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Columns

The Recount and Andrew Gillum as the Perfect Democratic Candidate

November 13, 2018 - 1:00pm
Lawyer observes a ballot recount in Riviera Beach
Lawyer observes a ballot recount in Riviera Beach

Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes of Broward County and Susan Bucher of Palm Beach County, a/k/a Abbot & Costello, are still trying to count the votes cast a week ago.

They were supposed to report them accurately to the Florida Division of elections on Tuesday night.

But Laurel & Hardy -- I mean, Snipes and Bucher -- are now trying to meet a third state deadline (the last one was on Saturday) that comes at 3 p.m. Thursday.

Bucher is already saying she can’t meet it.

So, why is she still the SOE?

Because she’s a Democrat and so is predominantly Palm Beach County.

The same can be said for Brenda Snipes, who is a colossal mistake as SOE.

Yet, these two SOEs have consistently screwed up just about every election they’ve overseen.

The truth be told is that the election outcomes, despite all of the posturing in the televised media and the handwringing to sell newspapers, is not in doubt.

To the Miami Herald’s credit, they published a story that shows what a Herculean challenge both Bill Nelson and Andrew Gillum have in order to win.

The U.S. Senate race is the closest, and yes, under Florida law, when the margin of victory is less than .5 percent, there must be a machine recount. If less than .25 percent, there must be a hand recount.

God forbid there has to be a hand recount, because I don’t believe either South Florida SOE can count that high, even if they use both hands.

According to VoteFair, there have been a total of “4,687 statewide elections between 2000 and 2016, just 26 went to a recount.  Of those 26, just three recounts wound up changing the initial result of the race ...” and none were in Florida.

But Florida is so much bigger than all but two other states. Isn’t there a chance of more votes flipping the outcome?

Alas, the August 2018 report cites, “With a larger electorate, there is a lower probability that a shift in votes will be large enough to affect the outcome of the election.”

Thus, the posturing by Bill Nelson and to a lesser degree Andrew Gillum, is really for naught. Probably more so because Bill will have to leave office as a loser, and Andrew never really had a real job since he was only “ceremonial” mayor of Tallahassee -- you know, cutting ribbons, using shovels to pitch dirt at groundbreakings, etc.

What’s so interesting is that Andrew and his Antifa Far Left supporters claimed the Dems have consistently lost the governor’s race for the last 20 years because they didn’t have progressive candidates like him.

This time they claimed the sun, moon and stars had aligned, or so it seemed when Andrew became the Democratic nominee.

As far as the mainstream media were concerned, Andrew was the real thing, even though he had won through the back door, with little scrutiny about his character, background and job performance in Tallahassee.

Yet, he was admittedly a good-talker who could easily sell ice to Eskimos.

Every Florida newspaper endorsed him. Every one.

George Soros and Tom Steyer promised him -- and delivered -- tens of millions of dollars to ensure that he would win and turn their Socialist-centric platform to reality.

He won both debates and they weren’t really even close.

He spent an extraordinary amount of time working to get young and liberal voters to register and then to the polls.

He had hundreds of like-minded liberal organizations working in Florida to get out the vote.

Let me suggest now that the loss wasn’t about race, though I’m confident that issue will ultimately be raised by him, Bill Nelson, and their supporters.

It was about governing philosophy.

I guess you can’t fool all of the people after all, because enough citizens voted to keep our state in the hands of those leaders, Republicans, who have brought Florida to where we are now.

A state whose bond rating is Triple A, whose debt has been significantly paid down by over $2 billion under Gov. Rick Scott, whose budget is balanced and where there are enough reserves to help out if the economy were to go bust again.

Floridians don’t appear to be thinking like the folks in Connecticut who have consistently raised taxes on the wealthy and corporations to the extent that General Electric moved to Taxachussets (wow, what does that say!), and rich people are leaving the state.

That’s the pablum that Andrew and Bill were trying to sell us.

Once again, the Florida Democratic Party hasn’t learned the electoral lesson of 2016.

Despite having a registration edge among voters, they don’t get it that Florida voters don’t want a welfare state.  

Don’t want a sanctuary state, though they want to help those truly fleeing dictatorships.
  
Don’t want a free education for their children because they know insightfully that nothing is ever really free.
  
They don’t want gun control because it’s not about the guns, it's about the sick people who will use a car, a knife, anything to kill other people.

If Democrats ever want to have a chance at winning again, they’re going to have to speak to moderate, conservative and rural voters, because we’re tired of PC and we want everyone physically capable of helping themselves to not expect us to carry their burden.

Listen, Democrats, you’ve talked ad nauseam to your progressive voters, you’ve had your “best” candidate, and you’ve had all the money one could hope for.

You still lost.  

How can you become competitive again?

Barney Bishop III is a former executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, the immediate past CEO of Associated Industries of Florida and the current CEO of Barney Bishop Consulting.

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