FL-21, FL-25: Good news for Martinez and Garcia campaigns

Here we are at five weeks to election day – meaning three weeks to start of early voting – and the momentum looks positive for the Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia challenges to the Diaz-Balart rubber-stamp brothers.

Cry foul: Lincoln Diaz-Balart won't debate Raul Martinez

Sorry, little mistake in the headline. Replace the word foul with fowl, for chicken. That should be the modifier for Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who's not up to the challenge of meeting his challenger in the debate arena.

Close readers of this blog may remember back on Sept. 10 when there was a post reporting at least two debates scheduled between the rubber-stamp incumbent and the Democratic contender for FL-21's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The post quoted from the Miami Herald column by Channel 10's respected political reporter Michael Putney, who was himself to be moderator or co-moderator of two debates between Martinez and L. Diaz-Balart.

Sorry to report now that the Martinez campaign says it's all off. As I suspected back on Sept. 10. Too good to be true. The Diaz-Balarts never have the fortitude to meet a challenger.

Last night I was at a fundraiser for Annette Taddeo, challenging Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in FL-18, and a welcome guest was Joe Garcia, who's running against Mario Diaz-Balart in FL-25. No surprise to hear both Annette and Joe report no luck in enticing their opponents to debate. They may hint at this date or that, only to pull back.

Why do they do this? My guess is that they may fool some few voters who will approvingly remember the little news story saying the Republicans had agreed to debate, but not see the one reporting the debate had been called off.

Thanks to the Raul Martinez campaign for rounding up links to various news stories about the "debates," as follows:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/692549.html

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2008/09/get-ready-to-ru.html

http://www.local10.com/editorials/17503337/detail.html

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2008/09/channel-10-miam.html

Commentary in El Nuevo Herald hints at win for Joe Garcia

Thanks to the Joe Garcia campaign for finding and translating this opinion piece from El Nuevo Herald this past weekend. It concentrates on Joe Garcia's strong chances in the FL-25 race against Mario Diaz-Balart but is just as relevant to Annette Taddeo in FL-18 and Raul Martinez in FL-21: Florida "will not be an island" in the ocean of change coming on election day.

The entire piece is quoted hereunder, and this link goes back to the original Spanish.

It's not hard to guess why Mario Diaz-Balart prefers to avoid Joe Garcia these days. He doesn't want to bump into him at social gatherings at the Versailles Restaurant in Little Havana, much less on the radio, television or here in the Herald. Things happen when, after so many years of a family holding political power, all of a sudden, there is fatigue of the repeated speeches, the passing of days, generational shifts or the moment of political realignment in the country sounds several alarms that warn that the trendy word, change, is not only coming to the White House, but to the Congress as well. And this is going to happen to good ol' Joe.

Let's go piece by piece. Nepotism, regardless how nice the brothers of a dynasty may be, creates antipathy, whether it be in Florida, California, Texas, China or Vietnam. You also have to add that the same anti-Castro focus of the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, no longer resonates in 2008. On the contrary, there is a boomerang effect, and you can no longer duck your head or use the same old story that generated votes in the past. Cuban-American voters clearly want change in their homeland, along with liberty and democracy, so they can once again breathe the breeze that stayed behind in Havana's piers. There is no disagreement on this issue, but alongside this exiled voting bloc, there is now a new voter. There is the young Cuban American that was born in the United States, and despite the love he may have for the grandparents and uncles he may or may not have met, he has a different vision of the problem. His origins may be in Cuba, but his school, university, wife, kids and future are in the United States. His first language is English, and he almost doesn't understand the rhetoric that dates back four decades of exiles talking about the death of the tyrant or the fall of the regime.

These young Cuban-Americans are affected by the drama of their peers, and the nostalgia less than 90 miles from Florida, but what they're more interested in is that a young politician, that speaks their language, is ready to solve their daily problems here in the United States. This has been the focus of Mr. Garcia's campaign. Aside from this generational dilemma, the Diaz-Balarts' and Ms. Ros-Lehtinen's problem, is that their Democratic opponents for Congress have surfaced while the country has been inspired by the optimistic change that Barack Obama signifies. During such a political climate, the standard-bearers of exile politics represent the exact opposite.

