Miami or at Dinner Key Auditorium, but real civic activists who don't personally profit financially from their work in the community. (The better to insulate yourself from future revelations.)

Frankly, the sort of serious high-minded people whom you don't have to waste time and resources on later reminding them to vote because they are, in fact, so busy being your shock troops at getting their own large circle of friends and acquaintances to the polls, you can instead concentrate on whether you need to devote time and energy on some areas that are under-performing or simply cut the cord and write-off some neighborhoods as un-winnable when you are running against so many opponents.

But in order to get those trusted community people on your side, you have to reach out to them.

Back in early January, I sent out an email to a few dozen friends and acquaintances throughout the Broward portion of FL-17 asking them to let me know if they ever heard about any
appearances by Galvin or any of the other FL-17 candidates, so I could arrange to be there and see them in action for myself.

Then I decided to set up separate Google Alerts for Galvin and certain of the other FL-17 candidates, so that I would have a good working intelligence base for following the various words and moves of the candidates, whether in print on TV or in blog posts.

I still have all of them in my computer, accessible in just seconds, and it has proven invaluable, but not for the reasons that I'd have originally imagined.

Now given how things have gone the last few months, where Galvin has seemingly done none of the things I think he ought to have done, has a website that is average at best, etc., I suppose I could mention some of the names of the dozens of such community people in the Broward portion of FL-17 whom I respect in Hollywood, Hallandale Beach and over in Pembroke Pines.

Folks that clearly should've been contacted by Scott Galvin and his team back in January and February if they wanted to be taken seriously NOW.

People who are persuasive as a result of their own hard work and ethics, dedication to their community's betterment and genuine honesty, even if you disagree with them on individual issues from time-to-time.

But they never received a phone call to arrange a personal meeting, never received an email saying that Galvin would be at so-and-so's and would like to speak with them alone after wards.

That's how you do it, especially when you don't have a lot of money to invest in sizable TV ad buys to keep your name recognition high in areas where you are otherwise a complete unknown, despite only living a few miles away.

So what was the Scott Galvin campaign strategy, exactly?

Nobody I sent that head's-up email to all those months ago ever heard from him, and they remain as flummoxed as I am now knowing that he had to run an upbeat, issues-oriented campaign that was decidedly different than his blah opponents, and has instead run a poor mishmash of a campaign that continually emphasized issues that have nothing to do with the job he is seeking: U.S. Representative.

That's why I titled my post about him on Friday the way that I did, FL-17's Scott Galvin isn't running for Class President, he's running for Congress. Different rules and standards apply.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/fl-17s-scott-galvin-isnt-running-for.html
after having previously taken him to task here on May 20th,
The FL-17 race that Scott Galvin ought to be hitting his stride in, is actually showing his immaturity. Has Galvin ALREADY blown it? http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/fl-17-race-that-scott-galvin-ought-to.html


"I'll do things differently."
Actually, that's what you needed to do in order to get the nomination.
News flash: You didn't do it.

That Galvin is so much more liberal than me I understood, this area being what it is, but just because you are liberal doesn't mean that you don't have to make any effort to reach moderate Dems like myself. And what did you talk about in your campaign literature?

Beach renourishment, traffic congestion, libraries, parks...?

Those are not issues to get you elected to Congress, they're issues to get you in line to replace Sally Heyman on the Miami-Dade County Commission, which perhaps would be best for all concerned.
What's his opinion of ending the tyranny of congressional earmarks?

It's my educated guess that his calendar since January 1st is littered with lots of wasted opportunities that he can likely not recover from, which is why perhaps what this race really proved about Galvin was that he's not ready to be a national prime-time player.

Maybe setting his sights on the Miami-Dade County Board is the thing for him to do.

But if he wants to do that, he and his supporters need to learn a few lessons.

First, don't put campaign signs on school property.


Above and below, July 31, 2010 photos by South Beach Hoosier of Scott Galvin campaign posters on school property in Hallandale Beach. They were there for weeks. Learn the rules of where you can place campaign signs.


And that goes for supporters of FL-17 candidate Phillip Brutus and U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, who for months have had their signs in all sorts of places that are forbidden.
Is that on church property or the public right-of-way?
You decide.
In any case, it's been there for a while.

