Check out the numbers in Miami-Dade this year alone, from January to August:

January 1, 2008:

August 1, 2008 (PDF):

Of 85,532 new registered voters in the south Florida county, 56,175 were Democrats, only 9,313 were Republican. That is, 66 percent of new registration were Democratic, only 11 percent were Republican (the rest were third party and "no party affiliation").

Even more incredible is the shift in the Latino voter away from the GOP. Of the 45,881 new Hispanic voters, only 7,236, or 16 percent, registered Republican. 25,907, or 56 percent, registered Democratic. The ranks of registered African American has grown by over 10 percent. And sure, Republicans picked up 80 of them, but another 22,035 of them slotted in with the Democrats.

Want to see how far Democrats have come? Let's go back to January 2000:

In 2000, Democrats had a roughly 60,000-vote advantage in the region. Today, it's 146,000. In 2000, 57 percent of Latinos (mostly Cuban Americans) registered Republican, while only 24 percent registered Democratic. That gap has closed significantly today, to 48 percent Republican, 28 percent Democratic. I'd bet quite a bit that the swelling ranks of Latino "no party affiliation" are full of closeted Democrats too ashamed to tell their hard-core Republican parents of their true party sympathies.

This obviously has huge repercussions in several races this fall. At the top of the ticket, Obama will obviously benefit from the increased Democratic performance in the region, and his continued voter registration efforts in Miami-Dade are epic. The campaign plans to squeeze out every last Democrat possible. But lower on the ballot, these numbers have benefits to our three South Florida Democratic challengers in FL-18, FL-21, and FL-25. None of these districts reside entirely within the boundaries of Miami-Dade, but the bulk of their voters do live in that county. Let's see how those district have changed from January 2008 to August 2008 (PDF):

In FL-18, O2B Democrat Annette Taddeo is taking on Illeana Ros-Lehtinen in an R+4.3 district (Bush won it 54-46 in 2004):

In FL-21, Democrat Raul Martinez is taking on Lincoln Diaz-Balart in the toughest district of the lot -- R+6.2 (Bush won it 57-43 in 2004).

And in FL-25, O2B Democrat Joe Garcia is taking on Mario Diaz-Balart in a R+4.4 district (Bush won it 56-44 in 2004).

In a series of elections were every vote will count, the GOP's rapidly eroding voter registration numbers are a telling harbinger of what's to come. All three of these House elections will be close, as will Florida's presidential contest. Every voter registration gets us one step closer to victories that would be game-changing, truly epic.  

On the web:

Orange to Blue ActBlue page
Annette Taddeo for Congress
Raul Martinez for Congress
Joe Garcia for Congress

SusanG has been writing frequently on the sketchy dealings of GOP bundler Harry Sargeant. Sargeant first came to attention as the chief bundler in a series of questionable donations to GOP presidential nominee John McCain:

The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton.

But the man who gathered checks from them is no stranger to McCain -- he shuttled the Republican on his private plane and held a fundraising event for the candidate at his house in Delray Beach, Fla.

Harry Sargeant III, a former naval officer and the owner of an oil-trading company that recently inked defense contracts potentially worth more than $1 billion, is the archetype of a modern presidential money man. The law forbids high-level supporters from writing huge checks, but with help from friends in the Middle East and the former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit -- who now serves as a consultant to his company -- Sargeant has raised more than $100,000 for three presidential candidates from a collection of ordinary people, several of whom professed little interest in the outcome of the election.

The trail of shady Sargeant bundles then leads to Sargeant's old fraternity brother (and McCain's potential running mate), Florida Governor Charlie Crist. McClatchy reports:

Jihan Nassar, a homemaker in Corona, Calif., is listed as a $500 donor to the campaign of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. But she insists she never gave a dime.

''I can't make any donations, financially,'' Nassar said Friday. "We never made any donations, sir. I have no idea what you are talking about.''

Nassar and her husband, Waleed, are among more than three dozen California donors listed as giving to Crist's campaign on June 19, 2006 -- donations bundled by a controversial Delray Beach defense contractor now under scrutiny for contributions to GOP presidential candidate John McCain.

On Thursday, the McCain campaign said it would return $50,000 in donations tied to businessman Harry Sargeant III, finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party and a college buddy of Crist's.

Well, guess who else has been a beneficiary of Sargeant's substantial largesse in the past?

Miami's Diaz-Balart brothers, of course.

In toto, the brothers have taken over $20,000 from Sargeant and his family. As the ethical clouds swirl over Sargeant's head, it would be the least they could do, I should think, to return Sargeant's money. Even John McCain has done that, after all.