Some things happen when a candidate arrives that was born on Miami Beach; has longer hair; is known for being a good guy; is linked to the University of Miami; is well prepared; and close to various groups of Cuban Americans, prefers to speak less about the 'Cuba libre' we all want, and focuses more on speaking to voters, whose lives are committed to the country we live in, about pocket-book issues and their daily lives.

I'm not sure if there will be a electoral dethroning of the congressional Republicans, but what is felt in forums, letters to the media and in polls is that change is not only a perception, but rather a real possibility, with a candidate that shows personal respect toward his opponents and thinks they are not efficient and that the time for another option is now. Certain things happen when a veteran politician that follows the line of Diaz-Balart begins to understand that we find ourselves in a year where China changes, and that Florida will not be an island in this cry for change, and that's why he'll find every possible excuse not to be in the same place where he may have to debate, confront or analyze his rival. Joe Garcia is here to win.

Kos reports on "Democratic resurgence" in Miami-Dade

DailyKos, thanks to Kos himself, Markos Molitsas, has a wonderful rundown of the latest voter registration statistics for Miami-Dade County.

This is the DailyKos Link. We all should study these numbers as we campaign our hearts out for our three congressional candidates, and the DailyKos article is the best place to get it in full detail and nicely laid out with hyperlinks to the official sources.

For this blog I’m only going to report the three districts’ Democratic deficits and show how they’ve shrunk.

• District 18, where Annette Taddeo challenges long-time Republican rubber-stamp Ileana Ros Lehtinen. The Democrats are only behind 7,129 souls, much better than the deficit of 18,006 in January.
• District 21, where Raul Martinez has what Kos regards as the hardest role to oust Lincoln Diaz-Balart. The Democrats are behind 24,643, against a deficit of 31,045 in January. It sounds like a big deficit until it’s clear that Republicans always have voted like crazy for Raul Martinez in the district, where he was mayor of Hialeah for many terms.
• District 25, where Joe Garcia is taking on Mario Diaz-Balart (he who brags untruthfully that our two Democratic congressmen won’t support Garcia). Here the margin has narrowed the most of the three districts, down to 3,624 from 13,348 in January.

No excuses will be accepted for slowing our efforts to recruit new Democratic voters.

Along those lines, I have to say I was sent out to canvass for Annette Taddeo last Saturday and the kit handed to me did not include voter registration forms. There’s no excuse for that. At least a couple.

US Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen rejects Medicare fraud remedy

The Miami Herald is outdoing itself lately with investigations. As the staff shrinks, will the good work still have a chance to continue? The answer will have telling effect on our civic culture, and on the jail population. Fewer crooks will be incarcerated if the Herald isn’t able to keep on exposing fraud.

In fact, fraud seems to be a major industry in South Florida. Look at two of our most important economic sectors:

· Real estate. Mortgage fraud on all sides has been exposed in the Herald as a reason for the steep rise of home prices a few years ago and now the drop. This was accomplished by our neighbors the bankers, mortgage brokers, borrowers and lenders. Working together and individually to get rich like good Americans or just to be housed, they came close to wrecking the whole national economy. Rampant was the word the Herald used to characterize the level of mortgage fraud.

· Health care. Now the Herald has chronicled billions of dollars defrauded from Medicare – that’s from our pockets, fellow citizens – by our neighbors, the fraudsters. This was billions annually in South Florida, not the whole country. An incredible haul. Perhaps it explains the big houses and fancy yachts in our splendid part of the land.

And what is the remedy? Congress! At least in the case of Medicare fraud. So it says on the front page of Monday’s Herald. Headline: Fraud Remedy Denied.

Headlines often are written in the passive voice without full verb forms. Let’s do a little exercise here and put this in the active voice. Congress Denied Fraud Remedy.