July 21, 2010 photos by South Beach Hoosier.


Yes, that's definitely a cross on the top of that building.


Second, don't approve photos or material for your campaign literature without knowing that you came by them honestly and legally.

In the case of the photos of Hallandale Beach City Hall and Hollywood City Hall on the cover of the material I received in my mailbox last week, I know that's not the case because they are MY photos, ones I took and have used on this blog.






When you do a Google search for Hollywood City Hall and then click Images, what is the first photo that comes up of all the possible photos in the world?
Let's see...


August 20, 2010 screen shot by South Beach Hoosier


Yes, it's MY photo, as the URL is listed on the description.
In fact, the shape of the clouds in the sky and the composition of the parked bicycles prove it.

It's less than a 20-minute drive from North Miami City Hall to Hallandale Beach City Hall, and another 15 minutes up to Hollywood if you don't catch red lights all the way up.

If you and your campaign saw the photos on my blog and liked the idea of using photos of the city halls in the 17th district in your campaign ads, since I can't patent an idea, per se, you and your campaign could've sent someone to take shots for your ads and that would be that.

Instead, though, in the laziest and most egregiously obvious way possible, you took something that didn't belong to you, did so without asking me or notifying me, without any credit on the material itself and on and on.
And now everyone knows it.
Congratulations!

But your campaign made damn sure that your mailer had a little Union Bug on it for the benefit of those who find that important?
So, I give up, which is it, attention to detail or no attention at all?

That sort of oblivious, half-assed behavior with respect to the use of my photos in these campaign ads is symptomatic of the larger problems of the 2010 Galvin campaign that looks likely to come to an end on Tuesday night -bad communications.

My vote against Galvin on Tuesday will be with that in mind.

Above, August 20, 2010 photo by South Beach Hoosier in Hollywood, FL for early voting.

------

FYI: Due to a problem with the scanner, I decided to take shots of the Scott Galvin campaign literature while I was at the Panera Bread, below, located on East Hallandale Beach Blvd., which is why the photos aren't as good as they'd ordinarily be, and why you can see part of the table in the shots or ceiling lights reflecting on the material.

Above, the Panera Bread in Hallandale Beach with The Duo condominium towers overlooking it on the south side and the Diplomat Golf Course on the north side.

My coffee of choice there is hazelnut with a bit of honey and cinnamon.

Miami Herald rediscovers FL-17 race it's largely ignored; FL-17 candidate forum at FIU's Biscayne Bay campus Thurday at 5 p.m.

Not that they bear ALL the responsibility for this, per se, but why is the Miami Herald once again doing something that's so counter-intuitive by posting this story about a congressional race that they have largely ignored the past year, FL-17, that includes info about a Thursday afternoon candidate's forum, at 11:22 p.m. Wednesday night, instead of showing some sense and doing so Tuesday night for Wednesday's print edition, so more readers and voters would have a chance to attend?

Isn't the candidate forum information time-sensitive?
Seems like it to me!

The Herald's longstanding and almost spiteful refusal over the years to run items like that early when they can actually be of practical use to readers, the final consumers of their product, is really something that gives frequent critics of the newspaper like me, even more ammunition than we need.

Frankly, it makes the reporters and editors seem EVEN MORE distant and removed from the concerns of readers.

In most major newspapers, that particular info would've run in the paper on Sunday, so that concerned readers could make plans to attend.

Yet curiously, events that the Herald or owner McClatchy or previously, Knight-Ridder, was sponsors or co-sponsors of, no matter how parochial or picayune, were/are always given lots of play in advance. We all know that to be true, so why the disparity?

By the way, I'm NOT a big fan of FIU Prof. Dario Moreno, who is quoted below in the story, as I've almost always found his appearances on local TV newscasts or public policy shows -usually Michael Putney's excellent This Week in South Florida (TWISF)- to be the worst kind of sycophantic conventional wisdom, with him offering no original take on anything.

Almost as if he was at pains to criticize anyone, which, perhaps he is.
When I see Prof. Moreno on the tube, I tune-out and change the channel.

There are a number of holes in this story but it's so damn blah, why shoot a fish in a barrel?
Well, because I can.

