Is There A State Democratic Party Anywhere In America In Worse Shape Than Florida's?

Is Argenziano a Democrat now?

Florida has a history of electing very conservative Democrats to office who reflexively vote with the GOP. The highly dysfunctional state party there, working closely with the DCCC, goes out of its way to discourage union members and working class Democrats from running, always getting behind wealthy, out-of-touch conservatives. The worst example I personally ever experienced was in 2006 when Rahm Emanuel and Steny Hoyer drove school teacher and Democratic activist Dave Lutrin out of the race against congressional Republican child molester Mark Foley and replaced him with a conservative Republican, Tim Mahoney, who changed his party registration and ran as a "Democrat."

Once Emanuel leaked it to the media that Foley was molesting underage male pages and he was forced to resign, Mahoney was a shoo-in. He got to Congress and promptly started voting with the Republicans on all the important issues of the day. He was little different from his predecessor in one other way-- he was just as randy and was soon driven from office for sex scandals, although not with underaged boys or even men.

Has the Democratic Party of Florida learned anything from this? Not on your life!

Last year right-wing Blue Dog Allen Boyd, a long-time and entrenched incumbent with a long history of consistently voting with the Republicans, was swept out of office when Democrats in Florida's Second District simply refused to vote. Deranged teabagger and mortician Steve Southerland got 136,371 votes (54%) to Boyd's measly 105,211 (41%). That was less than half the votes Boyd got two years earlier when he beat Mark Mulligan 216,804 to 133,404. Republicans were energized. Democrats stayed home.

It looks like they'll be staying home again next year. The Democrats want to run a mainstream conservative Republican ex-state senator, Nancy Argenziano, against Southerland.

Saying the Republican party has left her and is now owned by ideologues, former GOP state Sen. Nancy Argenziano, 56, of Crystal River says she will run for the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat.

..."The Republican Party has left me, and I will run as a Democrat, in a sense permitting a claim to ultimate bipartisanship, along the lines of Ronald Reagan. The current iteration of the party abandoned real Republican principles long ago to cater to ideologues and corporations – the Koch entities, most notably – whose interests lie in the profiteering of America and the sacking of the middle class," Argenziano wrote in a letter announcing her candidacy. "Current Republican leaders have neither patience with nor allowance for honest elected officials, and they demand that members of the various legislatures-- who, after all, have sworn to uphold the Constitution-- instead just follow the hijacked party line and shut up."

Problem is, when Argenziano left the GOP, she reregistered as an Independent, not as a Democrat, and post-Mahoney the state passed a law that says a politician can't run as a member of one party if he or she was a member of another party one year prior. Argenziano, and the Democrats, claim the new law is unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the state, Dave Lutrin is what he's always been: a dyed-in-the-wool champion of working families and a Democratic Party activist. Will he run against extremist GOP incumbent Tom Rooney? A few weeks ago we posted a video he had made about the issues and mentioned we were trying to talk him into running. He seems to be coming closer to making up his mind to do it. Here's a new video he sent yesterday, addressing the issues around the Satan Sandwich that every Florida congressional Democrat supported. Alan Grayson and Nicholas Ruiz III, Blue America-endorsed House candidates, would have voted NO. So would Dave Lutrin: