Flush with cash, state Rep. Irv Slosberg was giving incumbent Sen. Jeff Clemens fits in very blue SD 31 -- until Jose Lambiet did his thing this morning.
Lambiet, my favorite Florida journalist, came up with a whale of a story about Irv in his South Florida online tabloid Gossip Extra. Nobody else had the story. Just Jose.
The headline says it all: "EXCLUSIVE -- Dirt-Poor India Workers Planted Seed of Florida Senate Candidate Irv Slosberg's Fortune!"
Lambiet dug up a 1997 lawsuit citing the leather goods business that "made the Democrat a rich man able to pour millions into his political aspirations, drive a $110,000 Porsche and live in a $1 million house in Boca Raton." A telling document.
Now we know Slosberg's fortune may have been built on the backs of what may have been grossly underpaid laborers in India, one of the world’s poorest countries.
"The startling revelation was buried in a lawsuit filed in Broward County at first, then transferred to the federal civil court system, and it could end up being particularly bothersome for Slosberg’s campaign less than three weeks before he dukes it out at the polls with ... Clemens," writes Lambiet.
Affable as he is, Slosberg has always been an odd duck in the Legislature, in and out of the State House since 2000, and lacking any real political platform besides looking for ways to protect motorists from car crashes.
"If you believe the lawsuit that pitted Slosberg’s now defunct Mediterranean Trading Co. against the shipping giant Maersk Lines, India’s people may have been far from Slosberg’s mind when he imported hand-painted leather goods from Kolkota, India."
In the mid-1990s, all the manufacturing for Slosberg's products were made in the sprawling city then known as Calcutta, a place the U.S. Labor Department singled out for its notorious use of child labor, 12-hour factory work days and appallingly cramped working conditions -- all for pennies an hour. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, India’s factory workers were getting about 45 cents an hour at the time.
But Slosberg, 68, swore to Lambiet in an interview that he never witnessed a child working in the factory that manufactured his stuff. He said doesn't have them now, but at the time he obtained affidavits from each factory to guarantee that no minor worked there.
Interviewed this morning from his StairMaster, he told Gossip Extra, “There’s no way children were making my stuff. I had a staff of five or six people in India, and they inspected the factories constantly for child labor. I used to fly over there once a month to look for myself.”
Read the story. Taking advantage of poor children, if that's what he did, doesn't look good for a millionaire like Slosberg who's paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to self-finance his legislative campaigns.
"In the complaint filed by Mediterranean in 1997, Slosberg’s company accused Maersk of delivering wet and damaged leather handbags, wallets, purses and cosmetic cases it picked up from the impoverished city," writes Lambiet.
The case was dismissed in 1998. Slosberg was supposed to attend a pre-trial conference but didn't. In 2002 he sold his Broward county warehouse and shut his leather goods business down.
Delray Beach Democrat Marta Stein, 74, informed this morning about the story, admitted to Sunshine State News, "I'm shocked. I don't want to believe this can be true ... Irv is a Democrat ... yes, something like this could affect my vote."
Time will tell if Gossip Extra's revelation expands and resonates with SD 31 voters.
Crazy times for Slosberg. In the meantime, he's in the middle of a residency crisis of sorts. His Boca Raton home was outside Senate District 31, so he switched his voter registration on July 25 to a Boynton Beach address in Clemens’ Senate district. But Slosberg’s new address is outside House District 91, so he's asking for the Rules Committee to tell him if he can serve out his House term living out-of-district.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