As the Herald’s Jay Weaver reported exhaustively, the Medicare agency tried repeatedly for more money to combat fraud, and Congress always throttled the attempt. Weaver shows fine enterprise in interviewing two local members of Congress to delve into the reasons.

Interestingly, Republican Sen. Mel Martinez is on the good side (first-termer behavior?) of this issue, and is backing legislation to stop fraud. He says $1 invested in anti-fraud measures will yield $10 in fraud-reduction, the Herald reports.

Then Weaver turns to my congresswoman, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, FL-18, in the U.S. House since 1989, and she speaks out of both sides of her Republican mouth. Medicare needs help to fight fraud, but it’s risky for lawmakers to give money to an agency recognized for incompetence, she says:

“If you increase the money for oversight, then it looks like you’re fattening up the bureaucracy, even when it’s really for oversight and fighting fraud,” she said. “It’s a difficult choice.”

She then chose according to the ideology of small-government-is-best, and voted against it.

Perhaps it’s not ideology. Campaign donations could be another motivation. And thanks to research from the Florida Democratic Party, we have some detail on Ros-Lehtinen’s connection to Medicare fraud via past donations for her re-election.

From an FDP news release last week:

“In 1998, the largest home health care provider in South Florida was charged with bilking Medicare for more than $45 million in fake services. The company's founder had been a donor to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's campaign for re-election to Congress.

“Congress did have the opportunity to fight back against Medicare fraud before it reached crisis proportions, but Ros-Lehtinen voted against allowing Congress to pursue its Constitutionally-mandated oversight role. In 1995, she voted for the so-called Medicare Preservation Act (HR 2421, Roll Call 731, 1995). The Act that Ros-Lehtinen voted for "crippled the efforts of law enforcement agencies to control health-care fraud abuse in the Medicare program," according to the then-inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Even then, Ros-Lehtinen voted with the Republican Party line and against the best interest of the people of her district, a pattern that continues almost 15 years later.”

The FDP release reports that Ros-Lehtinen has banked $180,000 from Big Pharma and HMOs.

The charge:

“Ros-Lehtinen is either complicit or easily bamboozled, but any way you cut it she has no business representing South Florida in the United States Congress,” said Eric Jotkoff, FDP spokesman.

Amen.

Back to the remedy for Congress: Annette Taddeo is a brilliant businesswoman, passionate Democrat, unsullied by Big Pharma donations, and she’s running a strong challenge to Ros-Lehtinen. Now is the time to pop over to annette2008.com and give some honest money to her campaign.

And don’t forget Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez, who need your support to take out Mario (FL-25) and Lincoln (FL-21) Diaz-Balart (Lincoln declined to be interviewed for the Herald takeout), our two other rubber-stamps in Congress.

Re-elect? NO for 2 of 3 Republicans in South Florida

This is terrific news for those campaigning for a strongly Democratic House of Representatives. Fresh polling shows two of the three sitting Republicans in Miami-Dade County under the 50-percent threshold of incumbent viability.

So why am I disappointed? Darn, my incumbent Republican representative, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is not below the threshold. That’s FL-18, where Ros-Lehtinen has been in office since 1989. This is a call to renewed and more intense work on behalf of the excellent Annette Taddeo, the Democratic challenger in this district that covers the coast from Miami Beach to Key West and a chunk of mainland Miami.

Better news for Joe Garcia in FL-25 (the outer western suburbs of Miami and The Everglades) and even better for Raul Martinez in FL-21 (inner western suburbs of Miami). They are almost within the margin of error – barely behind the brothers Mario Diaz-Balart and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, respectively.

