U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia, who is facing one of the most closely watched re-election battles in the country, will open a campaign office in the Keys Sunday, 24 hours after he opened the one in the Hammocks neighborhood of West Kendall — his fifth and sixth in 
the District, which stretches from Calle Ocho or Tamiami Trail to Key West.
This is his second campaign space in Monroe County and the last of six “grassroots offices” that will serve as hubs for canvassing groups that have already started — and about time, too, since Curbelo’s been canvassing (even if just barely) for months.
Garcia for Congress Campaign Manager Juan Penalosa told Ladra they will be working the next six weeks with boots on the ground working persuasion and then turnout, much like the Charlie Crist campaign for guv, which is like the Barack Obama campaign before it.
In a word: Bodies.
Penalosa said they opened the neighborhood offices so that the residents who live nearby get involved. “So that people in the neighborhood can come by and pick up walk lists and packets,” he said. Those people become sort of like block captains who gather their own neighbors in the door-t0-door effort.
So far, Penalosa told Ladra, the hundreds of volunteers and 20 paid staffers have made 120,000 “voter attempts,” which are either phone calls or knocks on their door. Penalosa said they’ve reached 18,000 of those, which does not seem like enough but still would be one and a half times the Republicans that voted for 
Miami-Dade School Board Member Carlos “Crybaby” Curbelo in the primary. They must be counting NPAs as well as Democrats. God, I hope they have already reached out to NPAs. Penalosa says they’ve registered 7,000 voters.
And, judging from the momentum, the Garcia camp is just starting to ramp things up. Maybe that’s why they waited so long to get started. Ladra bets we see something new from them at least twice a week.
Read related post: Nice timing: Joe Garcia’s first radio ad follows headlines
After all, these grand openings are just the latest salvo in the beleaguered congressman’s recent offensive play to keep his seat, which the National Journal ranked the 15th most flippable seat in the Washington. A race that is now centered on ethics in which the tables are turned and Garcia is the candidate in the ugly headlines about election fraud. When he won in 2012, it was former Congressman David “Nine Lives” Rivera, who still has his share of news, too.
In addition to the areas he’s physically “conquering” with a visible presence, Garcia has within the past week released a radio ad in Spanish and the Florida Democratic Party released a new video ad that both hammer at the disclosure questions with the business run by Curbelo, who conveniently has his lobbying firm under his wife’s name so he doesn’t have the legal requirement to list his major clients on his financial disclosures. You know? Like other electeds who don’t put their firms in their spouse’s names, especially if said spouses do not work there.
Garcia even got the Florida Dems to request that the Department of Justice investigate. Because that’s what they do.
“We need to know who our elected representatives are working for. That’s why all members of Congress and candidates fill out in-depth disclosure forms each year,” Penalosa wrote in an email sent Saturday afternoon, titled “Who’s buttering his bread?”
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