U.S.-1/Biscayne Blvd./Federal Highway is the dividing line between Kendrick Meek's current 17th CD and the dreaded Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's 20th CD. (DWS)

It might interest the reporters -and those of you living far from here- to know that contrary to what they wrote, ALL of Aventura is in DWS territory.

Is it really too much trouble to expect news reporters to actually know what is and is NOT in the 17th CD when they write about it?
I mean there are maps of it after all, right?

Yes, I even posted one here for you to examine, and there's one anchored on the blog.
Here's the link:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=FL

The east side of West Dixie Highway is the dividing line for the City of Aventura, so the people who live in Miami-Dade County north of North Miami Beach -where I grew-up- and west of Aventura, are, technically in unincorporated M-D County, NOT Aventura, despite what the businesses there may call themselves or what they put on their signs or business cards.
Just ask the Post Office or any Aventura cop -they know.

See this handy map: http://skyhighhomes.com/picture/northeastdademac.pdf

And as discussed here previously, it's why the well-regarded Aventura Waterways Charter K-8 school, which I'd love to see replicated in Hallandale Beach, is NOT really in Aventura proper.

Not that the residents living on the other side of Dixie Highway don't want to be in it, but the City of Aventura powers-that-be don't want 'em because in their minds, pure and simple, the area isn't affluent enough.

I know all about this border not just from living so close to it, but because every time I see my barber in the M-D neighborhood of Ojus, which is in that no-man's land, we discuss it, just like we did yesterday for the umpteenth time.

See the Skylake-Highland Lakes Homeowners Assocation website for backstory at
http://skyhighhomes.com/outside_home.asp, in particular, here:
http://skyhighhomes.com/item_list.asp?subcat=44&subtitle=Annexation%2FIncorporation

As has been previously mentioned here in previous discussions of Meek, DWS and the South Florida CDs, the grand bargain the FL legislature made many years in carving-out the CDs, knowing that Carrie Meek was going to run, was to put as many African-Americans as possible in 17 and as many Jewish voters as possible in the 20th.

That's why the 20th CD has the strange shape it does and why Hallandale Beach, where I live, and not listed in the story, a city that's only 4.2 square miles, is actually divided in two, when its small size ought to make it even more important for the it to entirely be in the same district.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=FL&district=17
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/findyourreps.xpd?state=FL&district=20

The Broward County Commission districts also divide the city, albeit on a much smaller scale, since a sliver of NW HB is in District 8, formerly repped by the indicted Diana Wasserman-Rubin, and currently unrepresented at the Commission until November, while 95% of the city is currently repped by Sue Gunzburger in District 6.

http://gis.broward.org/maps/webPDFs/CommissionDistricts/comdist8.pdf

http://gis.broward.org/maps/webPDFs/CommissionDistricts/comdist6.pdf

And you thought that electoral districts were actually supposed to be "compact" for the benefit of residents like the law says?
Nope!

As for the dopey comments of self-serving Broward Democratic Party poobah Mitch Ceasar about possible low-turnout in the Broward part of the district, well, they're typical.

Explain how on the one hand that you'd imagine that people will turn out to vote in the Sue Gunzburger vs. Steve Geller fight for Broward County Commission District 6, but counter-intuitively, not cast a ballot in a primary for Congress?

If anything, it's very likely that the Broward part of FL-17 will have a higher voting-rate than the part located in Miami-Dade County.

I believe I wrote that many months ago in a few posts criticizing the FL-17 candidates who were refusing to come to Broward and campaign in cities like, yes, home sweet Hallandale Beach.
Now THERE'S your real story!

------

Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/11/1772338/1-open-seat-10-candidates-an-unpredictable.html

Florida International University and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce will host

a candidate forum for Congressional District 17 at 5 p.m. Thursday at the Wolfe University

Center Theater, FIU Biscayne Bay Campus, 3000 NE 151st St. in North Miami.

The forum, co-sponsored by The Miami Herald and Univisión/Channel 23, will be moderated

by WPLG-ABC 10 political reporter Michael Putney.

Marleine Bastien, Phillip Brutus, Scott Galvin, Shirley Gibson, Rudy Moise, André Williams

and Frederica Wilson have confirmed their attendance.

