The weeks following historic electoral gains by the Ron Paul liberty movement in the Miami-Dade County GOP have not been smooth ones for new chairman Nelson Diaz, accused by some of the Texas congressmans libertarian supporters of being a closet liberal and Democrat collaborator.
Diazs greatest offense? A 2009 donation of $250 to the re-election campaign of a Democratic congresswoman from Florida.And not just any Democratic congresswoman.
Diazs contribution was to U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who since 2011 has been chairwoman of theDemocratic National Committee.
Two emails outlining that and various other charges of closet liberalism have gone viral in the days since Sunshine State News told the story of the gains made by the liberty movement at the Dec. 18 Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee (REC) election.
In an exclusive interview with the News, Diaz defended himself against the principal charges.
Over the past five or six years,Ive given almost $25,000 to Republican candidates, from Mike Huckabee to Marco Rubio to John McCain, all the way down to Senator [Anitere] Flores and others down here in South Florida, he told the News. If anyone wants to talk numbers or question my Republican credentials ... Im not rich, Im not a millionaire, but Ive given almost $25,000 of my money to Republicans.
Sunshine State News has confirmed that Diaz has personally contributed at least $22,849 to state and federal Republican candidates and organizations since Nov. 29, 2005. Diaz insists his 2009 contribution to Schultz made the same year he gave $1,000 to Marco Rubios Senate campaign was a fluke, something he did to appease his colleagues at Becker & Poliakoff, the law firm for which he works as an attorney and a lobbyist.
I work for a law firm that raises money for both parties; weve given tens of thousands of dollars to Republicans, he tells the News. Every now and then, they ask me to participate in a Democratic event and I say, No. Finally, at one point they insisted they needed help with one particular race: Debbie Wasserman Schultzs. They asked me to contribute $2,500 and I said, No way in hell; thats a real check, and a real check means you believe in her. But a tiny check, 10 percent of what they asked for, was a way of getting them off my back.
Diaz, 34, says hes been registered Republican his whole adult life and has spent every summer since 1995 working to get Republicans elected to higher office, campaigning for the likes of presidential candidate Bob Dole and now-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio. He emphatically disclaims any sympathy for the ideas or political agenda of Wasserman Schultz.
I share absolutely nothing in common with her. Shes wrong on everything; her philosophy is going to destroy this country, he insists. I dont believe in anything she stands for. The only reason I gave that check was to help out my law firm, which had helped me thousands and thousands of times over again, giving thousands of dollars to Republicans at my request.
One of the other allegations circulating is that Diaz has lobbied for green energy companies to receive taxpayer-funded corporate welfare. Diaz tells the News he has never personally lobbied for such, though he admits his firm has.
And he says the claim, contained in one email, that he lobbies for ... exclusive gambling rights for certain companies, is just plain false.
I represent a pari-mutuel company that owns a casino in Broward County, he clarifies. My client is very much in favor of allowing open competition in the gaming market and allowing whomever is licensed and regulated properly to open up.
Diaz does concede the truth to at least one of the allegations circulating: he does indeed lobby for county and municipal installment of controversial red light cameras, which are the bane of civil libertarians and privacy advocates of both the political right and the left. And he does so proudly.
There was an article in the Miami Herald [recently] about how accidents at red lights have decreased significantly in my home town, Miami; and I think that speaks for itself, he tells the News. Yes, I do represent the red light camera people and for the record, a Republican Legislature passed that bill and a Republican governor signed that bill into law. So they cant tell me thats a Democratic cause. And people's lives are being saved as a result of it.
Grassroots activist Manny Roman, a former district committeeman whose term expired Dec. 1 and and who ran the Miami-Dade component of Ron Pauls 2012 presidential campaign in Florida, has emerged as the de facto leader of the liberty movement in the county. He distanced himself from the incendiary emails circulating about Diaz, but suggested they might be due to efforts made by Diaz and others over the last several months to unseat most of the 48 to 51 Paul supporters who were elected to the REC in August.
According to Roman, a high-ranking party employee tipped him off in early December that party leaders were seeking to disqualify as many of the August electoral victors as possible, over hyper-technicalities. One was the fact that most of them, following instructions on the party website, only filed their Republican loyalty oaths with the Miami-Dade supervisor of elections office, failing to file an additional copy with the party as the official party rules require.
Secondly, the employee told Roman that party leaders would attempt to disqualify elected commiteemen on the grounds that they were not registered Republicans for a full 365 days prior to the start of the candidate qualifying period. Several of the Paul sympathizers had no party affiliation before throwing their hats in the electoral ring, and Florida law does require that primary candidates not have been a member of any other political party for one year prior to the qualifying period; but Roman obtained a letter from an attorney at the Department of State confirming that No Party Affiliation is not, in fact, a political party for purposes of the statute.
Sixteen district committeemen-elect sent a letter to now-former Miami-Dade GOP Chairman Ben Powell on Dec. 5, respectfully warning him against disqualifying candidates on either of these two grounds, and days later received assurances they wouldnt be.
Diaz did not deny that he sought enforcement of official GOP rules, which he says would have disqualified some of his own supporters as well, but says hes let bygones be bygones and is no longer seeking to unseat the Paul supporters.
I let it go; what we did was basically grant them amnesty, Diaz tells the News. The Ron Paul people are good people. Im not trying to disqualify them. Im not going to pursue it. I could have filed a legal challenge or grievance, but Im not going to do any of that stuff. We need quality, energetic people like them.
Roman suggests that one other factor fueling conservative discontent over Diaz is the latters disputing the December election of Paul-supporter Rosa Palomino as REC vice chairwoman. Despite her being announced the winner on Dec. 18, and being sworn in by Diaz himself, opponents of her candidacy insist she was not the true winner because she received only a plurality of the votes instead of the required majority. Theyre insisting she face a runoff election.
Diaz tells the News hes not fueling opposition to Palomino.
I will abide by whatever our general counsel says; Im a neutral party in this, he says. All I care about is the welfare of the party and adherence to the rules.
Diaz insists theres not much ideological difference between himself and the Paul supporters, and urges some of their more vocal members to tone down their rhetoric and work for party unity.
At the end of the day, I consider myself relatively libertarian, he tells the News. Im very much in favorof people doing with their money what they wish, for doing in their bedroom what they wish, with as little government intervention as possible. I was opposed to the lousy fiscal cliff bill that Congress just passed, raising taxes on us, and I'm very disappointed it passed in a Republican House. I dont think the Paul people and I are very far apart at all.
Roman has had several meetings with Diaz since the Dec. 18 elections, which Roman says have left him optimistic that a rapprochement between the local liberty movement and the local Republican establishment is on the horizon.
I appreciate Nelson's expressed openness to the message of liberty; he has expressed a good-faith effort in working together and making the local party a change vehicle for energized libertarian-Republicans, Roman told the News. As we work together to help Republicans win election, I hope that the party will see that liberty is the core value holding together the Republican coalition.
Diaz echoed those hopes.
I dont want to belittle what the Paul people feel and what they represent; theyre good people, they want the same things I want, he tells the News. My No. 1 priority is to get young people more involved in the party, increasing our voter registration, and getting Rick Scott and Jennifer Carroll re-elected in 2014.
Im not going to give away the secrets or the plan, but we have a lot of hard work to do in making being a Republican cool again.
Reach Eric Giunta at egiunta@sunshinestatenews.com or at (954) 235-9116.