Failing that, however, please help cancel out Sargeant's money by donating to Orange to Blue candidate Joe Garcia, the opponent of Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart in Florida's 25th District.

Send the message that you won't let Harry Sargeant's shady money buy this election, at the presidential level or the Congressional level as well.

Help Joe Garcia give South Florida the kind of representative they deserve, and help take Washington back from people like Harry Sargeant.

On the web:
Joe Garcia for Congress
Raul Martinez for Congress
Orange to Blue ActBlue page

In this video (in Spanish) O2B candidate Joe Garcia essentially accuses the right-wing Cuban-American Frank Calzon of the Center for Free Cuba of essentially pilfering tax-payer funds. Later in the show, Calzon throws a hissy fit and storms out (and you don't need to know Spanish to be entertained by this clip):

A subsequent federal audit found $500,000 missing from Calzon's operation, lost into the pocket of the corrupt South Florida Cuban-American mafia. Just like Garcia had charged. Now, after finding more such discrepancies, Congress has frozen all funding for these corrupt groups.

Congress has put the U.S. Agency for International Development's $45 million Cuba program's 2008 funding on hold, following a series of troubling audits and cases of massive fraud, The Miami Herald has learned.

In a quest to get the funding hold lifted, U.S. AID on Friday ordered a bottoms-up review of all its Cuba democracy programs and suspended a Miami anti-Castro exile group that spent at least $11,000 of federal grant money on personal items.

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ordered a hold on the U.S. AID Cuba program funding last month, in part in response to a $500,000 embezzlement at the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington disclosed earlier this year, federal officials said.

In a memo sent Friday to various members of Congress, Stephen Driesler, AID's deputy assistant administrator for legislative and public affairs, said the agency recently implemented stricter financial reviews. That new review turned up irregularities at the Grupo de Apoyo a la Democracia (Group in Support of Democracy), a Miami group criticized in the past for using federal funds to send Nintendo games to Cuba [...]

A report by the Cuban-American National Foundation released in May showed that less than 17 percent of $65 million in federal Cuba aid funds spent during the past 10 years went to ''direct, on-island assistance.'' The bulk of the money, the report said, went to academic studies and expenses of exile organizations, mostly in Miami and Washington.

The report echoed findings by The Miami Herald in 2006 and a congressional Government Accountability Office audit that found lax oversight of the programs and came as the Bush administration prepares to dole out a record $45.7 million in Cuba democracy grants.

This is essentially a big chunk of the payoff the corrupt Cuban exile community gets for having its three South Florida Cuban American representatives (and Democrat Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, too). $45.7 million doled out in patronage fashion to all the co-conspirators, and that's not even including the millions wasted on Radio Marti in similar fashion. Democracy in Cuba? Pshaw! There are fancy dinners to be bought! The high life to be lived.

As you can see in the videos above (even if you don't speak Spanish) is that Joe Garcia has been fighting for accountability for those who receive US tax dollars, and isn't one to let ideology override the interests of the taxpayers.

On the web:
Joe Garcia for Congress
Orange to Blue ActBlue Page

It's well known around these parts that the past few years have seen me change form a frequent critic of the DCCC to one of its biggest supporters. Chris Van Hollen has proven himself to be an aggressive chairman and he is not satisfied to sit back and defend the majority we already have and is working to expand it. They have raised a lot of money and recuited strong candidates all over the country, even ib some of the more Republican parts of South Florida. The only problem is that Red-to-Blue Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz continues to undercut challengers to three right wing Republicans, epsecially Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

Despite warnings from Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), and Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), the Republican congressional leadership of 2005 and 2006 ignored the burgeoning national problems that we now live with every day (gas prices food prices, the housing meltdown, recession, etc.) in favor of wasting time and money on misguided attempts at legislating morality.  These GOP leaders, who at one time claimed a belief in limited government principles, were exposed as frauds when they showed no reluctance in using big government to legislate social issues.  In these cases, the sky was the limit!  This was especially true with Internet poker.

The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) is typical of Republican leadership efforts to legislate morality.  To pander to anti-poker extremists like Focus on the Family, the GOP leadership embraced the power of the federal government to tell Americans what to do in their own homes with their own money.  The GOP leadership also embraced UIGEA’s deputizing of banks to enforce the law, as if America’s banks were an unpaid arm of the Department of Justice.

The Florida Republican Party (and some Democrats like Debbie Wasserman Schultz) are kept afloat by the corrupt south-Florida Cuban-American mafia. Now, their three south-Florida reps are facing the challenges of their lives, and at least two are already in serious trouble.

