Former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell who lost her seat earlier this month to termed-out Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said she’s not even thinking about a rematch or challenging Sen. Marco Rubio in 2022, as some have speculated and, likely, prodded.
It’s time to take a step back and look at what happened in congressional District 26 and beyond before making any decisions about who should run where and against who, she said.
“People are moving on too quickly. We have to investigate the Senate 37 race,” Mucarsel-Powell told Ladra, referring to the razor thin defeat of incumbent Democrat State Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, who ended up 32 votes behind, even after a manual recount. There was definitely some cheating there, with an NPA plantidate that had the same last name as the senator who didn’t live in the district and stole more than 6,000 votes.
Mucarsel-Powell lost by a bit wider margin (51% to 49%, or by 7,659 votes) to former Miami-Dade Carlos Gimenez, who’s been in Washington D.C. this week getting acquainted.
Read related: Miami-Dade and Florida Dems lose focus and key seats in epic fail election
That’s a startling loss in a bellwether district that’s supposed to lean blue that she took away from a conservative Republican, former U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, only two years ago 52% to 48%. And a startling win for an unpopular mayor who hardly campaigned except until the very end.
Maybe she didn’t campaign hard enough. DMP was MIA for much of the COVID chaos caused by Gimenez. Her campaign focused, instead, on the caged children that Cubans couldn’t care less about and corrupt deals that made his friends and family members rich, when 2016 proved that doesn’t work. The ad with activist Johnny Farias and his wife came too late, and after he already lost the District 9 Miami-Dade Commission race in the primary. What were they thinking?
While she wasn’t painted with the same socialist brush as other candidates, she blamed the misinformation and smears that have become part and parcel of the Republican campaign playbook. The Republican Party-paid ads attacked her on muddy ties to a Russian oligarch, ironically, and allegations she sent CARES money to her husband’s firm, which isn’t true. There was also a whisper campaign at churches calling her a baby-killer because she is pro life.
Read related: Republicans crush blue wave with red rush on South Florida Dem incumbents
“It’s not just about socialism,” she said. “There’s a high level of disinformation and it’s usually aimed at people who are struggling. These are people who’ve lost loved ones, who’ve lost jobs.”
It’s hard to imagine that Mucarsel-Powell will go quietly into the night.
“This GOP dark money ad run against me was incredibly sexist & false,” she tweeted Monday, and she must be referring to the TV commercial with a woman in high heels doing some high end shopping. “Repeating lies about me from others feeds into the division & misinformation in this country. Let’s come together to work on what unites us – not divides: improving the lives of all.”
Read related: Corrupt Carlos Gimenez suppressed early voting by nixing arena polling site
But she told Ladra last week that there has to be much soul-searching before she puts herself out there again. She wants to talk to data analysts and get more details about the people who voted and why they made their decision. There are precincts where Biden got a low double digit increase over Clinton in 2016 but Trump got a four-digit, 200% increase.
“No Democrat should think about running for anything until we know what’s going on here. You can’t run a campaign when they are cheating and lying all the time,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “We have to figure out, how much can you alter people’s psyches to believe things that aren’t true.
“People have to really figure out what Republicans did to win statewide in Florida,” Mucarsel-Powell told Ladra. “Until we figure it out, we won’t win.
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell says election results show need to step back, review added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
