Miami-Dade and Florida Dems lose focus and key seats in epic fail election

Stupid Democrats.

They were so busy pushing unprecedented resources to get a blue, progressive, Miami-Dade mayor — dipping into other nonpartisan races, like county commission and school board contests — that they lost sight of the ball and gave up two key congressional seats, possibly a key state senate incumbent and at least two Florida House seats, potentially more.

“Inexcusable,” said one party operative.

“A shitshow,” said former elected Democrat.

“Cray,” said a team member of one of the ousted legislators.

Everyone was stunned at the underperformance from the top of the ticket — Joe Biden did not do as well in Miami-Dade as Hillary Clinton in 2016 — down the ballot to down-ballot state and local contests. There was a blue wave — of vote-by-mail or absentee ballots. But it was crushed by the red rush of early voting and Election Day Republicans responding to a clarion cry to “stop socialism.”

Even more gut-wrenching and unexpected were the defeats dealt to Congresswomen Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell — though that was not as shocking — the ouster of former State Rep. Cindy Polo, the loss of former Sate Rep. Javier Fernandez, who left a sure seat to run for state senate because they told him he could, and the very possible loss of Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez. We won’t know til after the recount on him, but that seat could flip red, too.

Democrats were all pointing fingers at each other the morning after. Days later they are still blaming DC and Tallahassee hacks who don’t understand that Hispanics are not a monolith, entrenched consultants who put their personal gain above the party’s, candidates who don’t work hard enough, the slew of mercenary subcontractors who only see another paycheck and not a concerted effort to move any idealistic ball, donors who expect immediate and splashy results and voters with adult ADD who fall for bullshit attacks about socialism and defunding the police.

So, the truth is they were up against a lot. I mean, besides a national pandemic that changed the way America both campaigns and votes.

But there is no doubt that a lot more effort than usual was put in non partisan races.

“All politics is local, and FDP launched the Municipal Victory Program in 2019 and dedicated resources and staff, because winning local and municipal races must be a key pillar of an effective strategy in Florida,” said FDP Chairwoman Terri Rizzo in a statement, announcing that the program, launched last year by Miami Commissioner Ken Russell, had helped elect 225 Democrats to local, municipal and county offices across Florida by providing municipal candidates and campaigns with training, communications and analytical resources and “direct investments.”

The election of Miami-Dade’s first female mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, is one of the “highlights from the victory program,” as were newly-elected Hillsborough County School Board Member Nadia Combs and St. Lucie County School Board Member Jack Kelly.

Seriously? We traded two congress members, two state reps and maybe a state senator for a mayor and two small town school board members? And isn’t it also a key pillar of an effective strategy to have representation in the partisan Tallahassee legislature, especially at a time when lawmakers are getting ready to look at redistricting in a post pandemic world?

Steve Simeonidis, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, said the win cannot be underestimated and that the party, in an unprecedented effort, put hundreds of poll workers at every single early voting location and precinct on Election Day.

Russell, who is rightfully proud of the wins credited to the Municipal Victory Program, said there was no relation between the those gains and the losses at the state and federal level. He said he spent 18 months fundraising for the MVP, which has a separate budget.

“It’s something we always should have done,” he said, adding that it allows like-minded electeds in different cities to share information on things like electric vehicle policy and budgeting during a pandemic as well as coordinate legislation like Russell’s ordinance last month to impose fines and stop work orders for construction sites that ignore anti-pollution rules.

He said the Senate Victory Program and the House Victory Program are there to help state candidates and are completely independent of the MVP.

But while Ladra applauds the program for its potential collective impacts and, of course, seeding the bench is a good idea, you need to take care of your house first, before you take care of someone else’s. The money is separate from the other victory programs but likely came from the same or kindred sources that could have helped state races more.

Russell — who has been punished for funding a Democrat candidate against Miami Commissioner Alex Diaz de la Portilla — doesn’t buy that argument. He says the municipal seats were less susceptible to the socialist smear.

“Not just because those municipal seats are on a ballot without a letter attached, but also because someone is more willing to vote for someone they know fixed their pothole without thinking who their party is,” Russell said. “Or they know them so well, that label doesn’t stick.”

In other words, people here know that Levine Cava and Commissioner Eileen Higgins are not socialists. But they aren’t so sure about Cindy Polo and J-Rod? (La Shalala la cago with that “pragmatic socialist” comment.)

It’s the easy way out to say that they just couldn’t counter the “radical socialist agenda” messaging and the multiple “defund police” TV commercials with rioting in the streets if so-and-so Democrat is elected. These spots multiplied like rabbits. They all looked alike and they all looked like Trump’s Biden’s America commercial. And while it is true that those scare tactics worked, it’s lazy to say that nothing could have been done.

You change the narrative. You come out and denounce the attacks and say you are not what your opponent calls you in desperation. Levine Cava did that. So did Raquel Regalado. Guess what? They both won.

You also campaign on something other than being against Donald Trump. Several Democrats told Ladra that this was an unprecedented effort, with thousands of poll workers fanned out across the county to push Dem candidates. But pushing a slate is not the same as supporting your candidates. Shouting “vote blue down ballot” and shoving a checklist in their face as people enter the polling place is not a strategy.

J-Rod shouldn’t even be in a recount position. He should have comfortably won that seat against a media darling and Latinas for Trump cofounder who has done nothing except spread fear and dread. If he can beat former Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla — a real public servant who had actually written legislation and defended the Urban Development Boundary — to get into the Senate, he should have been able to dispense with Ileana Garcia.

