So, Donna Shalala wants to be a congresswoman all of a sudden. Why? Because she’s “angry” at Donald Trump?
Aren’t we all? Most of us are not just angry but enraged at the current administration’s fear mongering, lies and conflicts of interest — just for starters. But if being angry makes you qualified for public office, well, then Trump has a lot more going for him than we thought.
The former president at the University of Miami may be angry now, but where has she been? 
She sounds like an opportunist taking advantage of the Trump rage fueling the blue wave across the nation. She also said at her announcement that she was disturbed at the lack of action after the tragic school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High last month. That’s opportunism for ya.
So why are some already giving her the congressional win in District 27, where there is a slew of qualified and good candidates already? Because they don’t live here. Ladra does. And let me tell you, the people of CD 27 are not falling for that internal poll she paid someone on her campaign team for. Have you seen the comments on social media?
Related: And then there were 16 candidates in the CD27 race to replace Ileana
Shalala’s announcement that she was going to, after all, run for Congress after thinking about it for a month came complete with a poll from Bendixen Amandi that shows her as the front runner in a Democratic primary against six other candidates. I call BS! First, because it is a paid campaign poll and like all paid internal polls is suspect. And also because we haven’t seen poll details, particularly the questions that were asked. Ladra suspects it was a push poll where the caller “tested” positive messages on Shalala until they got their desired results. There is just no way that she has a 32-point lead ahead of Jose Javier Rodriguez, who just spent close to $5 
million in an overlap district to take the senator’s seat against Republican Miguel Diaz de la Portilla. They overshot.
And also, and this might be the most important, because the voters here can tell an opportunist when we see one. Like her saying she is running because she is angry at Trump. She is actually saying that because her poll showed 78% of the Democrat voters have a unfavorable view of the president (only?).
But when Donna has had an opportunity to actually do something for her community, she failed time and again. Shalala is a smooth talker and has pretty paper credentials topped by a recent stint at the Clinton Foundation, but she also has a ton of baggage that Dems will find particularly heavy:
- She was serving as Health and Human Services secretary under Bill Clinton in 1996 when Congress passed a law banning the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from studying gun violence. Why is she hot on the gun issue now? Opportunism.
- She parlayed that position into a gig on UnitedHealth’s board of trustees, where she ended up with tons of stock she sold in 2005 for more than $5 million. Now Shalala will have to convince Democrat voters that she will work for Medicare for all instead of the for-profit insurance industry that she used to work for and made so much money from. Opportunism. And hypocrisy.
- For almost 10 years, she served as on the board of Lennar Homes, a major builder of crappy, cookie cutter homes credited with helping to create the housing and mortgage crisis in South Florida. Shalala only left after one of the company’s directors became a UM board member — only to join the board again two years after she left the school. Opportunism.
- As president of the University of Miami, she twice fought efforts by the cleaning staff and food service staff to unionize and make a decent living wage, protesting what many called “poverty pay.” Shalala was called an “enemy of the working poor” by a campus chaplain. The labor dispute gained national attention when professors and department academics began a hunger strike to support the workers. Meanwhile, she lived in a mansion in Cocoplum and, later, a nice condo on Edgwater Drive in Coral Gables she bought for $1.4 million in 2014. Oh, she also has a little place on South Beach she bought for $275,000 in 2013. That’s just hypocrisy.
- Then there’s that picture circulating of a giddy Donna taking a $50,000 check from booster Nevin Shapiro, who was later charged with securities fraud in a $900 million Ponzi scheme and showered UM players with gifts that led to an NCAA investigation.
- As UM president, she also sold us out when she secretly sold environmentally sensitive and endangered Pine Rocklands property that the university owned in South Dade to be paved over for a Walmart-anchored shopping strip. Opportunism.
She’s already coming under fire for that on Facebook, as you can see from the meme below.
And Donna is coming into this race a little late because she had to figure out the “mechanisms of a campaign” first, which she said means she had to gauge support. Sounds like she had to get all her ducks in a row. Sounds like she would only run after all the financial commitments (promised contributions) were made, but not if they weren’t. Opportunism.
Seriously, maybe Shalala should run as a Republican.
Either way, though, we don’t need more opportunists (or hypocrites) in Washington. There are plenty already there.
Poll shmoll! UM’s Donna Shalala is not going to fool Democrats in CD 27 added by Ladra on
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