While Florida's G.O.P. kick at each other, Florida Dems kick dirt ... by gimleteye

Back in the days when I coached pee-wee soccer, I called them dirt-kickers. Those were the six year olds more interested by clumps of grass or some strange pattern in the dirt than chasing the ball down the field. The swarm would be the Florida G.O.P. now engaging supporters of Jeb Bush and US Senate candidate Marco Rubio stealing the ball from Gov. Charlie Crist. Florida Democrats? They would be the dirt kickers.

With the G.O.P. in such disarray, one would think that the opposition party-- still a minority in Florida-- would be finding some way to take the ball away from the Republicans. But Florida Democrats seem to be belly-button gazers. I mean, it is not all about President Barack Obama, is it? Surely there are some themes relevant to the life of Floridians that could mobilize voters turned off by the nasty bickering within the state G.O.P.

If I were a strategist, I would go to the heart of the disagreement between the Rubio forces and Crist: how much more power to give developers and land speculators over Florida's future. But Democrats seem paralyzed by the issue and incapable of grasping the populist revulsion at dismantling growth management in Florida to let the Hounds of Development-ville run rampant over every last marketable, sale-able acre.

The edge of conflict within the state G.O.P., unmolested by any Democratic engagement, is about whether to save or to eviscerate state authority for managing growth. I couldn't tell you where state Democrats differ from the Republicans on this issue, because when it comes to favoring developers and the engineering cartel, Florida is a Unitary Party. And because it is a Unitary Party on issues relating to growth, Florida Democrats have no state-wide traction. Why? Because Republicans are simply better at mobilizing behind the avarice and greed underlying the growth-at-any-cost policies that have lined up campaign contributors in neat rows or water pipe infrastructure. Any time Florida Democrats come out for planned growth in Florida, they just sound Republican-lite.

One of the most decent guys in Tallahassee is the Secretary of the Department of Community Affairs, Tom Pelham. The agency that Pelham supervises is the focal point of such major controversies as those that envelop, in Miami-Dade, the future of the Urban Development Boundary. This issue pits the so-called moderates in the Florida G.O.P. against the radical wing, most visible in big campaign contributors from development and Big Ag, like the Fanjul family interests. Why is it so difficult for Florida Democrats to build strategies around populist anger against the hijacking of zoning and permitting in Florida massively contributed to the worst implosion of housing markets and construction since the Great Depresssion?

Pelham was DCA Secretary during the late 1980's under then Gov. Bob Martinez, when the Growth Management Act was implemented. As he recounts the history, principles of good growth were embraced by a bipartisan consensus in the state capitol. That consensus-- constructed around the popular theme of protecting Florida's natural resources while channeling growth-- seems to have been dissolved by the acid of unsustainable growth in the ensuring two decades. What remains is nothing but an undifferentiated mess that wraps up both mainstream political parties. In Miami-Dade county today, the simple matter of releasing accurate maps showing plots of land vulnerable to sea level rise has risen to the alarm of a state secret: that is how powerful the hold of growth-at-any-cost is. Today, the Unitary Party is what remains: insider-driven, lobbyist dominated on both sides of the aisle with no explanation, no arguments how the economy fell to such terrible times, nor any idea how the future might be different.

If the Rubio forces have their way, the Florida Department of Community Affairs will be history in the upcoming session of the legislature. And Democrats still can't tell what is happening. They are somewhere down the other side of the field, picking dandelions while the G.O.P. has driven the ball into the corner at the other end of the field, in a corner kicking each other's shins and ankles.

I agree with the New America Foundation and its assessment that in November 2010, the ballot referendum "Florida Hometown Democracy" will be the most important in the nation. It is a measure that strikes fear at the heart of the Florida G.O.P. But even on this clearest issue, Florida Democrats can't find a voice. Alex Sink, the Florida candidate for governor, won't even pick up a phone to discuss the issue. And so it goes as 2009 and a bad decade for Florida comes to a close.