Category: Florida

There’s no lack of irony here. Maybe more than a hint of karma too.

First, let’s reflect back on the gubernatorial race of 2010. That’s the one that would have belonged to incumbent Gov. Charlie Crist had he not decided that a career move trumped staying on the job as Florida was hammered by the Great Recession. Absent that Faustian miscalculation, there would have been no Rick Scott challenge.

Stuff happens.

Recall the consensus that the subsequent election was Alex Sink’s to lose, as they say. After all, this was Florida, and how do you lose to a weirdo, charisma-challenged, political outsider, no matter how wealthy, with Medicare fraud and the deposition from hell on his record?  To repeat: MEDICARE. FRAUD. FLORIDA. That campaign, however, was a Sinkhole and that which was hers to lose was, indeed, lost.

Fast forward to now.

Scott trails in most polls to Charlie Crist, but the margin has been clearly narrowing.

If enough Floridians credit Scott with the improved economy and forget that his “7-7-7” (“7 Steps over 7 Years for 700,000 jobs”) plan is modestly at odds with the big-picture context of the Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research projections, then he draws ever closer. And if too many Democrats are voter no-shows because Charlie Crist really isn’t one of them–or too many bother to read Jim Greer’s Crist-and-tell book–then Scott wins.

It could be Scott’s to lose by Labor Day.

And yet.

More stuff will happen. Bet on it.

In fact, note what just occurred in Orlando. Both Crist and Scott had been invited to speak at the GOP-leaning Florida Council of 100’s spring meeting. The one that does not permit media coverage. But at the last minute, out of deference to Scott, Crist–a life member of the council–was unceremoniously disinvited.

Cue: “The GOPster Mash.” The politically astute Crist showed up anyway and turned a blatant snub with peripheral media coverage into a free media coup.

Crist may not be ideological, but he is logical. And no Florida pol can take campaign lemons and turn them into lemon vodka spritzers quite like Charlie Crist.

At his well-attended, ad hoc press conference, he worked in his boilerplate points and added new material such as the merits of working to open Cuba to Florida’s advantage.

But he also accomplished something else. The council snub enabled him to juxtapose himself to Scott-supporting, business types. It was a perfect forum for Crist’s populist, for-the-people pitch. It’s the approach that otherwise uninspired Democrats most want to see.

And now look who’s back.

It’s Jennifer Carroll, Scott’s erstwhile lieutenant governor, who’s still looking for an apology for  being told to quit last year over her embarrassing association with Internet cafe scams. She’s been giving interviews–rife with uncomplimentary comments about Scott, his Medicare-fraud past and how his “good ol’ boy network” is not exactly minority-friendly.

Carroll also says she plans to write a tell-all book about what it was like for a black female in the Scott Administration. Ouch.

This has all the signs of a campaign stalker who doesn’t have to go away this time.

We know her background. She had her own public relations agency. She knows how to get attention and self promote. She’s media savvy, opportunistic and calculated. She is, for example, a member of both the NAACP and the NRA.

Recall that she agreed to be Scott’s black female token–after having chaired the statewide African-Americans for (Bill) McCollum group and throwing political haymakers at Scott. But who can account for epiphanies.

Now she’s carping about Scott’s “disloyalty” and reminding minorities about the governor’s GOB network. And all this just as Scott is trying to soften his image. Indeed, timing is everything.

Irony, karma? To be sure. Plus, add old-fashion nasty as this campaign really begins to heat up.

Charlie Crist certainly can’t match war chests and ad buys with Gov. Rick Scott. But the point may become moot if there are many more silver-platter opportunities served up like that recent one in Orlando. That’s when the Florida Council of 100, a GOP-leaning, ostensibly politically savvy group of business leaders, invited both the current governor and his predecessor to speak. Oops.

Then they uninvited Crist, a life member of the council, two days before the Ritz-Carlton spring meeting. Oops squared.

Florida’s corporate leadership had just snubbed the populist candidate. If there’s anything Crist must have–even more than money–it’s visceral reasons for Democrats to turn out and vote for him in November. As if, you know, he really were one of them. A public snub by corporate sorts who didn’t want to offend Scott was right in Crist’s for-the-people wheelhouse.

So Crist, as we know, was hardly a no-show. More like an I’ll-show-you-how-to-make-political- lemonade appearance. He came, he saw an opportunity for free press and he conquered any sense of chagrin or anger. Had he spoken, it would have displeased the self-congratulating Scott, but no one would have known details because Council of 100 events, ironically, are not open to the press and go largely ignored.

Not this one. At his ad hoc press conference, Crist labeled the snubbing “galactically stupid” and then worked in his speech talking points.