Bendixen & Associates. 6/6-22. MoE 5% in each district. (No trend lines)

Joe Garcia, up against Mario Diaz-Balart, is an Orange to Blue candidate. Martinez is going up against Lincoln Diaz-Balart. These numbers are nothing short of stunning. I've thought these races were quite competitive for some time, but I wouldn't have expected the Diaz-Balart brothers to be in this much trouble. And given that both Garcia and Martinez are raising great money, we have the makings of a series of dramatic upsets in South Florida this year.  

Annette Taddeo in FL-18 still lags, both in money and in this poll, but if she can keep it close, hers is one of those districts (like NH-01 and Carol Shea-Porter in 2006) that can get swept in by the force of larger trends (in this case, a strong Latino turnout for Obama and the entry of a large percentage of new voters, along with the collapse of the GOP brand). But she's got a ways to go before we can say she's "keeping it close".

But that is a lone bright spot for Florida Republicans (and their hard-right Cuban exile allies), who should otherwise be on "panic" mode given the Martinez and Garcia numbers.

On the web:
Orange to Blue ActBlue page
Raul Martinez for Congress
Joe Garcia for Congress
Annette Taddeo for Congress

McClatchy:

In a sign that Democrat Barack Obama will be competitive in Florida, the nation's largest swing state, a new poll shows that Obama is leading Republican John McCain comfortably in South Florida and has a slight edge among Hispanics.

The poll for The Miami Herald shows Obama preferred by a 46-30 percent margin over McCain in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, Florida's most populous area. South Florida traditionally votes Democratic, but the size of the margin often dictates whether the Democrat wins in a statewide contest.

One massive caveat -- the poll was conducted by the terrible Zogby, so take with a giant grain of salt. But if accurate, that would mean that Obama is running stronger in the region than Kerry, and is winning Latinos 40-35 in an area where Cuban Americans have long given their votes to Republicans.

Perhaps that's why Bush came down to help raise money for Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. The brothers are under pressure from Democrats Raul Martinez and O2B candidate Joe Garcia. A third seat, that held by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is being challenged by another great Democrat, Annette Taddeo.

These three Cuban Republicans have built entire careers around railing against the "Communists" in Cuba and the Democratic Party, but the region is changing dramatically, and we have a strong opening to take these three seats and. I don't trust Zogby and thus his numbers will always be suspect to me, but I do know the regional trends don't favor Republicans. Older anti-Castro Cubans are aging and dying off. Younger Cubans are either more recent immigrants, or are second-generation Americans without the strong feelings about the revolution. As such, they are more concerned with the same issues that other Americans are concerned with -- the war in Iraq, the economy, the price of gas, and health care.

Furthermore, those three Cuban Republicans -- Ros-Lehtinen and the Diaz-Balart brothers -- are rabid supporters of increased sanctions against Cuba, including tougher restrictions on travel to visit family and a ban on remittances. For a culture that is as family-centric as Latinos are, this is a violation of sacred family values. Our three great Democrats have made those restrictions a centerpiece of their campaigns and are gaining traction on the issue.

We are almost halfway to our goal of 1,000 contributors to our new ActBlue page. But I'd like a secondary goal as we close out the fundraising quarter -- Garcia is at 160 contributors as of this writing. I'd like to get that to 250 contributors. I know lots of people want to send a message to Bush that raising money for his most loyal lieutenants will cost him. I also know there are more than 90 south Florida readers of this site, and here's your chance to give a boost to one of your locals fighting the good fight for the good of our country.

So let's get Garcia to 250 contributors and help paint South Florida a delicious shade of Blue.

On the web:

Orange to Blue ActBlue Page
Joe Garcia for Congress
Raul Martinez for Congress
Annete Taddeo for Congress

I smell fear in South Florida.

President Bush will raise money for Lincoln and Mario-Diaz Balart this Friday at a fundraiser in Naples.

The afternoon luncheon will benefit the Diaz-Balart's "Florida Victory Committee," a joint fundraising account the two set up late last month. The account allows the pair -- who face their first significant re-election challenge -- to raise money along with the Republican Party of Florida.

Mario Diaz-Balart's district stretches across the Everglades, into Naples, but his opponent, Joe Garcia, is accusing the Miami Republicans of hiding, noting the fundraiser is "far, far away from our community" and is closed to the press.

"Apparently, Mario Diaz-Balart likes to vote with President Bush and take his money, but he doesn't want to be seen with him in public," Garcia's campaign said in an e-mailed fundraising appeal. "This isn't the first time Mario Diaz-Balart hides from you.  A few weeks ago he skipped a debate with Joe Garcia that had been on his calendar for over a month."

