A life long dream came true when Annette Taddeo spoke at the Democracy for America hospitality suite.  Annette was attending Netroots Nation and was meeting bloggers from across the nation. Here was a candidate who started out speaking about civil liberties and what it means to actually care about your constituents rights.

Cross posted @ Doing My Part For The Left

(Cross Posted at NM FBIHOPand Democracy for New Mexico)

Last weekend I attended Netroots Nation with many of you. It was my first time at Netroots Nation, and I really enjoyed meeting with people from my state and across the country.

New Mexico was well-represented at Netroots Nation. I sat with Barb and Mary Ellen, of Democracy for New Mexico, and Matt of New Mexico FBIHOP during Howard Dean's keynote. Elizabeth Winters put together a great panel on Saturday where Martin Heinrich, Pete McCloskey, Denise Fort and I discussed emerging issues in New Mexico and the West. I also ran into friends from Taos.

(Cross-Posted at MyDD, Open Left, and Swing State Project)

This weekend, we saw once more that no matter what happens in Iraq, there is no end in sight to this war unless we demand it.

For the people of Congressional District 18 in South Florida, getting out of the war in Iraq is a top priority.

www.voteTaddeo.com

In this video (in Spanish) O2B candidate Joe Garcia essentially accuses the right-wing Cuban-American Frank Calzon of the Center for Free Cuba of essentially pilfering tax-payer funds. Later in the show, Calzon throws a hissy fit and storms out (and you don't need to know Spanish to be entertained by this clip):

A subsequent federal audit found $500,000 missing from Calzon's operation, lost into the pocket of the corrupt South Florida Cuban-American mafia. Just like Garcia had charged. Now, after finding more such discrepancies, Congress has frozen all funding for these corrupt groups.

Congress has put the U.S. Agency for International Development's $45 million Cuba program's 2008 funding on hold, following a series of troubling audits and cases of massive fraud, The Miami Herald has learned.

In a quest to get the funding hold lifted, U.S. AID on Friday ordered a bottoms-up review of all its Cuba democracy programs and suspended a Miami anti-Castro exile group that spent at least $11,000 of federal grant money on personal items.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ordered a hold on the U.S. AID Cuba program funding last month, in part in response to a $500,000 embezzlement at the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington disclosed earlier this year, federal officials said.

In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID's deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba [...]

A report by the Cuban-American National Foundation released in May showed that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report said, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.

The report echoed findings by The Miami Herald in 2006 and a congressional Government Accountability Office audit that found lax oversight of the programs and came as the Bush administration prepares to dole out a record $45.7 million in Cuba democracy grants.

This is essentially a big chunk of the payoff the corrupt Cuban exile community gets for having its three South Florida Cuban American representatives (and Democrat Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, too). $45.7 million doled out in patronage fashion to all the co-conspirators, and that's not even including the millions wasted on Radio Marti in similar fashion. Democracy in Cuba? Pshaw! There are fancy dinners to be bought! The high life to be lived.

As you can see in the videos above (even if you don't speak Spanish) is that Joe Garcia has been fighting for accountability for those who receive US tax dollars, and isn't one to let ideology override the interests of the taxpayers.

On the web:
Joe Garcia for Congress
Orange to Blue ActBlue Page

Race tracker wiki: FL-21 FL-18 FL-25

It's well known around these parts that the past few years have seen me change form a frequent critic of the DCCC to one of its biggest supporters. Chris Van Hollen has proven himself to be an aggressive chairman and he is not satisfied to sit back and defend the majority we already have and is working to expand it. They have raised a lot of money and recuited strong candidates all over the country, even ib some of the more Republican parts of South Florida. The only problem is that Red-to-Blue Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz continues to undercut challengers to three right wing Republicans, epsecially Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

The Florida Republican Party (and some Democrats like Debbie Wasserman Schultz) are kept afloat by the corrupt south-Florida Cuban-American mafia. Now, their three south-Florida reps are facing the challenges of their lives, and at least two are already in serious trouble.

Bendixen & Associates. 6/6-22. MoE 5% in each district. (No trend lines)

Joe Garcia, up against Mario Diaz-Balart, is an Orange to Blue candidate. Martinez is going up against Lincoln Diaz-Balart. These numbers are nothing short of stunning. I've thought these races were quite competitive for some time, but I wouldn't have expected the Diaz-Balart brothers to be in this much trouble. And given that both Garcia and Martinez are raising great money, we have the makings of a series of dramatic upsets in South Florida this year.  