Interestingly, Paul Tash, chairman and CEO of the Tampa Bay Times, is (presumably still) a council member and made sure Crist’s ungiven speech was given prominent placement on the Times’ editorial page. Among Crist’s more salient points: criticism of Florida Polytech, renewal of efforts to create “a real high speed rail and mass transit system” and commitment “to open the borders with Cuba.”

Gov. Rick Scott did the right thing when he announced that he would veto that ill-advised bill that would have allowed drivers to go 75 miles an hour on Florida highways, including I-75 and the Suncoast Parkway. Of course, he did. Most folks, with notable exceptions such as (SB 392) bill sponsor Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, thought it was an awful idea. Why the hell is faster better unless you’re talking high-speed rail?

Several points.

First, to those praising Scott for the right call: Let’s not set the bar too low. State troopers and county sheriffs were dead set against it. They deal with the tragic aftermath of irresponsible driving on a daily basis. And AAA Auto Club South had data correlating traffic deaths with excessive speed. This is a no-brainer for anyone not in the Florida Legislature.

The governor declared his opposition to the bill after attending the funeral of a Florida Highway Patrol trooper killed while investigating an accident on I-75. He was, he acknowledged, deeply moved by it. Well, suppose he hadn’t attended that funeral? Would he have still vetoed a manifestly dumb, unnecessarily risky bill?

Second, Sen. Brandes inexplicably has promised–in effect, threatened–to bring the law-enforcement-defying measure back next year. Whose interests does this guy represent?

Third, if Scott truly wants to make Florida a less dangerous place, why hasn’t he assumed a leadership role on repeal or, at least, modification of “Stand Your Ground?” Why hasn’t he gotten out in front in pushing for texting-while-driving as something more than a secondary violation? But that would mean standing up to the NRA and T-Mobile.

Sure, it’s a gimmick.

Former Republican governor and current Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist has announced plans to visit Cuba this summer. Should it happen, there will be optics to dominate a news cycle, even if not to rival the Beyoncé and Jay-Z coverage. More than just the Florida media will take note. And no PAC has to pay for the ad hoc ad.

But it can be so much more than a political-business-as-usual gambit.

A Cuba visit would actually be a logical, attention-riveting extension of Crist’s stand–OK, recent conversion–on the Cuban embargo and normalized relations. Expedient, circuitous path notwithstanding, Crist now finds himself on the right side of an issue that matters mightily to Florida, especially Tampa.

Before there was Miami and ever-ratcheting, exile leverage, there was Tampa and proud, Cuban roots. Prior to the 1959 revolution, more than 50 percent of all American exports into Havana came via the Port of Tampa. The cruise business meant Tampa-Havana.

It matters because unfettered trade and travel have obvious economic upsides for this state, as well as for Tampa International Airport and the Port of Tampa. It matters because doing the humane thing is always right. It matters geopolitically that the U.S. is no longer the only country in the Western Hemisphere without formal relations with Cuba.

And it should matter that we acknowledge foreign-policy hypocrisy and act accordingly–finally. We have normalized relations with authoritarian trade partners such as China and blatantly undemocratic allies such as Saudi Arabia. Cuba is not in their league. But it’s personal.

And it matters because the upshot of a Cold War-policy relic that has had more than half a century to prove itself a manifest failure is this: Everybody loses. Everybody, that is, except the increasingly marginalized vendetta-agenda crowd still in lockstep with the Brothers Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Finally, it matters because Cuba can no longer remain a glaring exception to a geopolitical strategy that the U.S. typically exercises, if not venerates. In short, having free-flowing travel and trade is the best approach for promoting democracy and human rights in places where they are lacking. But Havana doesn’t count?

Crist’s Cuban-policy epiphany makes him the highest-profile politician in Florida to embrace normalization of relations with Cuba. Should he regain the governor’s mansion, he would be in a position to influence public opinion. If he turns his Tallahassee forum into a bully pulpit.

Put it this way: If the CEO of the state with the most skin in the game doesn’t prioritize making the case for a sensible, Florida-benefiting, Cuban policy, then why should other key pols go where he won’t tread?

Gov. Rick Scott, who’s already whoring out for Little Havana, definitely won’t make that case. It will be up to Crist–but it won’t be easy.

Keep in mind that U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who also chairs the Democratic National Committee, remains cowed by exile politics. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson is still an embargo appeaser. Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn won’t touch the Cuban issue out of deference to those he knows who lost too much in the revolution. And President Barack Obama, as we’ve seen, has proven no more than a tentative incrementalist so far.