They all need your help. Click on these links and give something. South Florida can be another of these places around the country where the Bush rubber-stampers properly are punished by the voters.

www.annette2008.com

www.joegarcia08.com

www.raul2008.com

Polling by Bendixon & Associates shows the following numbers in response to the question of which candidate you would support if the election were held today:

District 18

· Ros-Lehtinen 58 percent

· Taddeo 31 percent

· Undecided 11 percent

District 21

· Lincoln Diaz-Balart 41 percent

· Raul Martinez 37 percent

· Undecided 22 percent

District 25

· Mario Diaz-Balart 44 percent

· Joe Garcia 39 percent

· Undecided 17 percent

There are two comprehensive reports available for further provocation of your thoughts. The Miami Herald’s headline has the incumbents’ rivals “on their heels.” And CBS4 with Jim Defede is replete with advice that Garcia and Martinez concentrate on getting out the vote among undecided Anglos and African-Americans in their districts, because the Cuban voter has mostly already decided.

I want to raise the question of how Barack Obama’s just-arriving campaign may affect these congressional races. Remember, Florida was not on the main burner of presidential campaigning until the Democratic nomination was decided elsewhere – thanks to the too-early primary date imposed by the Republican-dominated state legislature. So while the Obama campaign got its feet on the ground everywhere else in the country, it was only a few valiant local volunteers who stoked the flame of Obama enthusiasm with parties to watch the primary results in other states.

It has been different now for a couple of weeks. There is a state campaign office and local campaign offices, with 250 Obama Fellows arriving lately in South Florida alone. These mostly young volunteers have been at meetings of our Democratic clubs, as well as running voter-registration events and recruiting more volunteers. Last night at the Miami-Dade Democratic Party’s meeting of the Executive Committee, three of the Fellows spoke, and a prominent part of their message was a promise to work for Democratic victories all along the ticket – not just the president.

All this, I’m sure, will help our Democratic Congressional candidates. And it’s earlier than we’ve had such campaign energy in the past. Certainly not in the 2004 campaign season, when the John Kerry campaign was barely visible four months before election day. Now is the time to make up some of that narrowing gap and send all three of our Republican incumbents home from Congress.

Endorsements in the news: labor unions, Cuban-American leaders

Joe Garcia and Annette Taddeo at a community candidates' forum Saturday -- empty chair for "no show" Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

(Belatedly cross-posting this from Miami-Dade Dems of July 1.)

Chapter I: Labor endorsement

In Tuesday’s Miami Herald it’s revealed that Lincoln Diaz-Balart was not – repeat NOT – endorsed by some of the labor unions that once endorsed him. Also it’s revealed that the Republican representing Florida’s 21^st District sorta fibbed in a news release claiming that he had been endorsed by those unions. Ooops. The Democratic challenger, Raul Martinez, asks for an apology.

And let’s be clear about the wider issue of labor endorsements. The three Democratic challengers for Congress – Raul Martinez, Joe Garcia (FL-25) and Annette Taddeo (FL-18) – are endorsed by the Florida AFL-CIO. Down with the Republican incumbents!

Way down in the Herald article is a reason why the unions reversed earlier backing of the Diaz-Balart brothers and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. The three had committed to the Labor Free Choice Act, which makes it easier to form unions, and then they failed to support it in the House. This is what we call behavior of finks.

UPDATE: Click here to read the news release about the AFL-CIO endorsement of the three Democratic candidates.

Chapter II: Cuban American endorsement

Monday evening, a lively gathering at the cocktail hour at the waterfront villa of J.C. Mas and his wife Vivian de la Maza. It’s a fund-raiser for Joe Garcia, the last day of the reporting quarter, and this is a well-heeled and enthusiastic crowd for Garcia’s candidacy.

Host J.C. Mas, son of the late Jorge Mas Canosa, longtime head of the Cuban American National Foundation, introduces Joe Garcia (whom he’s known since college) by admitting that he has given to the Diaz-Balarts in the past but now he has to ask “whether I want them to represent me as a Cuban American.”

“Honestly, when you look at the fact that they only have one issue they can talk about, and they are not addressing this community or all the needs of this community, I think that is something that needs to change. I think they’ve had plenty of opportunities and plenty of time to make their impact, and their impact really is nonexistent.”

He went on to urge the crowd to support Joe Garcia – “a man of honor and of integrity and ultimately more talented to bring hope to our community and to assist us with the enormous needs in this diverse community.”

