Blood on the Tracks

http://southflorida.metromix.com/politics/article/danation-blood-on-the/427445/content

Danation: Blood on the tracks
As the election train rolls on, a couple of Democratic contenders in South Florida like their odds.
By Dan Sweeney


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Democrat Travis Childers beat Republican Greg Davis in a district that, according to presidential election results for 2000 and 2004, is about twice as Republican-leaning as any of the districts currently held by Republicans in South Florida. In those three remaining Republican districts — the 18th, 21st and 25th, currently represented by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, respectively — it would be an understatement to say that shark-like Democrats smell traces of blood in the water. It's more like mounds of chum floating throughout thick, red water with the sickly sweet smell of fresh blood wafting over the surface of the sea.

"I am very excited about some of the things we've been seeing across the country," says Democrat Annette Taddeo, who faces Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in District 18, which encompasses Miami Beach and the Florida Keys. "Certainly, the Mississippi race was very exciting."

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Of course, claiming the centrist mantle while knocking one's opponent as an extremist isn't exactly the same as sitting on the sidelines of the Great Game of Hardball Politics. But Taddeo has that Obama-like ability to make partisan politics sound like above-the-fray reasoning, as when she takes the right-wing mantra of "family values" to explain her position on travel restrictions in Cuba. "I don't just preach family values, I really believe in them, and those are not my family values," she says. "That we would separate a mother from her children by telling them that we cannot go visit them but once every three years. If someone is ill or if someone in your family dies, you can't go to their funeral. That is unacceptable for the government to say that to a Cuban American."

Unlike Taddeo, Joe Garcia, who is running against Mario Diaz-Balart in the Everglades-dominated 25th District, is far from a newcomer to politics. The former chairman of the Democratic Party of Miami-Dade County has already been tarred by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart as "South Beach Joe." Diaz-Balart also expressed shock — shock I tell you! — when Garcia had a fundraiser with New York Rep. Charlie Rangel, or as Diaz-Balart's press statement put it, "left-wing radical Congressman Charlie Rangel." That smear is, of course, less an insult to Charlie Rangel than it is to left-wing radicals. I know an anarcho-socialist co-op that would collectively vomit at being lumped into the same category as the congressman. But point being, Garcia maintains that, as people come to know him, they'll realize he's not the loopy left-wing loon Diaz-Balart is desperately trying to paint him as.

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Send pinko-leftie, anarcho-socialist reprisals to Dan Sweeney at dfsweeney@citylinkmagazine.com. For more of Sweeney's stuff, visit Huffingtonpost.com.

in these races the same ones that Clinton's Florida surrogate (Wasserman-Scultz) won't campaign against.

Wasserman Schultz, just lookin' out for the GOP in 08.

GK

That said, I voted Wasserman-Schultz into office back in 2004, and her voting record while in Congress has been stellar. So, as with most politicians (and most things in life for that matter), you take the good with the bad. I'm not happy with her performance this election campaign, but I am happy with her performance in Congress over the past four years.