It will be up to Florida’s next governor to remind Floridians–and polls show most now agree with Crist on Cuba–and those in positions of leverage and policy-change about what’s at stake for the state of Florida and the United States of America. It will be up to Florida’s next governor to make the case that the Cuban embargo–and all its counterproductive ripple effects–is a foreign-policy gimmick that has to end.

And if it matters enough, it will be up to Floridians to vote accordingly. They now, for the first time, have a choice on this, heretofore, third-rail political issue.

Gov. Rick Scott took yet another presumptuous, pre-victory lap on jobs the other day. In town for the Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner, he noted that the private sector has added more than 500,000 Florida jobs in his three-plus years. And that included 22,000 in April. Attorney General Pam Bondi, of course, led the way in sycophantic praise.

No mention, of course, of context.

One, Florida’s recovery is largely a function of the national recovery, not the lowering of already low taxes or the implementing of Scott’s poaching strategy. Two, most of those jobs–it was more than 80 percent last month–are in the lower-paying, service-producing sector. Third, let’s not forget about the “7-7-7” plan. That was 2010 Scott shorthand for 7 steps over 7 years for the creation of 700,000 jobs.

Recall what the non-partisan economists at the Florida Legislature’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research said later in 2010 about Florida’s long-term job outlook. They concluded that Florida would likely add about 1.05 million jobs between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2018. And, moreover, it didn’t much matter who was governor.

Scott was then forced into clarification mode. Make that 700,000 jobs in ADDITION* to the ones that state economists had forecasted, he conceded. Nearly four years later, the asterisk is never noted–let alone an updated: “7-7-1.7 million” campaign mantra.

Call it “Cruba”: the intersection of Charlie Crist’s latest ideological incarnation and the island nation that has intrigued, entrapped and intimidated too many Florida politicians.

Former Gov. Crist is finally on the right side of the Cuba issue. It’s beyond circuitous how he got here, but he’s now in favor of normalizing relations with Cuba. That means he no longer supports the embargo. He’s even making plans to visit Cuba this summer.

Sure, it would have helped had he had his political epiphany earlier, say, when he was governor and could have influenced public opinion and possibly provided some cover to the first term Obama Administration. Ironically, he was advised by some to consider a game-changing move and visit Cuba when, as an independent, he was running for the U.S. Senate against Tea Party-backed, Cuban-American Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek, who always played it safe on Cuba. Rubio, of course, won, Meek dropped off the political radar and Crist hired on at Morgan and Morgan.

But this is 2014, and the incumbent is Rick Scott, who has been whoring out for the South Florida hardliners, who represent the views of few Floridians beyond Little Havana. They certainly don’t represent the best interests–including economic–of most Floridians.

So Crist the gubernatorial candidate will play the pro-Florida, Cuba card, one whose time is long overdue. And even though it’s a better-late-than-never gambit, it still requires some cojones.

Keep in mind that Crist made his Cuba-visit comments at the Versailles Restaurant, a Little Havana landmark and hardly the ideal venue for an anti-hardline announcement. He also can’t expect help from key Democratic influentials such as Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who remain embargo appeasers. And while the White House has eased up on travel and cash remittances, it has never been able to muster the guts for an end-the-  embargo policy push.

So, you go, Charlie.

And make the case that the ultimate bottom line is two-fold: Scott must go and a normalized Cuban policy must be jump-started as soon as possible. It’s a classic win-win for the state of Florida and the United States of America.

Regardless of party affiliation and ideological persuasion, we should all be able to agree on this: There’s no bigger responsibility for the Florida Legislature than investing in Floridians and their future. The partisan political devil, of course, is in the details.

Even with $1.2 billion in surplus revenue, the upshot of the 2014 legislative session is disappointingly modest–even if undocumented-immigrant, Florida high school grads will be eligible for in-state tuition, there’s (replacement) money for education and motor vehicle fees have dropped by $25.

Despite House Speaker Will Weatherford’s self-congratulatory, shout-out assessment, the session was marked by what didn’t happen. Medicaid expansion remains unexpanded. Stand Your Ground remains standing. Texting while driving remains a secondary offense. Out-of-state, online retailers not named Amazon.com remain without obligation to collect sales tax. Solar energy in the Sunshine State remains an oxymoron. And a natural springs protection bill remains unpassed.

But in-state, immigrant tuition and Charlotte’s Web passed. In this Legislature, you get to take a curtain call and bow for being on the same side as the majority of Floridians and not doing the unconscionably wrong thing. Plus, the Legislature stood strong and voted for anything that took on “Predators” or “Trafficking.”

It’s an election–and gubernatorial re-election–year, and an incumbent governor of the party in utter control can be expected to look at a legislative session as a quite doable exercise in self-interest. It comes with the political territory, regardless of party. Even when an incumbent has been elected as a consummate “outsider.”