Annette Taddeo in FL-18 still lags, both in money and in this poll, but if she can keep it close, hers is one of those districts (like NH-01 and Carol Shea-Porter in 2006) that can get swept in by the force of larger trends (in this case, a strong Latino turnout for Obama and the entry of a large percentage of new voters, along with the collapse of the GOP brand). But she's got a ways to go before we can say she's "keeping it close".

But that is a lone bright spot for Florida Republicans (and their hard-right Cuban exile allies), who should otherwise be on "panic" mode given the Martinez and Garcia numbers.

On the web:
Orange to Blue ActBlue page
Raul Martinez for Congress
Joe Garcia for Congress
Annette Taddeo for Congress

Race tracker wiki: FL-21 FL-18 FL-25

The news is out on Swing State Project: Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia have made the list of South Florida candidates-to-back by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Read it here.
MORE in the body. Crossposted from www.miami-dade-dems.blogspot.com

Empty chair.

At the AFL-CIO Candidates’ Forum at the Firefighter’s Memorial Building in Doral, Florida last week, I sat next to an empty chair for two hours and talked about the issues that matter most to working families in South Florida’s 18th Congressional District.

There was an empty chair because my opponent, incumbent Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, skipped an invitation to the first major open forum of the campaign cycle. A week before the event, she delivered the news that she wouldn’t be attending the forum via a spokesperson when The Miami Herald asked.

On Mother’s Day, what better than to talk about a mother’s love for her children. And here is a mother with tender thoughts about her 2-year-old daughter, and about her own mother, and how it translates into a run for Congress against steep odds.

MORE under the fold, cross-posted on www.miami-dade-dems.blogspot.com with photos and a YouTube video of her speech.

Hey there DKos community --

I was catching up on some news last night when I came across an article in The Washington Post entitled, "Republicans Vote Against Moms; No Word Yet on Puppies, Kittens."

This seems interesting, I thought, as I read on. Everyone loves their mom.

Friends – I am saddened to say that I thought wrong.  Let me explain.

www.voteTaddeo.com

Dear Friends,

It is with great pleasure that I am writing and posting my first diary here on Daily Kos.  My campaign staff posted on my behalf yesterday, but I’d like to take a moment to introduce myself.

Dear Friends,

Greetings from the Annette Taddeo for Congress Campaign.  Annette is running in Florida’s 18th Congressional District, which includes Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, downtown Miami, and the Florida Keys.  I don’t think we’re exaggerating when we say it’s the hottest district in the country, ready to go Red to Blue!  

The Democratic congresswoman from Florida’s District 20 held a town meeting Thursday evening and defended herself against assertions that she's not doing enough for three Democratic challengers for U.S. House seats in South Florida.

MORE and a version on www.miami-dade.dems.blogspot.com

We may have a hard time getting our local Democratic congressmen to back fellow Democratic challengers, but how about a nice letter from Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, James E. Clyburn, Rahm Emanuel and Chris Van Hollen.

Dated today March 14, the letter from the five top figures in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee congratulates Joe Garcia on a "strong start" to his campaign for Florida Congressional District 25.

It concludes: "We look forward to supporting your campaign and helping you become our newest Democratic partner for change in Washington."

Identical letters went to Raul Martinez, challenging in District 21, and to Annette Taddeo, candidate in District 18.
MORE below the fold

Since the beginning of the 2006 election cycle, I have generally been quite pleased, and impressed, by the performance of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. I think they've made some mistakes here and there-they're only human-but overall, I've been quite happy with the DCCC's performance. It's hard to argue with results, and we've gained 31 seats in that time, capped by an impressive victory in Saturday's IL-14 special election, which delivered the seat of a former Republican Speaker of the House to our Democratic Party.

That said, I find this unacceptable: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, co-chair of the DCCC's Red to Blue Program, apparently won

But as three Miami Democrats look to unseat three of her South Florida Republican colleagues, Wasserman Schultz is staying on the sidelines. So is Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Miami Democrat and loyal ally to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

That wasn't the case just two years ago when the pair flouted a long-standing Florida delegation agreement to not campaign against colleagues and vigorously backed Ron Klein in his winning bid to oust veteran Republican Rep. Clay Shaw.

This time around, Wasserman Schultz and Meek say their relationships with the Republican incumbents, Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his brother Mario, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, leave them little choice but to sit out the three races.

''At the end of the day, we need a member who isn't going to pull any punches, who isn't going to be hesitant,'' Wasserman Schultz said.

Yes, we do, Rep. Wasserman Schultz.

Look, at some level, I understand not wanting to campaign against your friends. I do. I also understand that the Florida delegation has long had a non-aggression pact, and that Wasserman Schultz broke tradition by campaigning against Clay Shaw in 2006.