But her attacks were left unchecked and he was left alone to defend himself partly because the Democratic Party was so busy with the mayor’s race — the Miami-Dade and Florida Democratic Party’s goal since at least the post-recall election of 2012 — and school board and commission seats.

Some political observers and Democrat activists say the epic losses were more of a strategic failure.

Why do the Dems always have to go all or nothing? They bite off way more than they can chew. Instead of cherry picking the races where they can win and putting all their eggs into those baskets, they spread it out too thinly with candidates in every House race. Sen. Annette Taddeo did the same thing in 2014 when she was the chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party and recruited seven House candidates against GOP incumbents and then did nada to support them. Despite her calling the campaign “No More Free Rides” for Republican legislators,” Ladra called them Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the “Fat Chance Dems” because they never stood one.

“We’re always looking for the shortcuts,” said one Democrat lawmaker, citing the Charlie Christ example from when he went from Republican to Democrat. “We have to get comfortable with building one seat or two seats at a time.”

Juan Cuba, the former chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, said that the morning after the election, he kept thinking back to the reluctance of the Florida party to examine the 2018 losses in their report seven months ago “and instead chose to set up a sham ‘Path to Power’ commission that only produced a short PowerPoint with general observations and vague promises.

“It’s not just on Terrie Rizzo,” Cuba tweeted. “The state executive committee members that refused to provide any accountability should not run again. This shouldn’t be a social club.

“We also need to reform/expand the committee to include more voices, instead of concentrate power in a few.”

Apparently, poll data was wrong, too.

JJR’s team was told he was up by 12 or 13 points. Shalala was supposedly up eight or nine. Mucarsel-Powell was allegedly up six or seven points. Both congresswomen lost by two.

It appears that Republicans had better numbers.

Javier Fernandez, who lost his senate race to State Rep. Ana Maria Rodriguez — and she did really work hard — was told days before Election Day that it was going to be so close, he may need to put together a legal team for a recount. His polls had him leading by 4 points. He lost by 12.

“Total systemic failure,” Fernandez tweeted hours later. “People have spoken and clearly said they don’t want what we are offering. Unforgivable part is that no one saw this coming.

“It is time to look in the mirror and hold ourselves accountable on this side of the aisle,” he posted, referring to the party.

A few days later, Fernandez seemed more forgiving: “Daniella’s victory represents an opportunity, not withstanding the terrible results in other races, to rebuild the Democratic Party and bench,” he told Ladra.

But other Dems wonder if she will become a real Democrat mayor with six Republicans on the commission. Can she be effective in government and pass progressive legislation despite this red wall at the state? Can she leverage the position to build the Democrat bench in the county?

There was also a waste of resources. Ladra doesn’t know if it was because Bloomberg flooded the region with millions of dollars, but Democrats had DJs and food trucks and folk dancing ensembles at early voting locations. It seemed they had money to burn which could have gone to better use. Not celebrity endorsements, though. Have you, dear reader, ever voted for anyone because of a celebrity endorsement? Yeah, Ladra hasn’t either.

There was also a lack of vision, a lack of focus and an inability to shift gears quickly enough from the vote-by-mail campaign when the local races started to beat the same Trump drumbeat on the defund the police, BLM and radical socialist fronts.

But the FDP doesn’t really do messaging, do they? They do math and mobilization. Data. Strategy. Ground work. They left the messaging to the Biden team. Locals tried to tell the party leadership that things are different here. That caged kids doesn’t sell in South Florida. It should, but it doesn’t. That, here, it is about the history of socialism and communism and the impact it’s had on so many of us. That all Hispanics are not created equal.

“I love Cesar Chavez,” said former Congressman Joe Garcia. “But if I raise him from the dead and take him to Westland Mall to campaign for someone, nobody there would know who he is.”

He says the failure was not at the state or local level, which broke registration records and “put us in a position to win.” He said the national campaign people should have listened to local — especially about reaching out to Miami-Dade’s multicultural Hispanics.

Like Ana Navarro told Anderson Cooper on CNN: “Latinos come in a lot of different flavors.”

Garcia said one of the biggest mistakes was the failure to tap into the 250,000 or so registered Colombian American voters. Democrats concentrated on Cubans and Venezuelans and left the Colombians for Salazar, who didn’t take them for granted. She got an endorsement from former President Alvaro Uribe and held a rally against socialism with the Colombian ambassador. That may have helped pull her over the top.

Maybe Shalala should have used Bill Clinton more. Colombians love Clinton.

“At the end of the day, candidates have to account for their own losses. Simply blaming the party is too easy a scapegoat,” Russell said, adding that supporting municipal democrats is the best way to build a bench, “to build a better future for Florida, from the bottom up.”

Except they sacrificed the future at the top.

Just ask Polo, who lost her seat to Broward Republican Tom Fabricio and has been tweeting about a need to reform the Democratic Party.

“Five seats lost doesn’t benefit our community. But people got PAIDDDDD,” she posted. “Losing seats….creates laws that last a lifetime. Especially when the current legislature is trying to abolish local control and home rule. Tallahassee has been chipping away.

‘”All of these races were very consequential.”

Cindy Polo, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Florida Democratic Party, Florida House, Jose Javier Rodriguez

Miami-Dade and Florida Dems lose focus and key seats in epic fail election added by Ladra on November 8, 2020
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