Florida Democratic Party-- A Picture Of Pitiful Dysfunction

May 2nd was the last day to file for federal office in Florida for 2014. Of the 16 congressional seats held by Republicans, 5 have no Democratic candidates at all. Many others have just vanity Democratic candidates or wild-eyed idealists with no real chance, but these are the 5 with no Democratic opponents:, along with the incumbents and the district PVIs:

• FL-04- Ander Crenshaw- R+19
• FL-12- Gus Bilirakis- R+7
• FL-13- David Jolly- R+1
• FL-25- Mario Diaz-Balart- R+5
• FL-27- Ileana Ros-Lehtinen- R+2

Obama beat Romney 53-47% in FL-27 and 50-49% in FL-13. Crenshaw is unassailable and Bilirakis is safe as well. It would probably take a two-cycle action plan to dislodge Diaz-Balart, although the masterminds at the DCCC don't ever, under any circumstances, think in terms beyond one term. So he's safe. And that leaves Dave Jolly and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

We've been discussing DCCC Chair Steve Israel's incompetent throwing away of FL-13 by forcing Pinellas NAACP president Manuel Sykes out of the primary for a flawed conservative with a padded résumé, Ed Jany, who then bowed out within hours of being gratuitously added to the once vaunted/now debased Red-to-Blue program. So now, Israel has managed to piss off Pinellas County African-American voters and progressive voters and has no candidate in a blue-trending district to run against a vulnerable and fatally flawed ex-lobbyist. And, no, Nancy Pelosi has not fired Steve Israel from the DCCC.

One of his worst recruits from the last cycle, Val Demings, who lost to cult christo-fascist Dan Webster in 2012, announced-- rather suddenly yesterday-- that she's withdrawing from the race for mayor of Orange County. She said "this is just not the right race at this time," although sh'e been running-- and soliciting contributions-- since January. Nevermind that this leaves the Democrats with no candidate in a county where they outnumber Republicans by over 100,000 voters… this is all about Val. And Val wants to run for Congress, not mayor. In her lame press release she described herself like this: "Demings is considered to be a rising star in Florida Democratic politics." And that speaks to how utterly dysfunctional the Democratic Party of Florida is.

And, in line with that dysfunction, state Party boss, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has made it clear for years that she will not countenance anyone running against her old friend and ally, Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, even if Lehtinen's district is now quite blue and one of the top 3 districts increases the share of votes it gave Obama from 2008 to 2012. McCain actually won the district 123,543 (51%) to 120,028 (49%), only to see a huge reversal in 2012-- Obama, 130,020 (53%) to Romney, 114,096 (47%). When Obama was cleaning Romney's clock in Miami-Dade, Wasserman Schultz and Israel had made sure there wouldn't be a viable Democrat fighting Ros-Lehtinen. They drafted a mysterious fake candidate, Manny Yevancey, whose job was not to run as a Democrat, just to make sure no one else could. This year, they didn't even have to do that. They just discouraged anyone even looking in Ileana's direction-- even though Ileana is vulnerable to various ethics and corruption charges.

Pelosi Should Appoint Only One Democrat To Trey Gowdy's Witch Hunt Committee: Alan Grayson

When a tiny handful of slime ball conservaDems like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Patrick Murphy (FL) and John Barrow (GA) conspired with the House Republicans to ramp up the politically and financially-motivated Benghazi witch hunt last week, I floated the idea of Pelosi doing the one thing better than boycotting it: just appointing a single Democrat to call out the GOP on their ugly partisan attacks. And who better than Oralndo truth teller Alan Grayson? Answer: no one. Yesterday, Ari Rabin-Havt made two cases, one for full Democratic participation in the GOP charade-- which I think is an awful mistake-- and the other, for Grayson to head the Democratic effort. That second part is the part that makes sense. Ari wants Grayson as the ranking member. I still want him as the only member.

The pugnacious former litigator has demonstrated the exact skill set needed to cut through the Republican mythology, the work ethic necessary to fully immerse himself in the issue, and the temperament to weather the blistering attacks sure to come from the conservative media.

In the aftermath of the Iraq War, Grayson’s courtroom prowess resulted in millions of dollars in judgments against war profiteers. This skill was on display in September when the congressman used his five minutes as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee to dismantle conservative Benghazi mythology while questioning Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy:



Too often members of Congress waste their limited time in the committee room on questions that are nothing more than self-congratulatory statements. Grayson has never demonstrated the compunction for these sorts of  legislative prerogatives.