1 open seat + 10 candidates = an unpredictable election

By Patricia Mazzei and Carrie Wells

August 12, 2010

For nearly two decades, nobody has had to figure out how to win Florida's 17th Congressional District.

Neither U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek nor his mother, Carrie -- the first person elected to the seat when it was redrawn in 1992 -- faced more than token opposition, if any.

But now Meek is running for U.S. Senate, and the nine other Democrats vying for his seat are working without a road map to model their races. Forced to devise their own strategies, the campaigns have not focused on capturing votes in the entire district, a safe Democratic seat that stretches from Overtown to Pembroke Pines.

Instead, they are carving out niches, trying to muster just enough votes to eke out a victory in the Aug. 24 primary. The winner will face attorney Roderick Vereen, running without party affiliation, in November.

With so many candidates splintering the vote, one candidate would win the primary with as little as 15 percent of the ballots cast, said Kevin A. Hill, an associate professor of political science at Florida International University.

"Anything could happen in that election,'' he said. "It's a total crapshoot.''

The race is also unpredictable because the district's more than 600,000 residents are as diverse as they come. A majority of voters are black -- mostly African American, though the district has the largest concentration of Haitian Americans in the country -- and there are pockets of whites and Hispanics.

"This election may answer whether it's an African-American seat, a Haitian seat or probably a bit of everything,'' said Mitch Ceasar, chairman of the Broward Democratic Party.

With Meek opting not to endorse anyone in the primary, the candidates have worked to shore up their natural bases as they crunch numbers to determine which is the district's biggest voting bloc.

Frederica Wilson has relied on an existing network in her Florida Senate district, which overlaps with much of the congressional district. The same is true for state Reps. James Bush III and Yolly Roberson and former state Rep. Phillip Brutus. To complicate allegiances further: Brutus and Roberson used to be married to each other.

None of those districts encompass all of Miami Gardens, home to two other candidates: Mayor Shirley Gibson and Councilman André Williams. As the third-largest city in Miami-Dade and the state's largest predominantly African-American city, a well-known official could amass enough votes to win with little need of support from elsewhere.

The same is not true for smaller cities like North Miami, where candidate Scott Galvin is a councilman. As the only white candidate in the race, he could collect votes in Miami Shores, North Miami Beach and Aventura.

Haitian Americans -- who depending on varying estimates make up between an eighth and a quarter of the vote in the district -- could swing the election.

Yet it is unlikely for Haitian Americans to vote as a unified bloc, with four Haitian-born candidates in the running: Brutus, Roberson, activist Marleine Bastien and entrepreneur Rudolph "Rudy'' Moise.

Looking elsewhere for support, Bastien, founder of Haitian Women of Miami, has tried to rally like-minded activists and the female vote. Moise, running with deep pockets after putting more than $1 million of his own money into the race, has gone on TV and sent campaign mailers to become better known.

His media campaign could reach some voters in Miramar, Pembroke Pines and Hollywood, which together comprise about a third of the district. Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober recently endorsed Moise, citing his "real-world experience.''

"The key for the candidates is to somehow make sure Broward does not believe itself to be a stepchild of the district,'' Ceasar said. "If that occurs, then the risk becomes greater that the turnout in the Broward portion is exceedingly low.''

Turnout is expected to be low everywhere. In 2006, the last time Meek drew a primary opponent, about 36,000 people -- or 16 percent -- of the district's 220,000 registered Democrats voted.

This time around the seat is more competitive, but some campaigns and political observers say a candidate could still win with as few as 10,000 votes.

That makes relying on one group for support particularly risky.

And, of course, whoever is elected will have to represent everyone in the diverse district. That tall order could mean a streak of competitive elections among Democrats battling for the seat in the future.

"It is difficult,'' said Dario Moreno, an associate professor of political science at FIU. "That's why the Meeks were so successful.''

