Posted on 04/04/2015 9:55:24 AM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater has been working the phones in recent days, telling Republicans activists and donors that he intends to run for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination and wants their support. With incubent Sen. Marco Rubio expected to announce his candidacy for president April 13, Atwater is gearing up for what could be a tough primary for a rare open senate seat.
Other Republican prospects include Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera and U.S. Reps. Ron DeSantis,R- Ponte Vedra Beach.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Jupiter has already announced his candidacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
So Rebecca Negron, wife of now State Senator Joe (who lost running under Mark Foley’s name in 2006, what a queer election law that was) is running for the 18th district which is being vacated by Murphy. Florida has 2 of our top 3 House targets.
She sounds more second-tier, unfortunately. We’ll need someone wealthy to run in this seat (I see one of the Rooneys is a possibility - Pat, Jr., 17th dist. Rep. Tom’s brother and a State Rep.). I see Carl Domino may run again, and he should be actively discouraged. His candidacy was an epic fiasco for a seat that should’ve been an EASY takeback.
I hope we also seriously target Gwen Graham in the 2nd, as she is a possible future statewide candidate. It’s too bad Steve Southerland proved so weak in holding that seat, losing in a GOP year. He doesn’t seem to be pondering a rematch. Two State Reps are listed as possible candidates.
Obviously Domino did horribly, do you know specifically what the problem was?
Brian Nestande, who ran against Raul Ruiz in Cali also did disappointedly poor, it ended up being the least close of the competitive Cali races.
“I hope we also seriously target Gwen Graham in the 2nd, as she is a possible future statewide candidate. “
Yes. Her victory was a serious black mark on the evening. She’s got to go. Polarized district, will probably be hard for a Republican to run away with, but Southerland shouldn’t have lost. His close shave in 2012 was a bad sign but I didn’t think he would.
Why can’t Joe Negron run instead of sending his wife to do the job? In that CD, which has all of Martin County and other areas that Joe has represented for years, he would be the favorite in both the primary and the general.
Gwen Graham must have received *a lot* of votes from Rick Scott voters, since Scott cleaned up in North Florida (sure, not in Leon or Gadsden Counties, but the district is much more than that). Hopefully this was because some normally Republican voters were pissed off at Southerland (who had some constituency-service issues IIRC) and not be ause they’ve bought into the canard that Graham is a “conservative Democrat.” We need a first-tier candidate there, as well as to spend money pointing out every single liberal vote cast by Graham in the House.
Perhaps someone from that district can enlighten us on what happened with Domino, because I’m somewhat at a loss. We all know Murphy himself thought he was on borrowed time (at one point floating the notion of switching to the GOP in order to hold the seat), so Domino’s disastrous showing (lost by almost 20%) is all the more shocking.
You know my opinion of the CA races. That we didn’t pick up any House seats where the Dems are too overrepresented was highly suspicious (especially after seeing the primary performances). We should pick up the previously GOP Lois Capps seat this time with her vacating it.
We can probably thank Mike Huffington for messing the seat up to begin with. The GOP incumbent, Bob Lagomarsino, was doing just fine with it, Huffington comes in and drops a $hitload of money to buy it out from under him (when he had no intention of remaining in it). Starts campaigning for Senator almost from the moment after winning it (when he should’ve just run outright for it to begin with), a weak Conservative lady wins it in 1994 and the disastrous collapse of the CA GOP beginning with the 1996 elections swept her out. Lagomarsino could’ve held onto it for at least another decade.
Getting back to FL, I loathe that the legislature has its hands tied on redistricting due to that Democrat initiative, which ought to be tossed out on Constitutional grounds. With a free hand (exclusive of the VRA to protect the Black moonbat Dems), the leg could wipe out Graham (2nd), Grayson (9th), Murphy (18th), and perhaps weaken one of the incumbents from the 21st (Deutch), 22nd (Frankel), or 23rd (Lil’ Debbie)) to get a 20R-7D or 21R-6D delegation.
I don’t know about getting rid of Grayson, that’s a lot of rats to parcel out.
Walter Capps never should have won, Dole carried the district IIRC, but that area is a lot less Republican now.
Well, it was Dan Webster who came out of retirement to take out that trash in 2010. Had the lines remained similar and absent the “Fair Districts” nonsense, Grayson would’ve faced a difficult time in a comeback.
Grayson may not have run if FL-8 was not made into a Orlando-area Democratic vote sink, but Webster might not have kept the seat against a less moonbat opponent. He barely won in 2012 in a GOP-leaning redrawn FL-10 where Romney carried it 53%-47%. Obama likely would have carried a district much like the old FL-8 and might have swept Webster out. Sadly, GOP numbers in Orange and Osceola counties aren’t what they used to be.
With FL gaining 3 seats, it made sense to have one be a cage for Orlando-area rats.
I just went and reacquainted myself on the demographics of the time. By the ‘90s, it had two somewhat polarized areas within it. Santa Barbara County being left-leaning and San Luis Obispo being Conservative leaning. Up to that point, Bob Lagomarsino (one of the few Republicans to succeed in a special election during the Watergate era in 1974) had done fairly well in holding the seat. His closest call, however, came during the 1988 Presidential year where he eked out a win of less than 2% over a State Senator named Gary Hart). He received 72% in 1986, so that was quite a scare and his lowest performance of his House career.
