David Lutrin Is Running For Congress In Florida

David Lutrin is a school teacher and progressive union activist in South Florida. You may remember him as one of Blue America's favorite candidates back in 2006 when he was taking on sex-obsessed Republican Mark Foley. But Rahm Emanuel had other ideas. He and the DCCC sabotaged Lutrin's campaign in order to guarantee a slot for... another sex-obsessed Republican, Tim Mahoney, who Emanuel had persuaded to switch his voter registration so he could run as a Democrat. Of course, as soon as he was elected he joined the Blue Dogs, voted with the Republicans and spent all his time pursuing his sex obsessions. He was defeated after one miserable term and the district is now saddled with vapid plutocrat Tom Rooney.

Yesterday Dave Lutrin filed with the FEC to run for Congress. I hope he runs against Rooney but, because Rick Scott and his allies have delayed the state's redistricting, no one knows where the boundaries of any districts will lie. The video above, with Dave talking about the issues that have motivated the OccupyWallStreet movement, was in front of Allen West's district office. "I don't think I'll be running against Allen West," he told me earlier, "but the message is the same and I'm taking it all over South Florida.

It's good the Dave is willing to express a progressive vision for South Florida. Thanks to a completely dysfunctional state party addicted to abject failure, many people haven't heard one since they moved down there from up North. Last year, for example, voters had to pick between Rooney and a teabagger in a blue T-shirt. As I mentioned at the time, a raving teabagger, Republican Jim Horn-- who was a greed-crazed selfish Republican when he was in the same college as me in the '60s--looked like he would run against Rooney as a third party candidate, splitting the Republican vote. But it didn't work out that way.

I wonder how long it will take Debbie Wasserman Schultz to embrace Horn, despite this public record of political contributions:



Jim Horn, a Palm City businessman, on Monday changed his voter registration from Republican to Democrat at the Martin County Supervisor of Elections Office, and also amended his ballot designation for the Congressional District 16 race from no party affiliation to Democrat... Horn, calling himself a “Traditional Values Democrat,” noted that he comes from a family of Democrats from New York.

“I was talking to my uncle the other day about my candidacy, he’s still in Manhattan, he said, “Bring your values to the Democratic Party like we did when we were younger,” Horn said. “You don’t have to accept what everyone is saying.”

“Unfortunately, I believe he will be an embarrassment to the Democrats,” Smilan stated. “In my opinion his presence on the ballot will be very divisive. He will reflect very poorly on the Democratic Party and drag down the ticket.”

In the end Horn only took half the number of votes Rooney got-- 162,285- 80,327-- one third of the vote. He lost all 8 counties in FL-16 as Democratic participation plummeted from 2008 (when the disgraced Mahoney managed to get 139,373 votes) and 2006 (the previous midterm- 115,506, which saw the Democrat win in 4 of the 8 counties, including 2 out of the of the 3 big ones, Palm Beach and St Lucie).

Florida Democrats are more often than not excruciatingly bad-- but when they're good... OMG! You get people like Nick Ruiz, Dave Lutrin and Alan Grayson. Oh yeah... Alan Grayson. See him last night with Rachel talking about OccupyWallStreet? You don't want to miss this:



Republicans in Congress don't get it-- don't want to get it. But even the Business Insider had to admit the OccupyWallStreet Movement that Grayson and Lutrin were talking about has legitimate gripes-- really serious legitimate gripes.

The "Occupy Wall Street" protests are gaining momentum, having spread from a small park in New York to marches to other cities across the country.

So far, the protests seem fueled by a collective sense that things in our economy are not fair or right.  But the protesters have not done a good job of focusing their complaints-- and thus have been skewered as malcontents who don't know what they stand for or want.

(An early list of "grievances" included some legitimate beefs, but was otherwise just a vague attack on "corporations." Given that these are the same corporations that employ more than 100 million Americans and make the products we all use every day, this broadside did not resonate with most Americans).

So, what are the protesters so upset about, really?

Do they have legitimate gripes?

To answer the latter question first, yes, they have very legitimate gripes.

And if America cannot figure out a way to address these gripes, the country will likely become increasingly "de-stabilized," as sociologists might say. And in that scenario, the current protests will likely be only the beginning.

The problem in a nutshell is this: Inequality in this country has hit a level that has been seen only once in the nation's history, and unemployment has reached a level that has been seen only once since the Great Depression. And, at the same time, corporate profits are at a record high.

In other words, in the never-ending tug-of-war between "labor" and "capital," there has rarely-- if ever--been a time when "capital" was so clearly winning.

How could that happen with a Democrat in the White House? Yeah... aren't we all wondering, although all you have to do is look who financed his election campaign-- as well as McCain's-- and who he picked for his economic team, to realize the deck is totally stacked against working families. Give up? NEVER! That's why it's so important to elect people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and progressives running for the House, like Grayson, Ruiz and Lutrin. And why you should consider participating in OccupyTheBoardroom this weekend.