"It's not a sprint, it's a marathon." But sometimes, as with Jeff Greene vs. Kendrick Meek, elections really ARE sprints, and Meek is Wile E. Coyote

With less than two weeks to go until the August 24th Democratic primary, it seems pretty clear to me that, among other things, Jeff Greene's Senatorial campaign is deliberately planning on forcing Kendrick Meek & Co. to burn through all their cash and resources as quickly as possible, knowing that he can always dig deeper than Team Meek at a moment's notice, and leave them gasping and unable to respond to any last-minute Greene attacks or change-up pitches.
That's exactly how I'd play it, too if I had Greene's resources and the lead in the polls.

It's also clear to me that based on Team Greene's smart media buys and frequency thus far, as well as the variety of their very attractive and well-produced direct mail -which seems to come into my mailbox every other day- they've known for a while that Meek's creative team simply isn't capable of turning-on-a-dime and producing and placing the high-quality materials the way that Team Greene can.

The first time my mailbox had Kendrick Meek campaign lit in it, last Thursday, was the same day that the St. Petersburg Times political editor Adam C. Smith wrote this killing with kindness article that featured this in the fifth paragraph:"Meek, who has been campaigning harder and longer than any other statewide candidate this cycle, grasps the dire position he's in: Three weeks before the primary, he trails by double digits to a last-minute rival with a bottomless campaign account. "

Later, in the first sentence of the 21st paragraph, Smith begins:"Indeed, while Meek remains little known to most Floridians..."
Now can you see what I mean?

St. Petersburg Times
Trailing in polls, Kendrick Meek chases a U.S. Senate victory in a bus tour of Florida
By Adam Smith, Times Political Editor,
In Print: Thursday, August 5, 2010

DAYTONA BEACH — Kendrick Meek likens his U. S. Senate primary to David against Goliath, but the Democratic underdog wields a weapon that covers more ground than a slingshot: a four-wheel motor coach with his smiling face plastered across the side.

On Wednesday Meek kicked off an 11-day, statewide bus tour aimed at picking up grass-roots momentum against the candidacy of billionaire real estate mogul Jeff Greene.
"The old-school kind of politics — when Bob Graham had his work days and Lawton Chiles walked this state — I think it still means something in this state," a fiery Meek told about 100 people at a Daytona Beach teachers union building.

"Democrats in Florida will give this nation the first example of what hard work means and what it means to run a grass-roots campaign against billionaires who have a shrimp in one hand and a checkbook in the other saying, 'How much does it cost to become a United States senator or governor in this state?,'?'' he said.
Meek, who has been campaigning harder and longer than any other statewide candidate this cycle, grasps the dire position he's in: Three weeks before the primary, he trails by double digits to a last-minute rival with a bottomless campaign account.

But sounding both upbeat and energized, the 43-year-old Miami congressman argued that the momentum is starting to turn back toward him, and that his deep roots among the most loyal Democrats across the state will compensate for Greene's nearly $10-million in TV ad spending.

Greene couldn't pull off a bus tour like his, Meek said. "Who's going to show up? Because his whole campaign is about campaign ads and not about real people."

Meek's campaign received a gift this week after Greene had to keep answering questions — and revising his explanation — about him taking his 145-foot yacht to Cuba in 2007, after a former deck hand told the St. Petersburg Times about guests partying and getting sick on the trip to Cuba.

First Greene said he hadn't been to Cuba in five years, then he said it was a Jewish humanitarian trip, and then he said he went because the yacht needed repairs.

On Tuesday, the Greene campaign released a statement from the yacht's chief engineer, Andy Valero, saying Greene and his fiancee were on the way to a diving vacation in Honduras when hydraulic problems prompted them to veer off to Havana to make repairs.

"With the current rough sea state and winds, Marina Hemingway was the best bet. All the guests were very sick," Valero said in the statement.

Visiting or doing business with Cuba can be illegal and Meek scoffed at Greene's explanation.

"Whichever way Jeff Greene packages his visit to Cuba, it was illegal,'' Meek told reporters, as the "Real Dem Express" motor coach left a facility in Sanford that turns wastewater sludge into energy.

Meek gave a blistering assessment of Greene, saying he could never endorse him in the general election because he lacks the character to serve in the Senate and would be an embarrassment to the Democratic Party and the state.

"He's a very, very — in my opinion — bad person and he has stomped on people and shouted people down his entire life, and all of that is going to come home to roost," Meek said, noting among other things, Greene's close friendship with convicted rapist Mike Tyson and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss.

