Marco Rubio creates an opening for Kendrick Meek
One of these people should thank Marco Rubio.
Marco Rubio’s troubles — his penchant for spending donor money to pad his lifestyle and PAC money to hire his family members as “couriers” — plus his unwillingness to man up and address the issue publicly, have done what most people, myself included, thought was next to impossible just a few short months ago. He has made it possible for the Democrats to pick up Mel Martinez’s old Senate seat, despite the fact that their front-runner, Kendrick Meek, barely registers in terms of statewide name ID. That’s the conclusion Markos Moulitsas has come to, based on the latest Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, which finds that while 57 percent of respondents (and 47 percent of Democrats) in the poll had no idea who Meek is (he’s a Miami Congressman, btw…) the Congressman (the Washington guy, no less…) has the lowest unfavorable ratings (18%) of the three major candidates, including Rubio (36%) and Gov. Charlie Crist (45%), while Crist loses the primary to Rubio in the Kos poll by 28 points. That matches the findings in two push-button polls (which aren’t the most reliable things…) and while the Kos poll is a wee bit hinky (only 600 respondents, 5 percent MOE in the primary samples…) the trend lines in it can’t be missed, and they are these: Read more
Morning clicks: run away Rubio, Kos flips on Crist-Meek
It’s a late morning here in ReidReport land. I’m getting ready to head out to Channel 2 to tape a segment of “issues,” but before I go, here’s a bit of what’s going on in the sunshine state:
Rubio on the Run: this Daniel Ruth op-ed on Marco Rubio’s duck and hide response to his credit card and family employment plan with other people’s money is worth it just for all the different ways he messes with Rubio’s political title. On the substance, the bottom line is that Marco is taking a page from the Sarah Palin playbook: when scandal calls, don’t answer the door; hide under the bed and stock the foyer with pre-screened, adoring fans.
Meanwhile, if the problem is politicians treating donor money like their personal slush fund, why is the answer to bring back even more political slush funds?
Here’s something you don’t see every day: the Meek campaign forwarding around a post from the Daily Kos. Read more
Marco Rubio’s bad mojo
A couple of weeks ago, I asked a prominent attorney involved in the case of an elected official who was charged with corruption for using his city-issued credit car for personal expenses, including dinners at Red Lobster with his girlfriend, what the material difference was between that alleged crime (the pol is pleading not guilty) and Marco Rubio using his party-issued card as his personal funds, in contravention to the rules governing the card (it’s supposed to be used for electioneering.) The answer was “none.” It’s all about whether the state attorney (or the IRS) chooses to pursue it in one case versus another. Whether you’re talking public money, or private money, misuse of a corporate, government or party-issued credit card is potentially hazardous to your freedom. Interesting. And so is this, from columnist Fred Grimm, writing in today’s Miami Herald:
A decade ago, Broward County Commissioner Scott Cowan tried to explain away political contributions going to hire relatives for mysterious jobs or to pay for repairs to the family car. His ledger sheet included a number of inexplicable purchases. As if he was using his campaign fund as his personal bank account.
“When looking back on how I handled expenditures . . . it certainly wasn’t the best judgment,” Cowan said, as revelations about his inappropriate spending habits became public. “Everything was legal. But it was poor judgment.”
… Everything was not legal. Cowan’s poor judgment translated into criminal charges. He pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors and served 125 days in jail. His wrecked political career should have sobered other ambitious politicians with a penchant for inscrutable expenditures or hiring relatives to perform amorphous duties.
Well guess who Marco Rubio is blaming for his free spending with a donor-funded party credit card, and for payments to his teenaged relatives (and his wife) for “courier” and other services out of campaign committee money? Read more
Herald article today: my answer to Uncle Luke
It’s District 5 day for me today. My Herald column focuses on the very little the district has seen go right over the last few decades, and answers this column by Luther Campbell in the Miami New Times: Read more
Alex Sink’s got a business plan for Florida … Bill McCollum: not so much
In the Florida race: ideology vs. substance
In his never-ending quest to become the worst political candidate in Florida history, Bill McCollum continues to ignore a pivotal issue in the up-coming governor’s race: Florida. I mean he literally has nothing to say about Florida, the state he presumably wants to govern. You get the feeling he’d rather be back in Washington, co-sponsoring legislation that let’s Wall Street destroy the country and voting himself taxpayer-funded pay raises so that he doesn’t have to “sacrifice the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed,” rather than rambling around the governor’s mansion, doing boring stuff like figuring out how to dig Florida out of the ditch his party has driven the state into. It’s almost as if McCollum isn’t really running for the job he truly wants …
