GOP Mismanagement Of The Pandemic In Florida Will Hurt Them At The Polls-- Up And Down The Ballot

COVID-Don with COVID-Ron

On Friday, Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republican-dominated state legislature gave Florida 11,433 new corfimed COVID cases. Yesterday it was 10,360 more, bringing the ghastly total to 254,511 (11,850 per million Floridians). Also on Friday Governor Greg Abbott and his Republican-dominated state legislature gave Texas 10,063 new cases. And yesterday it was another 8,389, bringing the total to 258,574 (8,948 per million Texans, not as horrendous as Florida's per capita number but catching up rapidly). To make it much worse, both states are experiencing hospital breakdowns-- no room for new patients in dozens of hospitals, the worst possible outcome to DeSantis' and Abbott's (and Señor Trumpanzee's) failed herd immunity strategy.

We'll come back to Florida-- oh, believe me, we will-- in a minute, but I want to share a Fox8 report from Texas first. Ask yourself why anyone would think COVID-19 was a hoax. Two big reasons: misreporting from Fox News and a campaign of deadly lies from Trump and Pence. San Antonio's Fox8 reported that "A 30-year-old patient died after going to a 'COVID Party,' according to Dr. Jane Appleby, the chief medical officer at Methodist Hospital. 'This is a party held by someone diagnosed with the COVID virus, and the thought is that people get together to see if the virus is real if anyone gets infected,' Appleby said... 'Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said, I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax, but it’s not,' Appleby said. She said many of the critically ill patients being treated at Methodist Hospital for COVID-19 are in their twenties or thirties, which is a developing trend across the San Antonio area."

The mayor of San Antonio says 25% of the county's positive cases are young adults. But I have a Florida story for you that's also pretty ironic about someone neither young nor, judging by all his chins, fit. St. Johns County Commissioner Paul Waldron of St. Augustine, a Republican in a red, red district is in critical condition after he was hospitalized with COVID late last week. His daughter reported that he "went into septic shock and many of his organs are struggling." Last week 3 county commissioners voted against a mask mandate; Waldron was one of them. In case you were wondering, in 2016 St. John's County gave Trump a landslide win over Hillary-- 88,633 (65.0%) to 43,037 (31.6%).

Paul Waldron

Despite the pandemic, things aren't as universally horrible in Florida as they seem. Democrats feel hopeful-- no one is allowed to day "confident"-- that Trump will lose Florida's 29 electoral votes, which means he has no path to victory. Our old friend, now a state senator from Miami, Annette Taddeo says Biden's in good shape electorally and cites the mood of the callers to Spanish-language radio stations on which she appears. "You learn so much from all these people calling in, really angry. They know I’m a Democrat and they say, 'I’m a Republican but I’m done.'" She cited not just the rising number of coronavirus cases but long-standing problems with the Republicans screwed up state unemployment benefit system, which has stymied many laid-off workers from getting the assistance to which they're entitled.

Several congressional and state legislative candidates who were once considered so longshot that the state Democratic Party either ignored them or even tried persuading them to not run, are now looking at legitimate shots of winning their races.

Anselm Weber is running for a state House seat to represent Fort Myers, one of those red districts where the Florida Democratic Party doesn't even try anymore. His campaign message is compelling: "It is not enough to end Climate Change, it is important to support the needs of people who lack quality healthcare, housing, or wages. That is why we support a living wage and provide universal healthcare for every Floridian on top of ending massive environmental degradation." This morning he told me that "Floridians are fed up and they have every right to be. You have a federal government giving trillions to corporations and high income earners, all while the working class has only received crumbs... and no universal healthcare. We have a state government insistent on reopening the economy while our hospitals are overrun and our unemployment system is in tatters. It's only a matter of time before even Republicans realize their governor and state legislature doesn't care what happens to them during this crisis."

Daniel Horton-Diaz and Bob Lynch will serve beside Anselm if all 3 are elected in November. Daniel and Bob, though, are running in Miami Date swing districts. "Republicans are solely responsible for our state’s broken unemployment system and they know it," said Horton-Diaz. "Every day when I speak with voters, I hear their anger and frustration with the continuous nonsense coming from Tallahassee. I expect this to be the top campaign issue from now until Election Day." Lynch had a similarly tough message for the GOP:

The criminal mismanagement of the entire response to Covid-19 from Ron DeSantis on down to Carlos Giménez and Francis Suarez has been a humanitarian disaster. I’ve spoken to future constituents who tell me about better responses in the third world countries that they fled for a better life in the U.S.

Rather than pay people to stay home and be safe, the DeSantis administration actively prevented people from getting the $600 a week PUA payments afforded to all Americans from the CARES act. This forced people to take their chances to return to work in unsafe conditions rather than let their families starve.

It is unconscionable but it presents an enormous opportunity for anyone who wants to ensure Trump is defeated. There is no other state with a full slate of candidates and a fed up populace. We can get Joe Biden elected, flip the state house and senate, redraw congressional districts after the census, force Ron DeSantis to take the Medicaid expansion, and actually save human lives from a GOP government that has abandoned them. Local candidates who speak Spanish in Miami are the most cost effective way to make this happen and should be supported at the highest levels of the entire Democratic Party.