Don't you just love Joe Garcia? I love it when Republicans skulk around in the darkness, desperate for Bush's money but paranoid of being seen in the same picture frame or YouTube video with him. And I particularly love it when Democrats keep pointing that out.

Joe Garcia is an Orange to Blue candidate. You can help counter Bush's big dollars with some small dollars of your own. And Joe is certainly a "better" Democrat, right on the two big issues that the current crop of pathetic Democrats in the House can't seem to get right -- Iraq and FISA.

Can we get 100+ new contributors for Garcia? As I write this, our O2B page has 84 contributors for Garcia. Let's get that 200 donors willing to send a message to George W. Bush that his fundraising efforts won't be totally painless. He might be able to raise the huge bucks, but we can help out with money and, just as importantly, help shine a light on Bush's best friends.

On the web:
Joe Garcia for Congress
Raul Martinez for Congress
Orange to Blue ActBlue page

The news is out on Swing State Project: Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia have made the list of South Florida candidates-to-back by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Read it here.
MORE in the body. Crossposted from www.miami-dade-dems.blogspot.com

For those not used to Planet Miami, this ad from Joe Garcia's backers gives some indication of what we have to contend with.

You see the Diaz-Balart brothers in the ad, Mario (FL-25) and Lincoln (FL-21). Joe Garcia is running against Mario, who complains that Joe is backed by a "left-wing extremist" named Charlie Rangel, Korean War veteran and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. Well, Joe just called from New York where he raised some money last night with the help of Charlie Rangel, and said his principles are still intact.

As if this wasn't bad enough:

The House had a meltdown today in the middle of the memorial service for the late Rep. Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor who was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The service, in the Capitol's historic Statuary Hall, was disrupted when a Republican House member [Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart] unexpectedly called for a procedural vote.

they decided to greet Lantos's successor, Jackie Speier with another display of childish petulance during her inaugural speech on the House floor.

For a few feel-good moments on the floor of the U.S. House today, Jackie Speier basked in bipartisan applause as she was sworn in as its newest member. Her family, supporters and kids cheered as she embraced her new colleagues.

Then, in her first speech in Congress, Speier spoke out about Iraq, and the boos and hoots began from the Republican side of the aisle.

"When will we get out of Iraq?" was the most frequent question she heard, she told the House, while campaigning in the special election she won Tuesday to succeed the late Rep. Tom Lantos.

"The process to bring the troops home must begin immediately," she said, as several Republicans loudly booed. Rep. Darrell Issa, a Vista Republican, bolted from his seat and left the floor.

The hoots grew in volume as Speier, a Hillsborough Democrat, continued....

"Why are they booing my mother?" Speier's middle-school daughter Stephanie asked, according to a staffer.

Nice.

Apparently Darrell Issa's sensibilities were so confounded by a frank assessment of the Iraq war that he was overcome and had to leave the chamber. This is the same Darrell Issa who dismissed the 9/11 attacks as "simply" a plane crash.

Class acts, these House Republicans.

The Democratic congresswoman from Florida’s District 20 held a town meeting Thursday evening and defended herself against assertions that she's not doing enough for three Democratic challengers for U.S. House seats in South Florida.

MORE and a version on www.miami-dade.dems.blogspot.com

Mario Diaz-Balart, attacking SCHIP:

In a flame-fanning tirade on Spanish-language radio last week, Díaz-Balart called the tax hike [to pay for SCHIP] an "attack on the Cuban-American community." He added: "It would hurt an industry specifically in Miami-Dade, in South Florida, an industry that is almost entirely Hispanic: those who make cigars by hand, which is a cultural tradition. That industry will not survive."

Lincoln Diaz-Balart, disrupting Tom Lantos's memorial service:

The House had a meltdown today in the middle of the memorial service for the late Rep. Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor who was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The service, in the Capitol's historic Statuary Hall, was disrupted when a Republican House member unexpectedly called for a procedural vote.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

House Democrats were furious, charging the procedural motion was disrespectful. "Very bad taste, very" as one senior House Democratic aide put it.

Republicans were apparently worried that Democrats were about to force debate on contempt-of-Congress citations against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) is the member who hit the panic button, so to speak, and called the procedural vote. His real purpose in calling the procedural motion was to protest the lack of a vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - before the contempt debate started.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, grandstanding about that stupid Petraeus ad:

The chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said the ad "is outrageous and it is deplorable" and called upon her "colleagues on both sides of the aisle" to condemn the ad and, somewhat inexplicably, to apologize to the general for the impugning of his integrity.

Democrats everywhere know that we don't need people like this in Congress. It goes without saying that the DCCC leadership should realize this, too.