The Greene campaign responded in a statement: "Kendrick Meek is not only already an embarrassment to Florida but should apologize for lying to Floridians in his ad using Mr. Warren Buffett's image and purposely misusing a quote for personal political gain."

It was a reference to a Meek ad criticizing Greene for making hundreds of millions of dollars on complex financial instruments that financier Buffett had criticized. But Buffett was not referring to anything Greene did personally, only to the type of investment involved.

While Greene only announced his candidacy in late April, Meek has been traveling to at least 50 Florida counties since January, 2009, and spent months gathering signatures in every corner of the state to qualify for the ballot by petition. In an off-year primary likely to have low turnout, that grass-roots effort and his own track record in Florida will make a difference, he predicts.

"I don't think there are many Florida voters saying, 'I need to make sure I get to the polls to vote for Jeff Greene.'?"Meek said.

Indeed, while Meek remains little known to most Floridians, he found plenty of enthusiastic supporters Wednesday in Orlando, Sanford, Daytona Beach and Jacksonville. They recounted him leading the fight to require smaller class sizes, sitting in Gov. Jeb Bush's office to protest sweeping changes to Florida' affirmative action admissions and purchasing policies, and supporting Democratic candidates up and down the ticket.

"If Kendrick Meek is beaten by Jeff Greene in the primary, I will definitely vote for Charlie Crist in the general election, no question," said Gary Morgensen, an Osceola County teacher holding an "I support the real Democrat" placard.
Last modified: Aug 05, 2010 03:00 PM]
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Personally, I'd be extremely surprised if Greene's media team doesn't already have a variety of pre-taped ads and already-produced campaign lit that's just the right combination of positive and reassuring, just waiting for the signal to drop it on Meek's exploding head, like poor ol' Wile E. Coyote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz65AOjabtM



My sense of things is that compared to what he needed to have in place, Meek's media is very mediocre and seems designed not to persuade voters so much as to reassure people outside of South Florida.

The two-fold problem for Meek is that he's not a very articulate candidate who can stir voters
to turn out in droves for him if he's an underdog with just one powerful speech.He never had to persuade voters before to get elected, he just had to not shoot himself-in-the-foot.
That's part of why Greene's decision to run for Senate was so brilliant, even though as I've stated previously, I'd have preferred seeing him run for governor, where he and Rick Scott could've actually had some interesting debates about ideas instead of re-fighting the same old wars, as will happen with stultifying Alex Sink now, to everyone's dismay.

Greene and Co. knew going in that Meek as a brand was still un-tested outside of Miami-Dade County since he has NEVER had to come from behind to win a race, since he's always been not just the presumptive nominee, but the presumptive elected.

That's the rub for his always having been in a gerrymandered congressional district rather than a competitive one: he never had to exercise his campaign muscles.
And now it's showing.
Meek is heading for a big fall.

So what do you think Meek's next job will be after his term expires?
I've gotten a few emails from you readers, but to be honest, not nearly as many as I expected.
Send your predictions to hallandalebeachblog-at-gmail.com

New York Times
Florida Starts Primary Vote Marathon
By Damien Cave
August 9, 2010

MIAMI — Nasty television ads and e-mail, campaign workers on street corners, and candidates emerging from the polls declaring imminent victory — is the Florida primary already here?

Not quite, though one can hardly be blamed for making such a mistake. Early voting started Monday across Florida with all the get-out-the-vote stunts once reserved for Election Day itself. In a state famous for electoral skepticism (no, the wounds of 2000 have not healed here), early voting has gone from feared to embraced.

Indeed, the Aug. 24 primary will simply add a final sprint to what experts now describe as an established marathon. And for a nonpresidential year, the stakes are high. Early voting is likely to decide two major Florida races: which Republican runs for governor, and which Democrat takes on Gov. Charlie Crist, the former Republican, and Marco Rubio, the actual Republican, for a seat in the United States Senate.

Read the rest of the story at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/us/politics/10florida.html
See also: Adam C. Smith articles/columns/blog posts:
http://www.tampabay.com/writers/adam-c-smith

The St. Petersburg Times excellent politics blog. The Buzz
http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/