It's official: Joe Garcia vs Mario Diaz-Balart in FL-25

OK, the battle commences. Weasly Republican words vs. solid Democratic challenges.

This is South Florida, and Joe Garcia, a Democratic strategist and progressive leader, launches his challenge to the three-term Republican rubber-stamper, Mario Diaz-Balart, for the U.S. House in Congressional District 25.

There was some pretty good and even-handed treatment of the Garcia announcement on Thursday, but I had to shake the old head at the local Fox outlet’s report on the 10 p.m. news Thursday night. Garcia was given his Democratic say, and then the Republican incumbent is shown sitting in front of a view of the Capital dome in Washington and intoning a load of hogwash about his supposedly fine performance in the U.S. House.

There’s not a link up to the Fox-7 report, but it was like what the Miami Herald used as boilerplate in its story 24 hours earlier previewing what it called a “grudge match” election.

UPDATE: More details emerged on Channel 4's version, in which reporter Gary Nelson showed the same video of Diaz-Balart speaking. Nelson said the Republicans had booked satellite time to feed the hogwash from Washington. We can be confident they will spend to the sky to hold this seat. So, Democratic donors, are you reaching for your checkbooks?

There's a handy donation link on the campaign website, JoeGarcia08.com

Diaz-Balart sent the Herald an emailed statement declaring: “Elections are a wonderful part of the democratic process.” (Said the master of gerrymandering who created the oddly shaped district himself while in the state legislature – perhaps not such a wonderful part of the democratic process.) And then went on: “As I have always done, I will base my campaign on my extensive record of cutting taxes on our families and small businesses while delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for our community’s needs, including transportation, health care and education.”

Well, folks, there’s his sound bite: cutting taxes, bringing home the pork. Sounds strong, but it is oh so challengable.

His declared support for transportation must seem pretty meager to residents of the traffic-congested part of the district in the western suburbs of Miami who spend far too much of their lives in crawling traffic. Health care – are there enough fingers to count his votes against children’s health insurance? Why is education more and more expensive? And why have local taxes become so onerous?

District 25 includes most of the Everglades, one of the largest national parks in the United States, which needs aggressive defense by the federal government but receives hardly anything beyond operating expenses. Why? Ineffective representation in Congress, I’d venture. The state of Florida and the federal government agreed years ago to share costs of restoring more natural water-flow conditions in the Everglades, but the feds have been pikers even as the state has continued to pay and pay. Thank you, Rep. Diaz-Balart, for giving us another big reason to vote you out of office.

For readers not familiar with our politics in Miami-Dade County, there are two Diaz-Balarts in the U.S. House, Mario and his older brother Lincoln Diaz-Balart (District 21), and their fellow Cuban American Republican, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (District 18). This gives us three Republicans to go with presently two Democrats, Kendrick Meek (District 17) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (District 20).

The two Democrats’ districts are so gerrymandered as to be impregnable, and Republicans don’t bother to send up challengers. The three Republican incumbents are increasingly vulnerable due to demographic shifts and the poor performance of the Bush administration, and polls show ample reason for Democratic challengers to rise and buckle up, though the battles will be tough.

For starters, I thought the broadcasters’ fairness doctrine had been abolished long ago. So it seemed from the poor treatment Democrats’ challenges received in the local media in the past. Now it seems that if a Democrat rises and declares a challenge, the other side gets to declare a full load of hogwash without any relation to reality – and then: Cut! Time to cover the departure of Shaq from the Heat!

So it requires courage and a thick skin for a Democrat to gear up for nine months’ campaigning on these terms. It is so heartening that we have those qualities now in three challengers to the three Republicans. To summarize:
• District 21. Announced two weeks ago, former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez is running against Lincoln Diaz-Balart. Though his city is thoroughly Republican in voter registration, Martinez won election after election and remains highly popular. Republican prosecutors tried repeatedly to put him away on corruption charges without success, and those failed prosecutions seem to be the only ammunition against him now. He was in the room Thursday as:
• District 25. Joe Garcia, chairman of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party and a leading national Democratic strategist, announced his run against Mario Diaz-Balart. Garcia’s Cuban immigrant parents were in the room, too, along with cheering Democratic activists. At 44, Garcia has an impressive record of public service both in the Cuban American community and the state of Florida, along with his national role as director of the Hispanic Strategy Center of the NDN think tank. He is a ubiquitous presence in some local Spanish-language media speaking for the Democratic viewpoint, and people increasingly know him by sight.
• District 18. Look for an announcement next week that Annette Taddeo, a dynamic Colombia-born businesswoman, will run against Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who was elected in 1989 while her husband prosecuted Raul Martinez (see District 21 above) and thwarted Martinez’ intent to run for Congress. Now, that would be a grudge match – if Martinez were running against Ros-Lehtinen -- but the district lines no longer call for that.
Dear me, it’s complicated, isn’t it. And we haven’t gotten into the fact that the Diaz-Balarts are shirt-tail relations of Fidel Castro, whom they hate so much. Those in need of full explanations are referred to the book “Cuba Confidential” by Ann Louise Bardach; its subtitle is “Love and vengeance in Miami and Havana,” and there’s a lot of that to expose in her thorough book. The Diaz-Balarts get about a third of a column in the index.

Dear friends out there, if you’ve got some money set aside for politics this year, click on those three links after the bullets above and find a way to help. South Florida is ready to be part of a national landslide to make Congress progressive and veto-proof, and your help is needed.