Since the beginning of the 2006 election cycle, I have generally been quite pleased, and impressed, by the performance of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. I think they've made some mistakes here and there-they're only human-but overall, I've been quite happy with the DCCC's performance. It's hard to argue with results, and we've gained 31 seats in that time, capped by an impressive victory in Saturday's IL-14 special election, which delivered the seat of a former Republican Speaker of the House to our Democratic Party.

That said, I find this unacceptable: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, co-chair of the DCCC's Red to Blue Program, apparently won

But as three Miami Democrats look to unseat three of her South Florida Republican colleagues, Wasserman Schultz is staying on the sidelines. So is Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Miami Democrat and loyal ally to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

That wasn't the case just two years ago when the pair flouted a long-standing Florida delegation agreement to not campaign against colleagues and vigorously backed Ron Klein in his winning bid to oust veteran Republican Rep. Clay Shaw.

This time around, Wasserman Schultz and Meek say their relationships with the Republican incumbents, Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and his brother Mario, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, leave them little choice but to sit out the three races.

''At the end of the day, we need a member who isn't going to pull any punches, who isn't going to be hesitant,'' Wasserman Schultz said.

Yes, we do, Rep. Wasserman Schultz.

Look, at some level, I understand not wanting to campaign against your friends. I do. I also understand that the Florida delegation has long had a non-aggression pact, and that Wasserman Schultz broke tradition by campaigning against Clay Shaw in 2006.

But as co-chair of Red to Blue, Wasserman Schultz isn't an ordinary Rep. In her capacity at the DCCC, her chief responsibility, her highest priority, is to do whatever it takes to win, in every district we have a chance at winning.

If it makes you a jerk to campaign against your friends and neighbors, fine. You've got to be bloody ruthless if you're serious about maximizing Democratic gains. If you're not prepared to do that, that's OK, but maybe the DCCC job isn't for you. Surely it's not for everyone.

As James L. writes in a must-read piece at Swing State Project (seriously, go read it right now), I can't imagine Rahm Emanuel doing this. Whatever his faults, he is a partisan fighter who is willing to get his hands dirty.

I expect Wasserman Schultz to do the same, and given her prominence in South Florida, I think it really undermines the three fine Democratic candidates in FL-18, FL-21, and FL-25 (respectively, Annette Taddeo, Raul Martinez and Joe Garcia) for Wasserman Schultz to sit these races out.

This is the best opportunity we've had to take these seats in years, and it's her obligation to do everything she can to make that happen.

What is it wrong with this picture? For the first time in a generation the Dems have two strong challengers in South Florida: Cuban Americans Joe Garcia and Raul Martinez. Both are competing toe to toe against well funded-one issue republicans Mario and Lincoln Diaz Balart. The two brothers have done nothing for South Floridians, oh yes! sorry, my mistake, Mario did vote against SCHIP after receiving campaign contributions from the tobacco companies. The brothers talk only about Fidel Castro and Cuba, that's it. And they neglect the proven fact that the demographics have changed, and that people want to have the freedom to visit their relatives in the island and send money to them.

For the first time since Pappa Bush screwed up the response to Hurricane Andrew in largely Cuban American south Dade County (an obviously genetic flaw which foreshadowed Shrub's response to Katrina in NOLA), the Democratic Party was poised to make significant electoral advances into the Cuban American community.  

This year, the Democrats are fielding a full slate of strong candidates against the south Florida "Gang of Three" of GOP Cuban American representatives (the Diaz-Balart brothers and Mrs. Dexter Lehtinen).  The strongest of the pack is Democratic former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez.  Raul was the anointed and groomed candidate to replace beloved Democratic Congressman Claude Pepper, until Raul was indicted by then Republican appointed federal prosecutor Dexter Lehtinen.  Of course, Raul was eventually acquitted on all charges, but not until after the Republican Mrs. Lehtinen was elected to the seat.  (How convenient!)

OK, the battle commences. Weasly Republican words vs. solid Democratic challenges.

This is South Florida, and Joe Garcia, a Democratic strategist and progressive leader, launches his challenge to the three-term Republican rubber-stamper, Mario Diaz-Balart, for the U.S. House in Congressional District 25.
MORE below, also posted on www.miami-dade-dems.blogspot.com with photos

Here’s great news from South Florida: Joe Garcia, chairman of the Miami-Dade County Democratic Party and a national leader among Hispanic electoral strategists, will announce on Thursday he’s running for the U.S. House in Florida’s District 25.

What a landslide awaits the Republicans – not only nationally with their meager presidential offerings, but also in Congress where once "invulnerable" incumbents now face strong challengers.
MORE below the fold