Beth Reinhard, in today's Miami Herald, delivers a piece of perfectly tee'd irony, "... it sure is strange to read a letter from Cardenas, a top advisor to Republican candidate Mitt Romney, praising the woman determined to turn Florida from red to blue in 2008."
Reinhard reports that Karen Thurman, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, has teamed up with Cardenas to lobby Congress on behalf of Miami-Dade County, Florida's largest and most politically dysfunctional county.
There is no mention how much she will be paid. For the county's part, county commissioner Joe Martinez, called it "a matter of survival".
Cardenas, from Miami, is not any old top advisor: he is a former chair of the state Republican party, a loyal, key ally of former Governor Jeb Bush, and lobbyist.
When the privatization of government services started under Jeb, Cardenas' law firm scooped up the "general counsel" role when it was outsourced by the South Florida Water Management District. That's the state agency spending billions of dollars of public money related to Everglades restoration and passing judgment on consumptive use permits to municipalities and counties within the district.
In other words, Cardenas is not just a top advisor to the Republican candidate Romney, he is very close to the center of the Republican web of influence and power that twinned both the fortunes of Jeb Bush and the real estate boom now in cinders.
So why is the chair of the state Democractic party teaming with a key player in the Republican power elite that deftly managed to tie the change of Florida's presidential primary date, which created a major headache for the national Democratic party, with critical state legislation that state Democrats could not afford to vote against?
Thurman is one of the leaders of the Democratic chorus that ranted and raved against the national Democratic party leadership for "marginalizing" Florida and its critical electoral college votes for the presidential election.
You don't have to have a hearing aid to sense Republicans like Cardenas gleefully congratulating each other: the disarray they sowed in the state Democratic camp will last for many months and generate headlines across the nation.
So Democrats have every reason to be angry that Karen Thurman is linking arms with Cardenas to help lobby Congress.
This is good bipartisanship?
When county commissioner Martinez, a Republican, calls it a matter of "survival", he is not talking just about county finances, that are in distress along with every other Florida county whose budgets became hooked on the crack cocaine of the building boom--the grand Republican strategy to keep Florida red. (Martinez, it is well known, took free construction work on his new grand home out by the Urban Development Boundary from a principal member of the Latin Builders Association, that was lobbying at the time to move the Urban Development Boundary. He is closely allied with Republican builders in Miami-Dade, whose fund raising capacity propelled Jeb Bush to two terms as Florida governor, and is pushing hard--again--for the use of the CSX rail corridor for public transit in order to open yet more Florida farmland to suburban sprawl.)
But this is all insider stuff, that never makes it to the pages of The Miami Herald, or rarely, and only in retrospect in national media.
Cardenas is smart, elegant, and persuasive to a point. He can read the public opinion polls: his party's fortunes for 2008 are a mess. It has so successfully alienated Hispanic voters--who could be a swing vote in 2008--that Florida US Senator Mel Martinez just walked full speed away from his chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.
When the Bush wrecking crew has finished with the White House it is going to take a very, very big broom to sweep out and set things right.
But one has to question, will the Democrats do any better? That is a theme that the Republicans will undoubtedly weave as a low-level threat, whisper campaign with the American public, while Al Cardenas holds open doors for Karen Thurman on Capitol Hill.
3 comments:
Excellent! While we are in politics it is important to know that 4 or 5 years ago the top scientists went to George W. Bush and told him that all of the electric generating plants in the Country were in danger because they all used the internet for controls and any one who understood the way it was done could crash the generators so that they would be down for months and large parts of the Country would have NO ELECTRICITY! None at all so that the Country would be unable to do anything. George did his usual. NOTHING. The worse part is that Iran has the same system so that they or anyone in their system or even someone they just told about it could cripple our whole country with just a stroke on their computer, wherever they were. Worse we never would know where it came from or who did it. Conditions are exactly the same today and W. would not bother his big business friends to change and protect the generators.
You mentioned water. If you go and check the Southwest Water Management District, you will find that at one time there were two guys from the Sugar Industry, one from Tobacco and a guy by the name of Ronnie Duncan who chaired the thing for two years. Ronnie has ties to CSX (member of NAIOP with Steve Crosby from CSX) and has been involved in major deals in Miami. He is a Councilman in Pinellas County and is pitching, guess what, commuter rail services there. This state is on lock down, folks. Cronyism has gone to an all time high in Florida. It's pervasive...I mean, these guys even have plants on Homeowner's Associations. It's really time to get serious about the checks and balances of how things are done, term limits, ethical acocuntability. Our founding fathers must be turning over in their graves.
For more on how elites control politics and policies through inter-locking boards, political appointments, and campaign finance see works by G. William Domhoff on American politics.
Post a Comment