We’ll see if a few weeks how the campaigns of Joe Garcia, Raul Martinez and Annette Taddeo are faring in the fund-raising area for the second quarter. They out-raised the incumbents in the first quarter. Let’s hope that the fund-raising totals show continuing endorsement by both the well-off crowd and the smaller donors who turned out in droves early this year.

Chapter III: DCCC endorsement

And let’s not forget that the Democratic Party machinery is increasingly behind our challengers. Garcia and Martinez have been endorsed by the Red to Blue committee, an arm of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Annette Taddeo has been elevated to status of a promising candidate on that ranking. She also attended the Monday evening event in Coral Gables, and appeared with Joe Garcia Saturday at a community candidates' panel, where I snapped the photo at the top of this report.

And lest you think that all the above is in the local news media, Chapter II is not. It's my little exclusive from having been at the fund-raiser (my check is in the mail, Joe).

Debating chickens

Annette Taddeo and the empty chair

The photo shows the bravery – lack of it, I mean – in our Republican congressional incumbents. They assert willingness to talk, set a date, ask to change the date, agree to a new date, and finally cancel. It’s a little dirty trick, taken, no doubt, from the Richard Nixon political playbook.

Some choice words of reaction from Annette Taddeo, whose date with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the AFL-CIO arena last week was a bust: “Her not being here is inexcusable. … I really believe you have been ignored. … On Saturday she’s to be at the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, but she didn’t have time for you.”

It was a fine display of temper from the Democratic challenger in District 18, which spans the beaches to Key West. Her event on Thursday marked three days in a row that the Republican incumbents blew off the Democratic candidates: Joe Garcia vs. Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25) on Tuesday and Raul Martinez vs. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (FL-21) on Wednesday.

Here's how Joe Garcia describes it on his website:

For two hours, our community heard me discuss my plans to bring a safe and responsible end to the War in Iraq, revitalize our economy and pass a health care plan that covers everyone and lowers premiums. All they got from Mario Diaz-Balart was an empty podium.

Where was Diaz-Balart during this important debate? On an AM talk radio show to talk about his strategy of "dividing Cuban, and Jewish, voters."

That's not the kind of politics we need when our community is facing so many problems.

And over at Raul Martinez' website, they're accusing Lincoln Diaz-Balart of "elitist tendencies" for refusing to appear with Martinez at the labor forum. Dee-licious!

Fred Frost, who heads the union grouping, introduced Taddeo to a crowd of about 50 by noting that there are 14,000 union members in District 18. “I truly believe she (Ros-Lehtinen) has disrespected the South Florida AFL-CIO for the last time,” Frost said.

We will see. And this is not only a race for us in South Florida. The Sunday NY Times had us under the lens again. “Democrats see Cuba travel limits as a campaign issue in Florida,” was the headline.

That may be a little out of date already. Listen to Joe Garcia talking with people at last week’s naturalization ceremonies, and health care and gas prices are the first topics he pounds. But anyway, it’s at least interesting to see the national media paying attention to Cuba policy and the nuances of SoFla democraphics.

The Times article devotes a lot of space to the view that Cuba travel restrictions are on the way out. But at the end it quotes a contrary view from pollster Sergio Bendixen, who ventures that the Democratic challengers may be mistaken if they focus on Cuba policy.

“What do you gain by focusing your campaign on travel restrictions and remittance restrictions?” Mr. Bendixen said. “I don’t get it. It’s turning off more than half the electorate that’s not Cuban, and the people who would benefit from a change are a very small slice of the Cuban electorate. It’s a mistaken strategy.”

Having listened to all the challengers (repeatedly), I have to say that they are not focusing on Cuba the way Bendixen seems to think. Yes, two of them (Garcia and Martinez) are Cuban Americans, and Cuba policy is part of their stump speeches. But they know their districts and just how much is Cuban. Taddeo told her union audience last week that District 18 is “under 30 percent Cuban” and it’s far from the makeup that sent Ros-Lehtinen to Congress 18 years ago. Voters, including Cuban Americans, now have health care at the top of their priorities, she said.

