Florida-- A Beacon Of Hope?

It's been a really good week politically in the Sunshine State so far. Republican hopes to pull off another Scott Brown shocker were dashed when Ed Lynch got clobbered Tuesday night by Democratic state Senator Ted Deutch. In 2008 Lynch was swamped by long-time incumbent Robert Wexler (of Firebreathing Liberal fame) with 66% of the vote. Deutch, relatively unknown in much of the district, drew 64%). Lynch and the GOP had tried to turn the special election to replace Wexler into a referendum on Obama in general and healthcare reform in particular. Obama won the district in 2008 with 65% and healthcare reform is something most normal people (i.e., non-Glenn Beck viewers) see as a positive. Tone deaf and clueless, Lynch and the Republicans-- deeply ensconced in their own Hate Talk Radio/Fox bubble-- insisted that Deutch’s aggressive and unwavering support of the health care law would prove politically fatal. It was fatal-- for Lynch.

Democrats in District 19-- which mixes a big chunk of Palm Beach County with a smaller piece of Broward-- gave Deutch, his campaign team, local Party leaders and a legion of volunteers the solid turnout and big win they yearned and worked so hard for.

Several key political points were made here-- from a cleansing of the political palate following Republican Scott Brown's Massachusetts Senate win a few months ago, to a road-test of the grassroots organizing and Get Out The Vote capacities of the local Democratic party in advance of November, to a "bring it on" response to GOP efforts to make the race a referendum on President Obama and health reform.

All those points were scored, emphatically, with high style marks all the way around.
Some in politics and media-- Republicans, The Tea Party, Fox News-- will maintain that because the 19th District is predominantly Democratic and liberal, this big Deutch win is not real news.

But over this past year of health reform Town Halls and Tea Party frenzy, some among the traditional Democratic Party faithful, especially Senior Citizens, became confused and/or disillusioned with their customary political brand of choice. It was a potential vulnerability that Deutch's Republican opponent, Ed Lynch, tried to tap into and exploit. But no such luck. Instead, Democrats rallied back together around a great candidate, and gave him a great win.

That is not only real news-- it is really good news for the Florida Democratic Party moving forward in this critical 2010 election year. And it is not very good news for the state's ultra-partisan politicians and calculating Republican candidates like U.S. Senate hopeful Marco Rubio, who are counting on continuing to use the Politics of Fear & Confusion to influence people and win votes.

Public servants who, like Ted Deutch, aspire to be statesmen rather than simply settling for being politicians, can cut right through that kind of divisive politics. Deutch has already demonstrated in the State Senate that those whom we elect to government can still work in bipartisan fashion to achieve great things for the benefit of The Common Good-- not for Democrats vs. Republicans, not for Liberals over Conservatives, but rather for the community benefit of the hard-working general public.

Meanwhile, further north, Gainesville not only elected a progressive as its new mayor, they elected openly gay City Commissioner Craig Lowe, who had been under vicious attack by deranged Republican homophobes.

And the quarterly fundraising reports show that the GOP's top national target, Rep. Alan Grayson from Orlando, who takes no money from lobbyists, banksters or anyone with business before his committees, raised more money-- almost entirely from small grassroots donations-- than anyone else running for Congress in the United States, his second quarter in a row with over $800,000.

With Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink already making headway, the GOP just got thrown for a loop when their handpicked establishment candidate, Bill McCollum, got a big spending extremist jumping in against him, multimillionaire teabagger Rick Scott, one of the most loathsome creatures to ever pop up in American politics. On his first day in the race, he blanketed the Florida airwaves with $1.5 million in ads-- right out of what he's stolen from the various healthcare companies he's defrauded over the years. And McCollum went batshitcrazy:

Rick Scott's aggressive new campaign for governor is gleefully distributing yesterday's talking points circulated by Scott's rival Attorney General Bill McCollum, until yesterday the presumptive GOP nominee.