But hearing House Speaker/Accomplice Will “Won’t” Weatherford’s gloat-zone exaltation about what the session did for Gov. Rick Scott’s re-election’s chances–however candid–was, well, infuriating. It spoke volumes about less-than-modest agendas and Florida priorities left unaddressed–from Medicaid still unexpanded to springs still unprotected to Stand Your Ground still standing.

“Everything he wanted going into the session, he got,” gushed Weatherford. “I have every reason to believe this will jump-start him into the election cycle. It’s going to be a really successful year for him going forward.”

But Weatherford–as well as Scott–does get credit for legislation allowing undocumented students who attended Florida high schools to pay in-state tuition. Weatherford should, but context can’t be ignored. The bar is set relatively low on this one right now. A majority of Floridians agree this was the right thing to do if we still call ourselves the land of opportunity–and not just opportunism.

And, frankly, it would have been unconscionably unfair not to pass the in-state-tuition legislation. The result: credit allocated for not doing the outrageously wrong thing. These are the times we live in. And, yes, it could help Scott with the non-Little Havana Hispanic vote.

Look for it soon in another one of those Spanish-language Scott ads ironically entitled: “Oportunidad.”

A pretty good argument can be made that the winner of November’s gubernatorial election will have won a decent share of the Hispanic vote. It’s about 15 percent of the electorate and growing faster than any other voting demographic.

So, it makes sense that Gov. Rick Scott’s deep-pocketed campaign would already be airing Spanish language commercials–titled “Oportunidad”–on television and online. “Yo no soy experto en la política pero yo sé el valor de un trabajo,” says Scott, which means “I’m not an expert in politics, but I know how valuable a job is.”

To many Hispanics, this is what they’re hearing: “Mira, no soy hispano tampoco como Jan Brewer, pero sé alcahuetear como cualquier político, aunque no soy experto en la política. Y yo sé el valor de una estafa.”

As in: “Look, I’m about as Hispanic as Jan Brewer, but I can pander like any other politician, even though I’m no expert in politics. And I know the value of a con job.”

Scott’s approach to Hispanics, heretofore, has reinforced the reality that he’s more than an awkward, charisma-challenged politician. He has given the impression that he still doesn’t get the fact that it’s about more than Little Havana Republicans. That it’s about more than Cubans who enjoy special immigrant status.

What non-Cuban Hispanics–the Latino majority–recall is that before he was governor, Scott showed his stripes with his enthusiastic backing of an Arizona-esque, anti-illegal immigration bill. And Hispanics, to be sure, were prominent among minorities obviously targeted by the Scott Administration’s high-profile efforts at voter suppression in 2012. And they surely have seen through the blatantly transparent puto role of Lt. Gov. Carlos López-Canterra.

Non-Cuban Hispanics also remember that shortly after being elected, Scott pandered to the Cuban-exile community by coming out for legislation that would have prohibited Florida governments from doing business with those who were doing business in Cuba. That would impact jobs, Scott’s raison d’être.

Speaking of economic impact and resultant jobs, no surprise that Scott has been supportive of the economic embargo with Cuba, especially since Charlie Crist is now against its continued, counterproductive existence. But Little Havana still approves. Good enough.

And speaking of the South Florida vendetta-agenda crowd. Notice who it was who rallied in Scott’s behalf after Mike Fernández, Coral Gables billionaire and co-finance chairman of the Scott re-election campaign, very publicly quit amid allegations of poor Hispanic outreach and some insultingly, anti-Hispanic behavior by Scott staffers. In addition to López-Canterra, the effort was led by the usual South Florida amigos: U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Díaz-Balart and former Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart.

No other Florida governor, including Bob Martínez, the first person of Spanish ancestry elected to that office, and the bilingual, married-to-a-Mexican Jeb Bush, has advertised so heavily in Spanish. And it’s only April. The ads are now running here–as well as in the media markets of Miami-Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers-Naples and Orlando.

But, no, don’t look for any Spanish voice-over ads featuring Scott and King Juan Carlos.

We now know that Alex Sink, who lost to Rick Scott in the 2010 gubernatorial race, will not chance a ballot-box hat trick and run again against David Jolly in November for his Congressional District 13 seat. Even though there are supporters and consultants who have urged her to try again.

In an ironic sort of way, however, the names of Sink, Charlie Crist  and Scott belong together on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Call it six degrees of separation. Or just call it politics, Florida style. The names Sink, Crist and Scott are endurably linked.

Had it not been for Sink running that awful campaign, Scott would not be governor. And had it not been for Crist abandoning his economically-blindsided state when it needed him most, there would never have been a Scott candidacy.