Florida State Rep. Scott Randolph... And The Struggles Of Ann Romney

I knew Florida state Rep Scott Randolph's name because he was Alan Grayson's campaign manager. Grayson told me "he was the mastermind behind our 2008 victory." But the last time-- before this week-- he was in the national spotlight was in March of 2011 when Republicans in the sate legislature were passing out the smelling salts when the intrepid Orlando defender of women's rights said this to the Republicans who control Florida's state government:

"We constantly talk about not putting more regulations out there, but yet again, when it comes to my wife's uterus-- more regulations. When it comes to my friends' bedrooms-- more regulations. When it comes to unions-- more regulations. Don't practice an ideology of convenience! ... Look into your heart and practice exactly what you preach."

Republicans were horrified. He said the "u" word... out loud.

House GOP spokeswoman Katie Betta: "The Speaker has been clear about his expectations for conduct on the House for during debate. At one point during the debate, he mentioned to the entire House that members of both parties needed to be mindful of decorum during debate.

"Additionally, the Speaker believes it is important for all Members to be mindful of and respectful to visitors and guests, particularly the young pages and messengers who are seated in the chamber during debates. In the past, if the debate is going to contain language that would be considered inappropriate for children and other guests, the Speaker will make an announcement in advance, asking children and others who may be uncomfortable with the subject matter to leave the floor and gallery."

Randolph was originally elected to represent downtown Orlando in 2006-- the first Democrat to do so in 34 years-- defeating the incumbent Republican, Sheri McInvale, 61% to 39%. Two years later he was reelected with an astounding 74% and he was even endorsed by the hopelessly conservative Orlando Sentinel. This week, when most Democrats were running away from Hilary Rosen's poorly articulated point about Ann Romney having never worked a day in her life-- including before she was a mother or married, Randolph seemed to enjoy jumping into the fray via Twitter.


Fox News, mistaking him for a U.S. Congressman, tried making some trouble. "Democratic Rep. Scott Randolph attacked Ann Romney in a series of tweets yesterday," they reported. "Specifically attacking her as a stay-at-home mother." These were his tweets:

How many house servants did "stay-at-home-mom" Ann Romney have to raise her kids. Just b/c u don't have job doesn't make u stay-at-home mom.

Wish my spouse had hundreds of millions in off shore accts gained by firing American workers so I could be "stay-at-home-dad".

Romney should release all his tax returns so that we can see how many nannies "stay at home mom" Ann had. Release ur taxes!!

Totally false that Ann Romney didn't have job--all those nannies, gardeners, cooks, drivers, in all those houses--If Mitt let her have say

Sometimes, though, Twitter's 140 character limit doesn't quite do the trick. Digby picked up where Rep. Randolph left off in the weekend's most stunning satire, Ann and Mitt, The College Years. It's all about the horrors of having to live off inherited stock dividends, covering floors with carpet remnants that didn't match and being reduced to eating tuna fish and pasta. Can you imagine! No wonder this avid horsewoman complained on Fox last week that she's knows what it's like to struggle.

And yesterday Ryan Grimm picked up the ball, by exposing Willard's long-stated views on women who stay at home-- not stay-at-mansion-moms, but the real struggling stay-at-home-moms.

Mitt Romney, however, judging by his January remark, views stay-at-home moms who are supported by federal assistance much differently than those backed by hundreds of millions in private equity income. Poor women, he said, shouldn't be given a choice, but instead should be required to work outside the home to receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits. "[E]ven if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work," Romney said of moms on TANF.

Recalling his effort as governor to increase the amount of time women on welfare in Massachusetts were required to work, Romney noted that some had considered his proposal "heartless," but he argued that the women would be better off having "the dignity of work" -- a suggestion Ann Romney would likely take issue with.

"I wanted to increase the work requirement," said Romney. "I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, 'Well that's heartless.' And I said, 'No, no, I'm willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It'll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.'"

Regardless of its level of dignity, for Ann Romney, her work raising her children would not have fulfilled her work requirement had she been on TANF benefits. As HuffPost reported Thursday:

As far as Uncle Sam is concerned, if you're poor, deciding to stay at home and rear your children is not an option. Thanks to welfare reform, recipients of federal benefits must prove to a caseworker that they have performed, over the course of a week, a certain number of hours of "work activity." That number changes from state to state, and each state has discretion as to how narrowly work is defined, but federal law lists 12 broad categories that are covered.

Raising children is not among them.

According to a 2006 Congressional Research Service report, the dozen activities that fulfill the work requirement are:

(1) unsubsidized employment

(2) subsidized private sector employment

(3) subsidized public sector employment

(4) work experience

(5) on-the-job training

(6) job search and job readiness assistance

(7) community services programs

(8) vocational educational training

(9) job skills training directly related to employment

(10) education directly related to employment (for those without a high school degree or equivalent)

(11) satisfactory attendance at a secondary school

(12) provision of child care to a participant of a community service program

The only child-care related activity on the list is the last one, which would allow someone to care for someone else's child if that person were off volunteering. But it does not apply to married couples in some states. Connecticut, for instance, specifically prevents counting as "work" an instance in which one parent watches a child while the other parent volunteers.

The federal government does at least implicitly acknowledge the value of child care, though not for married couples. According to a 2012 Urban Institute study, a single mother is required to work 30 hours a week, but the requirement drops to 20 hours if she has a child under 6. A married woman, such as Romney, would not be entitled to such a reduction in the requirement. If a married couple receives federally funded child care, the work requirement increases by 20 hours, from 35 hours to 55 hours between the two of them, another implicit acknowledgment of the value of stay-at-home work.

Romney's January view echoes a remark he made in 1994 during his failed Senate campaign. "This is a different world than it was in the 1960s when I was growing up, when you used to have Mom at home and Dad at work," Romney said, as shown in a video posted by BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski. "Now Mom and Dad both have to work whether they want to or not, and usually one of them has two jobs."

Yesterday Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was on This Week talking about the "controversy" with George Stephanopoulos, who wrote that "Geithner verbally smacked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney this morning... calling his assertion that the policies of the Obama administration have hurt women and resulted in major job losses for them fiction." Romney is sticking to his guns by saying that the Recession-- which began early in 2008 when Bush was president and when right-wing economic and fiscal policies were in place and destroying the economy as they always do-- destroyed jobs for everyone and that included women. Oh. OK. True, but many of the jobs that women lost were due to the actions of mostly psychotic right-wing governors like John Kasich (R-OH), Rick Scott (R-FL), Scott Walker (R-WI), Rick Snyder (R-MI), Tom Corbett (R-PA), Paul LePage (R-ME), plus all the freaks in the Old Confederacy, doubling down on the Bush policies and throwing millions of state employees out of work while giving tax breaks to the wealth one-percenters who had financed their political victories. You think Willard wants to take ownership of the worst unemployment record in America-- that of his ally Scott Walker's?