Lago got back up to 55% against a Latina leftist. When Huffington came in, he only beat Lago by 6%, and that was only a plurality. Although Huffington defeated his Latina Dem opponent in 1992 by 18%, in actuality, he got just 52.5% of the vote while the leftist bloc (the Dem and a Green) collected about 45%.
When Seastrand and Walter Capps first faced off in 1994, the ideological pull of both counties was obvious. She won SLO, he won SB. With no Green candidate (but a Libertarian), she won with a plurality of just 1,500 votes out of more than 200k cast (49.3-48.5%). This was a true test of ideologies, since it was considered then that for a coastal district as such, she was “too Conservative” for it. Capps was, conversely, too leftist for it. A bonafide moonbat from the education sector.
Given that Newt had been made the face of the GOP and all the Dems were flogging that horse something fierce for 1996, Seastrand’s unapologetic support for him cost her here. This time around, Walter’s % in SLO went up (although he still lost the county) and was able to clear it with actually slightly less than what he got as a percentage in 1994 (but in raw votes, he increased his numbers from 101k to 118k; she only went up from 103k to 108k).
Bob Dole did win the district in 1996, but in percentages, it was just 44% and he won by only several hundred votes. It was apparent that Perot’s voters may have been more favorably inclined to Capps (though there was an actual Reform candidate in the race, but they got just 1.6%). The Libertarian got just .9%, so adding in those two would not have gotten Seastrand another term.
However, there was an Independent candidacy, one Stephen Wheeler, who got 10k votes. Combing his votes with the other two, assuming they were center-right leaning, could’ve combined to push Seastrand to a second term by another narrow margin. I did a cursory investigation, and it appears he may be a dentist from Santa Barbara who has contributed to both parties, but I get the impression he was a “moderate” Republican, so this may be the missing piece of the puzzle.
The Dems were at least smart here to put the kibosh on having Greens pull enough votes away at the time (however, it also served to pull the party even further leftward). Had Walter Capps lived, Barone theorized he would be too leftist for the district to last in office against a less Conservative (than Seastrand) Republican. He died at an opportune time, barely into his term, and allowed the “grieving widder” to take his seat. I would not have predicted in 1998 that she would still be in the seat by January 2017.
With a free hand, I’d have tried to draw a Hispanic GOP seat out of the old 8th. It was curious to note Grayson was concerned about facing a Hispanic Republican (why he spent his $$ to help a White Republican become his opponent in 2012).
I’ve tried drawing a Hispanic-majority CD based in the Orlando area that voted at least 48% for McCain (which is the minimum that one would need for a GOP CD in Central FL), and it can’t be done, even if one has the lines slink down to Collier County (which would take GOP votes away from the three Miami-area Cuban-American CDs). True, the Puerto Rican vote in Central Florida tends to swing, and went for Jeb in 2002, W. and Mel in 2004, and Rubio in 2010 (and Puerto Rican-born voters in Central Florida likely voted for Scott in 2010 and 2014 as well, with “Newyorricans” from NY, NJ, CT, MA and IL voting as Democrat as they did in their original home states), but the numbers just aren’t there right now. Maybe after the 2020 Census there might be a chance, but Western Osceola and Southern Orange have not been trending in the right direction.
My problem with the FL-09 RAT vote sink is that it is not Democrat enough. When that state judge struck down the Jacksonville-to-Orlando black-majority FL-05 CD because it wasn’t compact enough (not because it went all the way to Orlando, but because it curved into Sanford!), the GOP Legislature should have taken the opportunity to redraw the FL-09 to be like 40% Hispanic and 30% black (by adding black Orange County precincts from the FL-05), making it a more efficient (and compact) RAT vote sink. It could then either split Jacksonville into two GOP-leaning CDs (the judge said that there was no need to have a black *majority* CD in North FL, so why not call the bluff and draw two 28% or so black CDs that vote Republican?), or else play it safe and have a black-majority CD run east-to-west from black parts of Jacksonville to Tallahassee and Gadsden County (with Gainesville thrown in there to boot) that would turn the FL-02 into a safely GOP CD (no way could Gwen Graham have won it without Tallahasee and Gadsden). Frankly, that’s J’ville-to-Gadsden CD is how the GOP should have started out, and dared the jduges to strike down an additional black-majority CD.
I’m cautiously optimistic that, later this year, SCOTUS will strike down the voter-approved AZ redistricting commission’s ability to draw congressional district lines because such system doesn’t permit the state legislature to draw congressional district lines (which duty is assigned to the state legislatures in the U.S. Constitution). When that happens, the FL legislature should sue to get that ridiculous “fair districts” constitutional amendment be declared inapplicable to congressional redistricting for the same reason. At that point, the legislature can redraw the CDs to its heart’s content, and we can get a 20R, 7D House delegation from FL.
The GOP should hire you to handle redistricting nationwide ! ;-D
The Widow Capps wouldn’t have survived 2002 or 2004 (much less 2010) under the 1990s lines, but RAT redistricting guru Michael Berman (the brains behind Phil Burton’s gerrymanders) drew an almost entirely coastal district for Capps that reduced GOP performance by like 7%.
He’d be a great Senator if elected. Can he get elected?
DeSantis, you mean ? We’ll have to see if he can get the nomination depending upon whom all enters.
Domino is running again, Politics1.com reports.
Facepalm. That seat is a top 3 target for us, we need a real candidate.
If Domino had come close, it would be one thing (and frankly, the GOP should’ve won it back outright), but he has no business running again here.
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