But as co-chair of Red to Blue, Wasserman Schultz isn't an ordinary Rep. In her capacity at the DCCC, her chief responsibility, her highest priority, is to do whatever it takes to win, in every district we have a chance at winning.

If it makes you a jerk to campaign against your friends and neighbors, fine. You've got to be bloody ruthless if you're serious about maximizing Democratic gains. If you're not prepared to do that, that's OK, but maybe the DCCC job isn't for you. Surely it's not for everyone.

As James L. writes in a must-read piece at Swing State Project (seriously, go read it right now), I can't imagine Rahm Emanuel doing this. Whatever his faults, he is a partisan fighter who is willing to get his hands dirty.

I expect Wasserman Schultz to do the same, and given her prominence in South Florida, I think it really undermines the three fine Democratic candidates in FL-18, FL-21, and FL-25 (respectively, Annette Taddeo, Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia) for Wasserman Schultz to sit these races out.

This is the best opportunity we've had to take these seats in years, and it's her obligation to do everything she can to make that happen.

Race tracker wiki: FL-18 FL-21 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.
MORE below, also posted on www.miami-dade-dems.blogspot.com with photos

Here’s great news from South Florida: Joe Garcia, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party and a national leader among Hispanic electoral strategists, will announce on Thursday he’s running for the U.S. House in Florida’s District 25.

What a landslide awaits the Republicans – not only nationally with their meager presidential offerings, but also in Congress where once "invulnerable" incumbents now face strong challengers.
MORE below the fold

There's all kinds of terrific horserace news coming in, and our chances of substantially increasing our House majority are looking better every day. A quick roundup:

--First the biggest news, in FL-15: Florida Republican Dave Weldon will not be seeking reelection. On top of that, we have a strong candidate poised to enter the race in former Brevard County Commissioner Nancy Higgs, who steered the commission during the 2004 hurricane.

Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) announced Friday that he will retire from Congress at the end of this session, citing a desire to return to his medical practice.

"I want to thank my wife Nancy and my kids for all the support over these many years, as well as my staff and the people who supported my re-election efforts. It is a very big undertaking to run and successfully serve, and I would never have been able to do it were it not for the generous help of so many fine people," Weldon said in a statement.

Weldon, 54, is a seven-term lawmaker who sits on the House Appropriations Committee.

Weldon is the 22nd GOP incumbent to announce that they will not seek reelection in 2008.

Six-term incumbent Weldon won with just 56% of the vote against an underfunded challenger in 2006, so the prospect of an open-seat race here is very exciting. The district is relatively Republican with a PVI of R+4.1, but it is an open seat, and we expect this to be a Democratic year. Bush won with 54% and 57% here in 2000 and 2004.

Rumored Republican candidates include State Senators Bill Posey and Mike Haridopolos.

--In addition to FL-15, we can now put two additional Florida seats (these ones based in the Miami area) on the map for 2008: the 18th District and the 25th District. Following hot on the heels of the recent entry of Raul Martinez into the race in Florida's 21st district to face Republican Lincoln Diaz-Balart, we have two more serious candidates jumping in to take on Miami-area Republicans.

In the 18th District, businesswoman Annette Taddeo, founder of a language services company, will take on incumbent Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen; and in the 25th District, Miami-Dade County party chairman Joe Garcia, also director of NDN's Hispanic Strategy Center and formerly Chairman of the Florida Public Services Commission, will run against Lincoln Diaz-Balart's brother Mario.

Garcia's potential entry has been rumored for months, and it's exciting to see him finally getting in the race. With his service as Miami-Dade party chair, he's a high-profile name with a good deal of influence in the district, and he has a national profile from working with NDN. The 25th District is more favorable territory for Democrats than the 21st is: it has a PVI of 4.4, Bush drew 56% in 2004 and 55% in 2000. Diaz-Balart drew the district for himself, in fact, when he served in the Florida House.

--Up in New York's 25th, following the retirement of Republican incumbent Jim Walsh, Democratic standard-bearer and Blue Majority candidate Dan Maffei has been added to the DCCC's Red To Blue program. This is most excellent news, as the DCCC's backing of Maffei should preclude any stuffy old Albany pols from jumping into the race, and will spare us the pain of an ugly primary. Also, it tells potential GOP candidates to think twice about running in this Democratic district, as we'll have a single strong candidate with establishment support. And finally, it's wonderful that the DCCC sees the same things in Dan Maffei that we see.

--Finally, up in New York's 29th District, Republican Randy Kuhl, who barely hung on to defeat Eric Massa last year and faces him again, has apparently not decided whether to run for reelection. I guess his highly deceptive flyers haven't been doing the trick.

Race tracker wiki: NY-25 NY-29 FL-15 FL-18 FL-25