Meanwhile, on the other side of the ledger … Alex Sink has released her business plan for the state. Personally, I’m a big fan of the b-plan idea for governing. It has worked wonderfully for my favorite mayor, Shirley Gibson of Miami Gardens, and helped that city get on track fast (it still has issues, but is doing a damn site better than much older cities and areas with similar issues and demographics.) And releasing a business plan emphasizes what voters will probably like most about Sink: that she is a smart, pragmatic businesswoman who can finally turn around Florida’s faltering economy and 11.9 percent unemployment (while not emphasizing what they will probably like least: that the business she used to be in was banking.) Overall, gotta give Team Sink an A on this one. Shows she and they are on the ball, and focused on the topics that are most on everyone’s mind: jobs and the economy. As for Bill Keep bleating on about that healthcare bill you no longer have anything to do with because you’re not a friggin member of Congress anymore. Knock yourself out. It’s very becoming, in an irrelevant sort of way. Read more
In case you missed it: the Alan Grayson comedy hour, ‘Wild Alaskan dingbat’ edition
Alan Grayson: funny always wins
Alan Grayson is a lot of things, including brash, in-your-face, down-to-earth, and funny as hell. RawStory presents his comedy stylings at Sarah Palin’s expense, which could have been a late night monologue. It all started when Palin knocked him during an Orlando appearance (I wonder how much she got paid…) saying she “got to meet quite a few candidates who are lining up in a contested primary who want to take out Alan Grayson” and adding: “what can you say about Alan Grayson? Piper is with me tonight, so I won’t say anything about Alan Grayson that can’t be said around children.” Badum-bum! Any of you folks from out of town? Grayson’s reply was much funnier: Read more
For Marco Rubio, expensive chickens roosting
There’ll be no more living the political high life for Marco Rubio — basking in the adoration of the eager press corps, crowned as the “Hispanic Obama” and the “Hispanic Ronald Reagan” at the same time … and the answer to the Republican Party’s demographic woes … hailed by tea partiers everywhere and fawned over by Erick Erickson and Jim DeMint, who isn’t at all using him to make himself look hip and relevant in an election year or to set himself up to take Mitch McConnell’s job (okay, the last two things are still happening.) No, friends, the Marco Rubio hot air balloon appears to be coming in for a landing. Read more
Rubio’s brand dented with conservatives, Hispanics?
Marco says: "It's my money!" ... only it's not.
I had lunch with a prominent member of South Florida’s Hispanic community not too long ago, who told me, to my surprise, that Marco Rubio has a Cuban problem. On Spanish language radio, apparently (and this person appears on it regularly,) he is often criticized for appearing to deliberately take stands harmful to fellow Latinos just to win over white conservatives, including opposing immigration reform (a priority for Hispanic elected officials), calling Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty grant a mistake, and coming out against counting illegal immigrants in the Census, a strange position that makes xenophobes happy, but which if implemented, would cost Florida billions of dollars.
Indeed, being a black or brown conservative often seems to require making repeated and increasingly vigorous demonstrations of disdain for one’s own ethnic group. Blacks who vehemently oppose affirmative action and Latinos who oppose immigration reform are particularly prized by the right. Clarence Thomas is beloved by white right wingers as much because he is hostile to what they see as the “race hustling” of traditional black leaders as for his Supreme Court rulings (which are just like Tony Scalia’s anyway.) Rubio, by taking hard-right stands on things like immigration, is positioning himself roughly where Tom Tancredo is on issues, which is good for his push-button poll numbers, but which has also hurt him, according to those same (not very sound, but highly media-shiny) polls, with Hispanics, who right now prefer either Charlie Crist or Kendrick Meek, to one of their own. So could Rubio be more properly characterized as the Hispanic Clarence Thomas, rather than the Hispanic Barack Obama? (Thomas’ wife is now a tea partier, so the similarities are growing.)
A piece in the National Journal’s Burn After Reading blog suggests his troubles might be real: Read more
Uh-oh Rubio …
Marco Rubio: It's good to be the speaker.
The latest St. Pete Times/Miami Herald scoopola details Marco Rubio’s lifestyle-padding through what sure looks like a multi-tiered political slush fund. This time, Rubio is tagged for allegedly using his political committees to pay his wife and several members of his family. From the story (which was forwarded around by both the Crist campaign and the Florida Democratic Party, with the former dubbing the story “the Rubio hustle…”): Read more
Kitty discovers the truth about Medicare Part D
Have you noticed how many of Charlie Crist’s friends are suddenly all over TV? Who are the equivalent for Marco Rubio, besides Jim DeMint and the tea party people…? Anyhoo, Florida Temp Senator George LeMieux was just on “Hardball,” and Chuck Todd, sitting in for Chris, stumped him by informing LeMieux, perhaps for the first time, that Medicare Advantage is not Medicare. It’s a private insurance product that gets taxpayer subsidies, so if you cut the subsidies, you’re not cutting Medicare, you’re just giving less money to insurance companies. Cue the “ums…” LeMieux wouldn’t say straight out that Marco Rubio is qualified for the Senate, and he stood by his friend Charlie Crist. Not much other news there, but someone ought to forward Kitty a description of Part D … Best line of the segment: Chris Cillizza: nobody knows Charlie Crist like George LeMieux. He also made the observation that Crist may be struggling without his chief strategist, who is the equivalent of the governor’s Karl Rove. Interesting point …
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