Even worse are when hearings denigrate into meandering soliloquies that never provide any relevant information. Grayson has a clear track record, demonstrated during his tenure Finance Committee, of asking questions designed to craft specific narratives and elicit from witnesses-- both friendly and hostile-- clear answers.

Trey Gowdy has cast himself as prosecutor, necessitating Democrats provide a countervailing force focused solely on the truth. It’s this talent Democrats need on the select committee on Benghazi-- one for which Grayson’s gift is well-proven.

Earlier today, Eli Lake broke a story at the Daily Beast about how many senior Republican congressional leaders have warned their deranged colleagues that the Benghazi clown show would backfire and blow up in their faces. It won't matter for districts filled with brain-dead Hate Talk Radio zombies in the Deep South (like Gowdy's) but for Republicans who depend on winning independent voters, the Benghazi hysteria could be a political death sentence. House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers warned it's a "rabbit hole" and a crackpot conspiracy theory. Buck McKeon and Darrell Issa agree.

Contrary to the caricature of Republicans, as singularly obsessed for political reasons with Benghazi, the reality is quite different. There is deep unease within the Republican leadership that the select committee, which has yet to announce a schedule of hearings, could backfire, and badly. Investigate and find nothing new, and the committee looks like a bunch of tin-hatted obsessives. Investigate and uncover previously-hidden secrets, and it makes all of the other Republican led panels that dug into Benghazi seem like Keystone Kops.

If-- and it's a big "if"-- the House Democrats were to sideline Steve Israel and put a competent leader in charge of the DCCC, there are a dozen otherwise safe Republicans, all of whom need independent voters for reelection, who could lose their seats because of Benghazi insanity. Israel is not making any effort to defeat any of these incumbents:

• Fred Upton (R-MI)
• David Reichert (R-WA)
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)
• Sean Duffy (R-WI)
• Erik Paulsen (R-MN)
• Reid Ribble (R-WI)
• Patrick Meehan (R-PA)
• Charlie Dent (R-PA)
• Joe Pitts (R-PA)
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
• Peter King (R-NY)
• John Kline (R-MN)

UPDATE: FL-13… Something Else Pelosi Should Deal With

Just a few short months ago, when Bill Young died, the DCCC and DNC-- i.e., incompetent party hacks Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- declared his district, FL-13 (Pinellas County), the number one target for a Red to Blue switch anywhere in America. The GOP nominated a slimy, unknown lobbyist, David Jolly, and the Democrats cleared the field for Alex Sink, who had won the district when she ran for governor against Rick Scott. It really did look like it was in the bag. Sink out-raised Jolly substantially and she was the favorite to win. But she didn't.

The corrupt profiteers at EMILY's List and the DCCC insisted she spend her money on expensive TV advertising-- from which they make a fortune in rake-offs-- and NOT spend money on field. Sink lost because of her lack of a credible field campaign-- as well as because she followed standard Steve Israel "mystery meat" strategy, refusing to embrace a strong progressive vision for America. She then refused to run for the seat in November. When local NAACP president Manuel Sykes declared he was running, Israel and Wasserman Schultz got a local cypher of theirs, Mark Hanisee, to badger and threaten Sykes out of the race so they could insert a Republican-turned-"Democrat," Ed Jany. Jany couldn't get on the Democratic ballot line but decided to run as an independent. Israel immediately tossed every Red-to-Blue qualification in the garbage and immediately placed Jany on the list and urged big Democratic donors to open their wallets. The African-American and progressive communities decided to boycott the election in November, jeopardizing the chances to defeat Rick Scott.

Then, over the weekend, it came out that Jany is a compulsive liar and made up stories about his educational achievements-- as though he had any. Yesterday he withdrew from the race. That leaves the Democrats with NO CANDIDATE in their number one target district, a district that hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan.

So… after Pelosi appoints Grayson to Gowdy's committee as the sole Democratic member, she should fire Steve Israel as DCCC Chairman and clean out that nest of corrupt incompetents and try to salvage what they can of an election cycle that Israel has shaped into a catastrophe in the making.