Her speech opened with a telling anecdote from her background as a business leader who would travel to Washington to lobby Ros-Lehtinen on what the business community saw as top legislative priorities. Health care, for instance. “Our list of priorities was getting longer,” she said. “We are being represented by someone who does not vote in the best interest of our community.”

And, she pointed out, it was a business delegation asking for a yes vote on children’s health insurance, not a labor delegation.

Taddeo also thought it was noteworthy that Ros-Lehtinen now is changing some of her votes and talking to the Chamber of Commerce. “They all know me,” she said of the Chamber. “She doesn’t have the labor community. She doesn’t have the business community. Who does she have?”

Good question.

Debate? Republicans run and hide.

Republican members of Congress in South Florida don’t look like debaters. The reference is to the Diaz-Balarts and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- track stars when it comes to running and hiding.

Joe Garcia, challenging Mario Diaz-Balart for District 25, said in a statement Wednesday that his opponent had backed out of a commitment to debate.

“This is an act of political cowardice. If Mario Diaz-Balart had time to vote to underfund our schools, three times against children’s healthcare and against medical benefits for veterans, then he better make time to explain himself to the people of South Florida,” the statement said.

Cowardice? Goodness, tough word. But that’s exactly what Raul Martinez said Tuesday evening at a meeting of the Democrats of South Dade Club. Martinez said his opponent in District 21, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, had accepted a labor union debate invitation but then changed the date and now seems unavailable. “Why is he hiding?” Martinez asked. Later he returned to the topic and said if there is no debate, “I’m going to call him a coward. Mr. Coward. Coward, coward.”

The crowd was delighted. Just think, there are still over five months of this before election day.

Annette Taddeo’s campaign was more polite, according to the Miami Herald, which quoted the candidate’s campaign manager, Anastasia Apa, saying she hopes for a change of heart.

Lavish coverage of Dems in races for Congress

I had hoped to pump out a couple quick links to good coverage Sunday of our congressional races, but for some reason the Miami Herald and Channel 10 aren’t cooperating, though both revealed that Annette Taddeo is challenging Ileana Ros-Lehtinen for the U.S. House in District 18.

No links available to the news:
--Channel 10’s “This week in South Florida” program covered Taddeo, along with a live interview with Raul Martinez, challenging for District 21 against Lincoln Diaz-Balart; and a reprise of the Thursday coverage of Joe Garcia’s launch of his run for District 25 against Mario Diaz-Balart.
--Miami-Herald’s story “Ros-Lehtinen Challenged” at the top of the front page of the metro section. As far as I can tell, this was the first time Annette Taddeo was identified in the Herald as intending to run for the District 18 seat in the U.S. House.

Maybe links will come later, and I’ll change this post.

But meanwhile, there is some digital coverage available.

Andres Oppenheimer’s Herald column in the main news section reminds us of another reason to vote against John McWar with the headline: “McCain’s advice Miami-bred.” Yes, our friends the Diaz-Balarts and Ros-Lehtinen, along with Sen. Mel Martinez, are influential advisers on McCain’s thinking about our hemisphere.

Count me as agreeing heartily with Oppenheimer’s opinion that McCain “would face an uphill battle to convince the world that he represents change and would bring a breath of fresh air to Washington.” His advisers are toeing a line drawn 40 years ago.

And over on the Reuters wire Miami correspondent Tom Brown has a long piece asking whether the Republicans are “losing grip” on our local Cuban vote. Well, yes, I’d say. And the Reuters report seems pretty much in agreement. Here’s its kicker (that’s news lingo for the last words in a story):

"Unless they (Republicans) address the issues that are important to this community they may be in for, unfortunately, a rude awakening," said Jorge Mas Santos, head of the once powerful but now lower-key Cuban American National Foundation.

Me, I would have left out the word unfortunately.

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.