Hastings Decides Against Fla. Senate Bid. Well, although he had a shot at the nomination, he had no real chance to be elected. Which is sort of a shame, as he is a very impressive human when seen up close.
I guess this partly explains the mystery of Hastings's endorsement of Lieberman — Hastings didn't care about the tactical implications for a Senate race because he wasn't making one.
As Congressional Republicans plan to violate Washington DC's home rule, and force a school voucher system on the city, I think it's useful to review how vouchers are working here in Florida.
I'll support almost anything reasonably calculated to improve the access of poor people — and rich people too! — to quality schooling for kids. Abstractly, vouchers look like they might do that, subject to a small host of caveats about the effect on kids with serious problems who might end up being treated like the 'lemons' of a primarily for-profit system, or dumped into the vestigial remains of an underfunded public system.
Given the Florida experience, however, one has to ask whether vouchers in practice are in fact reasonably calculated to be helpful on balance. As usual, the Florida Blog is on top of this one, with links to:
Talk about waste, fraud and abuse! Not to mention special interest lobbying, hogs at the trough, and every other cliche too.
I didn't see this one coming. Lieberman to pick up endorsement of Florida Rep. Hastings
I have no idea how much of this is tactical, and how much is something else like personal friendship. Alcee Hastings is running for Senate in Florida. In a crowded field he'd have a shot at the nomination, but how endorsing Lieberman helps him get that nomination I fail to see. Peter Deutsch will probably get most of the Jewish vote. And the odds of anyone being fooled into thinking Rep. Hastings is a conservative Democrat are pretty low, although he's less predictable and more interesting than most Representatives. I suppose there's some reason to think Lieberman will run strong in Florida, if his campaign has any juice left by the time we have our primary.
It could well be that Hastings just likes Lieberman for some reason. But it's hard to see what that reason could be other than something personal. Lieberman is my least favorite of the major Democratic candiates because of his disgraceful reaction to the courageous decision by Illinois Governor George Ryan to commute the sentences of 167 death row prisoners
“Governor Ryan's action was shockingly wrong,” Mr. Lieberman said … “It did terrible damage to the credibility of our system of justice, and particularly for the victims. It was obviously not a case-by-case review, and that's what our system is all about.”
Sorry, that decision of Governor Ryan's was shockingly right.
The Miami Herald | 11/11/2003 | State's sex predator law goes too far, some argue
The issue is the so-called Jimmy Ryce Act, §§ 394.910-394.931, Fla. Stat.
The statute provides for indefinite confinement of sexual offenders who are currently incarcerated, to continue until they are pronounced ‘cured’ which in the very large majority of cases so far means ‘never’. The statute doesn’t actually say that they must be incarcerated for the sex crime — and the plaintiff in this case committed a rape 20 years ago, was released in 1991, but has been re-arrested since for various crimes of violence.
The Florida Supreme Court has said the Ryce Act is basically constitutional but it has yet to rule on whether the statute can be applied to inmates who committed a sexual offense in the past, but are currently incarcerated for a non-sexual offense.
The Florida Blog points to this stimulating but very high-bandwidth Flash animation about possible Florida GOP Senate candidate Katherine Harris: GRAND THEFT AMERICA.
I do have two and half beefs with the show. First, I'd have liked footnotes for the statistics. Second, it leaves out my favorite Katherine Harris story, in which she demonstrated ignorance of the laws she was supposed to administer. And (the half), there's an explitive that may offend sensitive viewers, especially the sort not already sickened by electoral manipulations.
Harris turns eyes toward Senate suggests that if Katherine Harris runs for the GOP senate nomination and gets it, her presence on the ticket will energize Democratic voters. There's a lot to that. Being as amazingly inept as she is, she may turn off Republicans too.
But there is a scenario in which she gets elected. It goes like this: the primaries don't have run-offs — whoever gets the most votes wins. The Democratic primary is going to be crowded, and may become ethnicized, with votes split up between one Hispanic (Miami's own, tarnished, Alex Penelas), one Jewish candidate, Rep. Peter Deutsch, one Afro-American, Rep. Alcee Hastings, and several Anglos. If either Penelas or Hastings were to win the nomination, Harris might win the general election.
Hasting's negatives are being Black, unabashedly liberal, and too smart. I've met him. Boy, is he smart. Very, very impressive, but I don't think that will play well upstate.
Penelas's negatives are complex, and not strictly racial: he's widely considered to have sabotaged the Gore campaign in 2000, and there are also allegations of fundraising irregularities. Worst of all, from the point of view of a state-wide election, Penelas said he would not support the operation of the ordinary legal process in the Elian affair.
Just from an electablity perspective, Harris would be an awful candidate for the Republicans, yes. But, don't underestimate the Florida Democrats' ability to nominate an even less electable candidate.
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