The Florida Democratic Party, for all its disdain for rich Republicans and the privileged "1 percent," is doing its best to find and run for office the wealthiest, best connected silver-spoon candidates -- even if they have to step over longtime party loyalists to do it.
It doesn't matter how much of a sham your commitment to party principles is. If you want to run for office and you can self-finance, welcome aboard -- the gang at FDP HQ is here for you.
I bring it up now because the latest victim of this most anti-Democratic principle is Sen. Dwight Bullard of Miami suburb Cutler Bay.
As fate would have it, redistricting landed Bullard in unfamiliar territory, in District 40, now predominantly Hispanic.
Bullard, who would face either Republican state Rep. Frank Artiles or no-party candidate Mario A. Jimenez, apparently isn't very good at fundraising. Never mind that both Artiles and Jimenez will have an uphill battle winning in District 40, party officials decided they want Ana Rivas Logan to challenge Bullard in the Democratic primary.
They want him out.
Never mind that Bullard is a good senator, a good representative of his constituents, a good policy-faithful Democrat and a tireless campaigner. Never mind that people in his former district love him.
He isn't rich and he isn't connected to rich people.
Sen. Bullard and I might now play on different teams -- I'm a Republican, he's a progressive Democrat. But I have admired him for the last four years he's been in office, as I did his father Edward and particularly his mother Larcenia who served long years in the Florida Legislature.
Bullard obviously did not want to talk about this, at least to me. I left messages, but he did not return my phone calls during the weekend.
On April 27 and 28 Public Policy Polling conducted a survey of 470 District 40 voters exclusively for FloridaPolitics.com. The result, according to PPP, was that Rivas Logan would crush Bullard by 20 points in the August primary.
Could that be? Didn't sound good for Bullard when I read it. But not everybody takes the poll seriously.
Said one of the people close to party leadership who doesn't approve of the treatment Bullard is getting. "This was like a push poll. You have somebody named Bullard and somebody else named Rivas Logan. Voters in this Hispanic district don't know either one of them, but they hear the names and they know the difference between an Anglo name and an Hispanic name. Who do you think they're going to tell poll takers they're for? This was all rigged to scare Dwight Bullard out of the race."
Though no one I contacted would be quoted by name, support for Bullard and outrage at party leadership aren't hard to find on social media.
In an exchange among South Florida Democrats on Facebook May 10, for instance, activist Joe Kreps wrote, "Spoke to Nan (Rich), Susan Smith, Mary Kiar, Tim Canova, Alina Valdes, Daniel Sohn and Leslie Wimes. We all have Dwight's back and will support him. ... Dwight doesn't know big donors and his supporters have enough trouble putting food on the table. DWS and (Allison) Tant always run to the money. They don't do a damn thing to help people who aren't rich or connected."
Wrote CD 25 candidate Alina Valdes, who is opposing Republican Mario Diaz-Balart in the Broward County race, "i just sent him (Bullard) a donation...i want to support him and they always screw with the good people...i am personally tired of hitting brick walls and being told cd 25 is too repub n i can't win. ...if i do anything, i will help him get elected."
Though Rivas Logan has not officially entered the race, she told The Miami Herald "I'm leaning yes."
Two years ago she and Bullard were on entirely different pages.
When serving on the Miami-Dade School Board she was a strong proponent of school choice. As a state legislator from 2010 to 2012, she voted to oppose women’s reproductive rights and gay rights, supported more school choice plans and backed virtually all of the Republican economic agenda.
Said progressive perspective website The Florida Squeeze on Feb. 11, 2014, the day after Rivas Logan defected from the GOP, "For an ambitious politician like Rivas Logan, getting out ahead of a possible collapse in the GOP hegemony in local legislative districts was probably the calculus."
FDP Chairwoman Allison Tant was unavailable Sunday on the cell phone number she provided me.
It's the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party that gets me.
Isn't this supposed to be the party of the people? The party that cares about the neediest among us? The folks who understand what it's like to be hungry, to go without, to need a job?
Then, why do these same hypocrites who want officeholders to take a "Minimum Wage Challenge" and who point fingers at Republicans for what they call "elitism" ... why do they put candidates with deep pockets, or candidates with access to piles of cash ahead of candidates who know best how their party's rank and file live and what they need?
No wonder Bernie Sanders caught fire. What humbugs.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
