BLUE AMERICA WELCOMES JOE GARCIA (FL-25)

50's style red-baiting has become as salient as... hula hoops -- except in Florida where McCarthyite tactics are frequently on full display. Extreme right politicians are never shy about tarring their opponents as "Communists" and "commie-dupes." If you check over at ActBlue, you'll notice that Blue America's latest endorsee, Joe Garcia, has more contributions than all the other candidates in the entire state-- combined. The average Florida Democratic candidate, not counting Joe, has 31 ActBlue donations. Joe has 1,874 donors so far. And Blue America has just added him today; let's bring that number up. It scares the bejesus out of Mario Diaz-Balart, the throwback rubber stamp incumbent. Joe has more donors in 2 months than Mario has had in his entire federal career! Diaz-Balart's voting record is as devoid of anything approaching independent thought or political moderation as anything you will ever find in Congress. There's no reason for him to even come in and vote. He could have just as well handed his proxy to Cheney and said, "Whatever you want, boss." Take the 22 roll calls on issues involving the well-being of America's military personnel. Ole Mario claims he supports our troops. His voting record tells a very different story. Not once did he vote to support our troops; he voted against them 100% of the time. Same story with Mario and American veterans: 100% anti-veteran voting record-- the worst in the entire U.S. Congress.

Since first being elected in 2002, he's never had a serious opponent. This year he does-- and he's scared to death and in full smear mode. Son of the majority leader of Cuba's House of Representatives before Castro's revolution threw out the corrupt neo-fascist regime there, Mario quit the state Senate so he could chair the state House committee charged with drawing up congressional districts. He drew one tailor-made for... himself. This year he's going to lose it. He's going to lose it for three reasons:

1- He's been an execrable representative for his district and a lock step lemming-like partisan, voting against the best interests of his constituents again and again, like on health care for children and supporting extremist Bush economic policies that have wrecked the American economy so the wealthiest could have more unneeded tax cuts;
2- Joe Garcia, who supports the Responsible Plan for Ending the War, is a bold and trusted community leader whose policies and positions are far more aligned with those of the people who live in their south Florida district; and
3- Americans of all stripes have realized they've been bamboozled by Republican politicians with an extremist agenda that's been sold to us through fear and smear. That's not going to work in 2008, not when there are fearless and articulate candidates like Joe Garcia who know how to stand up for progressive values and know how to push back when right wing goons try to act like bullies.

What makes Joe an ideal Blue America candidate are his overall strong progressive stands across the board-- in terms of Iraq and foreign policy, in terms of domestic priorities like health care, employment, the environment and housing, and in terms of values like equality and privacy. But because FL-25 has a large Cuban-American population (around 30%)-- and because Diaz-Balart tends to make everything about Cuba (even when he voted against S-CHIP he claimed it was an attack on Cuban Americans since raising the price of tobacco would impact on his big money tobacco donors, which he apparently equates with his constituents' needs more than the need for decent health care for needy children)-- we need to look at how Joe and other progressives have been changing the dynamic of the Cuba-America relationship. Joe doesn't mince words about the Castro Regime:

There is no question that the Communist regime of Cuba is a brutal dictatorship and I don't think anybody on any side of this issue wants to argue that the form of government that the Cuban people have lived under, without any chance for self-determination, is acceptable. I agree with the moral position of the embargo-- which isn't a real embargo (last year alone the U.S. did $447 billion in trade with Cuba)-- but what I do think we have to change is the issue of travel. People interrelating with their family and friends in Cuba can help bring about change in civil society and that is something we should encourage. We should end the remittance caps and the remittance controls to people on the island. You can't even assist a dissident and if you want to help a family member you're limited to $100 a month. This absurd interference. The travel restrictions are inhumane and purposeless. They do nothing but divide families and prevent civil society from flourishing in Cuba. It's as though we were adopting Castro's own tactics... The people of Cuba have done nothing wrong beyond being born under a brutal dictatorship and we should offer them a way out.

I first heard about Joe's campaign from his netroots outreach director, Shane Markowitz, a student at the University of Miami. Shane became interested in Joe when he watched him take the lead in modernizing the Maimi-Dade Democratic Party, a process that included, for the first time, Internet operations. Since then he has also started working with Joe Trippi and I don't recall a candidate who has been more excited about blogs and Facebook than Joe, who really seems to thrive on engaging in dialogue with people online.

Aside from running on a platform demanding an end to the war in Iraq, Joe is concentrating on the economic bread and butter issues that residents of the district are telling him are most important to them and their families.

The economy's got people scared. South Florida is an area that pays low wages and has few unionized jobs. It's a very tough right-to-work state where people don't have access to pensions or health care as part of a typical job. Jobs and health care come up again and again when I talk to voters. In my district alone it's estimated that one in four people don't have adequate health care coverage... And the mortgage crisis has been devastating here. This is the second or third leading foreclosure area in the country. We've had 7,000 foreclosures in Dade and Broward counties. As I walk through the neighborhoods, there's barely a street I walk on where there aren't at least a couple of houses for sale. And there are abandoned houses, which means there has been a foreclosure and a bank has stepped in. It's a tough time and South Florida's main economic engine has been the home building and construction industry and when that comes to a grinding halt everything gets affected.

Joe is offering pretty disgruntled residents of South Florida a real change. Take a look at a clip his campaign made the other day explaining this. And please join me in helping Joe finance a campaign that can change another red district blue-- and for all the right reasons. Our Blue America page is right here and there is no such thing as a contribution that is too small.