Joshua Hicks is a major rising superstar in Florida progressive politics. He's running against an entrenched incumbent in the Jacksonville area. "Florida just reported the largest one-day increase in coronavirus hospitalizations this week and Jacksonville was named one of three 'surge cities' in the entire country. The trend lines show the spread getting much worse before it gets better, and that's before more than 50,000 Republican National Convention attendees arrive in Jacksonville next month. We still haven’t seen a concrete public health and safety plan, and time is running short to figure it out. Without a plan, we are unnecessarily putting the health of First Coast community members at risk. And I won't support that. My opponent, State Rep. Cord Byrd, has been completely silent on any COVID precautions during the pandemic, but he was seen on Saturday night at a reception with the RNC Host Committee and Vice President Pence, and he wasn't wearing a mask-- in open defiance of GOP Mayor Lenny Curry's mask order in Jacksonville. Now more than ever, we need leaders who will set the right example and who will ask the tough questions of those in power when people's lives and livelihoods are at risk. That's one of the reasons I'm running to defeat him. I will always put the people's health and safety first. And when I see other elected leaders not living up to this basic duty, I will call them out on it."

Dr. Cindy Banyai is the progressive candidate running for an open congressional seat in the Ft. Myers/Naples area. "It’s clear that Republicans are playing politics with the mask issue," she told me today, "and are not considering the health and safety of people. In Southwest Florida, local officials are receiving communications overwhelmingly in favor is mandatory mask ordinances. Yet, most ordinances have not passed, leaving people here vulnerable. We need leaders that will consider science and data, as well as the thoughts of the people in mind while making decisions."

I really should mention that last week, reporting for The Intercept, Aída Chávez wrote that more than 50 Democratic candidates across Florida are "revolting against the Florida Democratic Party, saying that the party has abandoned them-- and that the party’s refusal to support their efforts to flip the legislature could hurt Joe Biden in November. Several candidates are being denied access to a powerful voter data tool, significantly impairing their ability to organize and campaign, and are now asking the state Democratic Party to either help turn Florida blue or get out of their way.

Adam Christensen, one of three Democratic candidates running for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Rep. Ted Yoho, said the Florida Democratic Party is missing a huge opportunity, putting a “start-up cost” on something that should be an investment.

“If these candidates had the voter files, the data, the information on where to canvass, who to canvass, not only would it increase the amount of Democrats in Florida, it would in turn increase donations, it would increase the amount of races that are won in Florida,” he said. “But right now the Democratic Party is more concerned with making money off candidates, who they essentially see as suckers, and they will not call them back, they will not give them any actual backing.”

In the letter, the candidates wrote that access to the voter files is “a necessary first step” toward winning the 84 GOP-held state legislative seats Democrats are running for, dozens of congressional races, and the presidential election.

This election cycle marks the first time that some Democratic candidates are challenging previously uncontested, Republican-held legislative seats. For decades, the Florida Democratic Party has refused to run Democrats for state House and Senate in deep red districts, offering little resistance to the Republican takeover. That changed this year, when the voting rights group 90 for 90, with help from local progressive groups, recruited challengers and helped raise money to cover the massive ballot access fees to run for these long-ignored seats.

Florida also has the second highest fees in the country to get on the ballot, requiring congressional candidates to obtain 5,000 signatures or fork over $10,500. And because the coronavirus pandemic has made it more difficult to obtain the number of signatures necessary for the petition, this means candidates are expected to pay the large fees on top of the fees to access VAN. For working-class candidates or young people trying to run for office, Christensen said, “it’s game over.”

The idea is that running Democrats everywhere, especially in GOP strongholds, helps drive turnout, cuts the margin of defeat to make districts increasingly competitive over time, and forces Republicans to spend money. Efforts by local- and state-level Democrats to help drive turnout by better targeting get-out-the-vote efforts could also help Biden in the battleground state, which Donald Trump carried in 2016. But candidates say that the Florida Democratic Party has no interest in competing and at times actively discourages opposition, claiming that it would anger Republicans, or refuses to help any of the Democratic contenders.

“They have gone out and hired a bunch of field organizers and they give them access to VAN, they give [Democratic Executive Committees] access to VAN, they give everyone access to VAN except for the candidates,” Christensen said. “And at the end of the day the candidates are the ones who not only use the data, but update the data. They fix most of the data rolls to begin with because they’re the ones that actually make contact with voters and find people who are persuadable enough.”

Is it safe to visit Florida, which is so dependent on tourism? If you're thinking about going... watch this CNN report below. But if you want my opinion... well if I were offered an all expenses paid trip to leave tomorrow for a week, I wouldn't have to think about it twice-- Not.A.Chance-- not to Florida, not to much safer Hawaii, to re-opening Paris, Rome or Thailand. I don't even feel safe going down the hill to the grocery store any longer. You know what will make me feel safer about travel-- aside from an effective, proven vaccine? The Republican Death Cult removed from office at all levels. Watch the clip-- then please consider contributing at the thermometer above.