If My Friend Bob Can Run For Office... So Can YOU!

My friends don't usually run for office. I become friends with some when they are already running; it's a side-effect of my new profession. But this is different. Bob's an old friend. And he's running for the Florida state legislature in a south Florida swing district that the Democratic Party had decided to ignore and just hand to the GOP... again. That's something the Florida Democratic Party is really, really expert in-- one of their very special talents. In fact, the state House district Bob is running in-- HD-116-- overlaps, in part, with Mario Díaz-Balart's adopted congressional district, another one where the Florida Democratic Party (and the DCCC) have refused to run a candidate, even though Trump only won it in 2016 with 49.7% of the vote. Sounds like a swing district to me. You? How do you leave a swing district on the table... in a presidential year and in the swingiest of swing states?

Bob's a hard-working, goal-oriented guy who sets out to win, not to make a point. The Florida Republican Party isn't going to know what hit them. And, for that matter, neither is the Florida Democratic Party. Please read his guest post below. And if you like what you read... well, either run for office yourself, back one of your other friends who's running or... see that thermometer below? That's the 2020 Blue America State Legislative Thermeometer-- and if you click on it, you can contribute to Bob's campaign and to the campaigns of other brave citizens who are running for state legislatures around America. Don't be shy. As Bob says, ¡Ya Basta!


When the Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro...
by Bob Lynch
Florida House candidate

Never in my life did I ever think that I would one day find myself running for local office, but after three years living in a city, county, state, and country under the toxic mix of incompetent and hopelessly corrupt GOP rule, well, here we are…

As a political candidate, I am often asked why I decided to run for office; all candidates are. Usually, this turns into some long-winded and unnecessarily complicated stump speech filled with talking points and policy proposals. I’ve been struggling with this question and it has led to my procrastination on finishing this post introducing myself to those of you who may not know me. I made the executive decision today to delete the entire thing and start from scratch.

The reason I am running for Florida House District 116 is because our city, county, state, and ultimately our entire nation are facing an unprecedented existential crisis. As someone with a heavily dog-eared and highlighted copy of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness on my bookshelf, I do not use that term lightly.

You hear a lot these days about how our country, as we know it, cannot survive another four years of Donald Trump. This is true, of course, but it is one of the biggest understatements of our lifetime. People that we know and love are already dying because of the Trump and DeSantis administrations. Four more years will be catastrophic.

Each one of us needs to decide how we can best use our own talents to make sure that this does not happen. It would be easy to say that this is the final battle, but that is not true. If we win this one, there will no doubt be many more. But if we lose, there won’t be.

Like many of you, I have spent the past four years going in and out of profound sadness, anger, disillusionment, hopelessness, embarrassment, fear, and loathing. I dabbled in political strategy. I became just another angry voice on twitter complaining about anyone and everything. It didn’t get me anywhere except for becoming more angry and frustrated. It definitely didn’t move the needle in terms of saving our country.

That is until my dear friend and Chief Advisor, Doctor Ferguson Reid Jr. introduced me to Dr. Janelle Christensen, President of the Florida Democratic Environmental Caucus. As usual, I was working behind the scenes with Fergie and Janelle to make sure that we could get a candidate to run in every single state House and Senate race in Florida but also to pay their $1,800 qualifying fee. The Democratic Party, nationally and statewide has long ceded major swaths of the state to the Republican Party by not even bothering to campaign at the top of the ticket or field local candidates in many areas that didn’t have an attractive Cook PVI rating.

As I began calling my network of strategists and donors, I realized the strategic importance of this effort was going ignored. In trying to understand the logistics of running, so that I could pass it along to potential candidates, finally Janelle asked me “Why, are you thinking of running? We could use someone good in HD 116.”

Suddenly, everything became clear. I could finally find a way to channel all of my rage, frustration, and strategy by throwing my own hat into the ring. If I was a candidate, at least I knew there was one candidate who couldn’t ignore my advice. It is one thing to tell other people what to do with their time and money. Everyone has an opinion on how best to spend other people’s money but I would never ask someone to do something that I wasn’t willing to do myself.

Florida House District 116 happens to be a district of major strategic importance. The current incumbent is a guy who describes himself as “the Spanish Brad Pitt.” I had never even heard of him after three years in Miami, until I decided to take his job. He is supposedly a lock for Speaker in 2024, which tells you all you need to know about the backroom dealings and smug attitude of the Florida GOP.

The easiest and most cost-effective way to defeat Donald Trump is to win Florida. The easiest way to win Florida is to increase turnout amongst younger voters in the Hispanic Community, of which my district is over 90%. I’m 38 years old and have spent the better part of the last ten years of my life traveling and living all over the Spanish speaking world. Including right here in Miami, the capital of Latin America. Oh, and I speak Spanish. Not Beto O’Rourke or Mayor Pete Spanish. Ya lo se donde esta la biblioteca…. Sin Babel o Rosetta Stone.

District 116 is at the epicenter of every major political battle involving South Florida this year. The district is part of three different Congressional districts. FL-25, FL-26, and FL-27. For reasons that have never been properly explained to me, the Democratic Party decided to let career GOP hack, Mario Díaz-Balart, get re-elected completely unopposed. There are parts of my district where I will be the second Democrat on the ballot after Joe Biden. This should never ever happen. Every resident of Florida should have the opportunity to choose which party they would like to represent them at every level.