After He's Defeated In November, Ed Jany Can Teach At A DCCC Mail Order School Specializing In How To Lose Blue Districts

Steve Israel, as we mentioned earlier in the month, failed again. He always fails. He fails at everything. Tangent: one of his closest allies in Congress sent me a note yesterday to tell me that Israel's philandering has led to a second divorce and a catastrophic personal financial situation that "puts him at risk of being unduly influenced by corporate interests who promise him a lucrative post-Congress future… [and] makes him want/need favors now, like a cheap re-fi on his home when he wouldn’t otherwise qualify. Will he turn up with $80,000 in the freezer?" Israel is the 6th most indebted Member of Congress and has a net worth of minus $795,000. He "has a small account worth less than $1,000 and a retirement account worth more than $15,000, which is something many middle-class folks can probably relate to. However, as with the other members of Congress on this list, his debt is pretty high. His liabilities come from a mixture of mortgages, credit card debt and the dreaded student loan debt from his children. All this debt combined totals up to about $800,000."

But the Israel "ally" wasn't the only politician who wrote to me about him yesterday. A Democratic candidate who hates his guts-- which, believe me, describes almost every Democratic candidate since 2011-- suggested I look a little closer at Israel's horrific recruit for the FL-13 seat he already screwed up twice before-- once in 2012 and then again last month when he was key to Alex Sink's tragic loss. The new recruit is fatally-flawed Republican-tunred-indepedent, Ed Jany, now running, disgracefully, as a Steve Israel Democrat. Israel, Hoyer and Florida's sad, pathetic excuse for a Democratic Party first strong-armed Rev. Manuel Sykes, president of the St. Petersburg chapter of the NAACP, out of the primary. They even lied to him and told him St. Petersburg's progressive mayor, Rick Kriseman wanted him out, which Kriseman says is pure, unadulterated bullshit. Then they anointed Jany, a snake-oil salesman from Brazil who has exactly no chance to win whatsoever. But not just because Jany, like the rest of Israel's wretched recruits, does't stand for anything.

Jany is a phony through and through and anyone who even cared to do the slightest due diligence on this character and references would have seen right through him. By not bothering to look, Israel is handing the GOP another win in FL-13, a district that voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012, and was widely considered to be one of the best chances for a Democratic pick-up anywhere in the country.

Jany has tried to pass himself off as a college graduate but he went to something called "Madison University," not James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, ranked as the 6th best college in the South, and not even James Madison High School in Brooklyn, where Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Norm Coleman, Andrew Dice Clay, Ken and myself, all went to school. And Carole King.

No, Jany's Madison University is an unaccredited diploma mill located in a Gulfport, Mississippi post office box. The only accreditation it has is from some kooky, senile woman obsessed with Atlantis and bizarre, paranoid conspiracy theories. In their 2003 catalogue they offered a price list of what it would take for "students" like Jany to "earn" various degrees:

This is all public information that Israel and his lazy, incompetent, corrupt staff at the DCCC could have found as easily as I did-- The Google-- before they recruited him as the DCCC candidate and immediately put him on the Red To Blue Emerging Races list.

Alex Leary, the Washington Bureau Chief for the Tampa Bay Times, pointed out that even before this revelation about the fake education claims came out, Jany had "considerable challenges" to overcome. He switched party registration too late to be allowed onto the ballot as a Democrat so he'll appear as a "no-party affiliation" candidate. And although Alex Sink endorsed him-- for whatever that's worth-- the shoddy way the DCCC and their local allies have treated Manuel Sykes, is sure to hold down African-American and white progressive participation in the election, not just making it impossible to defeat Jolly, but jeopardizing the Democratic gubernatorial candidate as well, who absolutely must win a landslide in his native Pinellas County to win statewide against Rick Scott. Back to the original premise: Steve Israel-- the ultimate loser! What will it take for Nancy Pelosi to open her eyes? How many more catastrophes?

This evening, the Tampa Bay Times also noticed the discrepancies in Jany's c.v. and real life. They're calling his educational record "dubious." Jany, who doesn't live in the district, "boasts a degree from Madison University, a school often described as a diploma mill without a campus or classes, but which Jany insists is a legitimate institution. In his online Linked­In resume, Jany lists a degree from the University of Minnesota, which he attended from 1982 to 1986." But he lied; he didn't get a degree from the University of Minnesota, just a fake one from Madison "University."