The talking points include a section headed "Off Record/Surrogates" that goes after Scott on his obvious vulnerability: The hospital company he lead, Columbia/HCA, pled guilty to massive fraud charges after his departure. Scott says the company should have fought the charges, but it's a hard thing to recover from.

A slightly more surprising line in the talking points charges that Scott-- who started harshly attacking the health care legislation while many Republicans were still taking a wait-and-see approach-- didn't fight hard enough.

"He abandoned the fight against the Democrats once the public option was dropped," say the talking points, which have the name of McCollum's communications director, Kristy Campbell, attached.
They also include a link to a slashing video from Health Care for America Now, a frontal attack on Scott from the left, and an unflattering New York Times profile.

I hope we'll be seeing plenty of this delightful ad again, paid for with plenty of GOP dollars:



Scott, predictably, is slinging the mud just as hard. Should be as much fun as Crist vs Rubio. Speaking of which... Rubio has been floating the rumor for months that Crist would wind up running as an independent. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal picked it up and amplified it gigantically.

Hounded by conservative activists as too liberal, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is being advised by some close supporters to abandon his lagging Republican primary bid for a U.S. Senate seat and run instead as an independent.

Mr. Crist's campaign issued a statement last week saying the governor would run in the Republican primary and describing the talk of an independent bid as "baseless rumors.''

Still, some advisers see room for him to take another course. Mr. Crist is trailing badly in public-opinion surveys against state House Speaker Marco Rubio, who has become a darling of conservative activists nationally.

Florida law doesn't give Mr. Crist the flexibility that enabled Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to win election in 2006 as a third-party candidate after losing the Democratic primary. Mr. Crist must decide by April 30 whether to seek the Republican nomination or to appear instead on the general-election ballot with no party affiliation.

An important sign of Mr. Crist's aims could come this week: He must decide by Friday whether to veto a teacher merit-pay bill supported by prominent conservatives in the party.

"If you were to put a gun to my head, I'd say he's running as an independent," said a GOP strategist who serves as an informal adviser to the governor.

His exit from the primary would mark the biggest win yet this year for the GOP's conservative wing, which is trying to pressure the party to strictly oppose Democratic policy initiatives, such as the economic-stimulus initiative and a cap-and-trade energy program, both of which Mr. Crist has at times embraced. But the move would also present those activists with a risk. Should Mr. Crist win the Senate seat as an independent or serve as a spoiler by splitting the GOP and helping to hand the seat to Democrats, it could undermine their argument that the party can best help itself by moving to the right.

One longtime adviser to the governor said vetoing the education bill-- which would eliminate the possibility of tenure for new teachers and create a new pay scale linked to student performance-- would allow Mr. Crist essentially to kick off an independent candidacy with a bang. Rejecting the measure could draw support from one of the state's most potent Democratic Party interest groups, Florida's 140,000-member teachers union, which opposes the legislation.

...[S]ome Republicans see a number of Mr. Crist's recent actions as signals that he is moving closer to an independent run.

Last week, Mr. Crist vetoed a campaign-finance bill that was a GOP priority. In addition, he is weighing whether to call the legislature into special session during the summer to discuss ethics legislation, a move that could highlight recent Republican scandals and try to signal the governor's independence from the party.

Several Crist supporters said he would prefer to win the GOP nomination. The governor is spending $1 million to air negative ads targeting Mr. Rubio-- an effort, some Crist supporters said, to test the former speaker's vulnerability before the governor is forced to decide whether to remain in the primary.

All that said (and keeping in mind that the newest Quinnipiac polling shows that Crist would win the Senate seat as an independent), the two most important opportunities for progressives in Florida this year-- aside from beating back the reactionary menace by helping Grayson win a decisive victory-- are red-to-blue pickups by great Democratic House candidates in FL-12 (Doug Tudor) and FL-16 (Dave Lutrin). Oh-- and then there's this...