During the 2018 Blue Wave, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL-26) and Donna Shalala (FL-27) flipped two districts crucial to the Right Wing Cuban Republican power structure that we are in the process of dismantling. Winning these seats was an incredible accomplishment but now we need to hold them for us to maintain our congressional majority. To do this, we need to focus on the needs of the Hispanic Community, something that my campaign will be doing, on the ground, in Spanish.

Another part of my district is in Florida Senate District 39, which is currently held by a Republican who is getting termed out so the seat is up for grabs. Oh yeah, and we also have a mayoral race in Miami-Dade County, which is the 7th largest county in the entire country by population. Our current mayor, the shamelessly corrupt Carlos A. Giménez, has his sights set on Debbie Mucarsel-Powell’s seat and his absolutely disastrous response to Covid-19 reflects the thought process of a guy who is more worried about his next job instead of doing his current one.

Couple that with the 2020 Census, that Republicans are trying everything they can to scare Latinos into not completing, so yeah, there is a lot going on in HD 116. We have the opportunity to block the GOP’s gerrymandering efforts and reshape Florida for at least the next decade.

Too often politicians try to complicate things with overwhelming details and nuance. My platform is very simple, but I am happy to provide as much detail to the level of geekiest of policy wonks want (because I happen to be one of them), but that is not what gets people to the polls. Of course, I want to go to Tallahassee and force our criminally negligent, and Trump sycophant, Governor Ron DeSantis to take the Medicaid Expansion so over 750k Floridians get access to healthcare in the middle of a pandemic. I want to work towards Medicare For All, however I can on the state level.

The All-Time leading record holder in national Medicare Fraud, current Junior Senator and former Governor, “Red Tide” Rick Scott, purposely designed our state’s unemployment system to fail. This has left millions of Floridians without the benefits of a system that THEY PAID INTO at the State and Federal Level. Something about Rick Scott and fraud and theft in health care just seems to go together like arroz con pollo.

The criminally botched Covid-19 response by future Fox News Contributor, Ron DeSantis, has been the alarming preview of what will happen to our economy if we leave climate change unaddressed and do not do something to reverse the pollution that is killing our beaches. Covid-19 destroyed the Miami tourism industry and left thousands under or completely unemployed. Imagine what happens when our city gets flooded by sea level rising or human sewage continues to wash up on our beaches? Don’t even get me started on these guys and their plan to bring offshore drilling to Florida immediately after the election.

Our education system is an embarrassment, the NRA has way too much control over our state, our budget is shot, and there is an insanely high level of blatant corruption at every level of state and local Florida politics to the point that we are now the envy of many third world Latin American countries, just for the sheer brashness of it all.

I could go on and on about specific policies that need to be changed but here is something that everyone in this country needs to understand right now:

NONE OF ANY OF THIS MATTERS IF TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS WIN ANOTHER FOUR YEARS

None. Trump and the GOP will sell our country off for scrap to the lowest bidder. That’s how incompetent they are even at corruption. These guys don’t even realize they’re getting underbid!

Russia already influenced the 2016 election. Trump has invited them to do it again along with the Chinese. Everyone knows we are for sale from the Russians to the Chinese to the Saudis, Israelis, Turks, and Emiratis. We even have high level Florida GOP operatives acting as the bag man for brutal Venezuelan Dictator, Nicolas Maduro. Something that current head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Little Marco Rubio would have cared about in his pre-Bible study past life.

Enough!

Let’s get the criminals and traitors out and then work together to chart the new path forward. This is impossible with the GOP in charge at any level of government. This iteration of the GOP needs to be completely destroyed. If they choose to rebuild, fine. But they cannot be allowed to continue to sell American interests out for their own personal business ones. The easiest way to ensure this happens is to support my campaign for House District 116 so I can help everyone else on the top of the ticket avoid the advice of the misguided consultants, strategists, and vendors who don’t have to live here if we lose. My entire campaign team is made up of local experts. Almost all of them are female Hispanic women. There is no other straight, white, “raised Christian” man in this campaign. I am listening to the people who have been silenced or ignored for far too long. Any bit of support you can give to my campaign means I can turn the megaphone for their voices up that much louder. I want to take the volume up to 11. The saddest part of it all is that I have to explain this in English to potential donors just so that we can actually go out and energize the voters, which will be done almost entirely in Spanish. That requires local, country specific, expertise. We have it. Our campaign will empower the people in Miami that have been marginalized or taken for granted, by both parties, for far too long. The amount of untapped energy within the female Hispanic community leaders, LGBTQ, and younger voters cannot be measured by any poll. Help me show them that they are no longer being ignored. There is no better investment you can make to defeat fascism and prevent our country from becoming another failed state.

My last name is awful, especially in this day in age. However, it is an Ellis Island bastardized version of a Gaelic name “Ó Loingsigh”, which means “Descendants of the Mariner.”

The first rule of the high seas is Women and Children First. When the shit gets real, All Hands on Deck. Time for everyone to get to their Muster Stations.