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

The latest article from the Naples Daily News on the 25th district election looks like nothing less than something that would come straight from the Diaz-Balart campaign office itself and he actually attempts to make himself look like the Democrat, even though he has a 90% voting record with Bush.

Let’s respond to the Diaz-Balart rhetoric.

  Energy.

   That word describes the personality of U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, as well as his primary platform.

The only relation to the word energy and Diaz-Balart that I can think of is the Congressman’s lack of using it to fight for the district, as he ranks among the least effective members of Congress and in six years in Congress he has never addressed the energy issue until this year.

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.

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

It's the last day of another quarter, and no doubt you'll be asked to dig deep into your pockets and make one last contribution before that FEC deadline hits at midnight. I wouldn't say no to any spare change you might throw in my direction, but that's not what I came here today to share.

I wanted to say thank you.

When I got into this race, I knew it wouldn't be an easy one. There were a number of obstacles in our way and a number of naysayers who didn't think we had a chance. But, over the past few months, we've built a grassroots campaign powered by thousands of individuals who have stepped up to say "enough is enough - it's time for a change".  That grassroots support has caused people in South Florida, and up in Washington, DC, to stand up and take notice.

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

Cook Political Report has good news for us, as they've upgraded the chances of two of our Orange to Blue candidates.

AZ-03    John Shadegg    Solid Republican to Likely Republican

Democratic tax attorney Bob Lord’s strong fundraising and Shadegg’s hesitancy to announce reelection plans have put this seat on both parties’ radar screens. But this district’s near-certain strong preference for Sen. John McCain at the top of the ticket, and Shadegg’s $938,000 in the bank, will be tough obstacles for Lord to overcome.

While we still believe Shadegg will need to make a mistake to give Democrats an opening here, the cash-flush DCCC’s optimism about Lord earns this race a place in the Likely Republican column.

FL-25    Mario Diaz-Balart    Solid Republican to Likely Republican

If his brother Lincoln Diaz-Balart faces the most serious challenge of the three Cuban-American Republican incumbents in Florida, Mario Diaz-Balart faces the second most serious challenge. Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chair Joe Garcia notes that this district is less Republican than the neighboring 21st CD, and held $316,000 in cash on hand to the incumbent’s $748,000 at the end of March.

This is the reason Orange to Blue and our previous fundraising lists exists -- to take races that seem safely Republican and push them into contention. There's a lot of time left in this cycle for Joe Garcia and Bob Lord to keep working hard toward a November victory.

These may be "Likely Republican", but if we keep working hard (and you guys can help), these will be toss-ups by Election Day.

On the web:

Bob Lord for Congress
Joe Garcia for Congress
Orange to Blue ActBlue Page

On Friday, George W. Bush is coming to raise money for his favorite South Florida rubber-stamp, Mario Diaz-Balart.  The media is not invited and the event is far, far away from our district.

Apparently, Mario Diaz-Balart likes to vote with the President and likes to take his money, but he doesn't want to be seen with him in public.

The cold war still rages on, if you can believe Mario Diaz-Balart. Check out this:

It turns out, in Diaz-Balart's mind, you are one of the Commies. Here's how Diaz-Balart responded to that ad, from the Joe Garcia campaign:

Yesterday they released a statement asking us why we didn't release the names of our small-dollar contributors – people donating less than $200 dollars. While we're happy to provide this information (and proud of our more than 2,000 donors), keep in mind that campaigns are not required to do this. For example, neither Obama nor Clinton does, and this is the first time Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart has. The release:

A simple analysis of Joe Garcia's campaign finance report (see attached), shows that Garcia is concealing the source of more than $51,000 in campaign contributions. The decision to cover up the identity of these contributors raises serious questions. Who are these contributors? Are these contributions legal? Were they cash contributions? Did any of these contributions come from outside the United States?

And this is where it gets ridiculous: Mario Diaz-Balart's campaign has coupled this release with a whisper campaign that says we're taking donations from the Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro regimes. In the past few days, our campaign has received numerous calls about this.

Almost $45,000 of that $51,000 the Diaz-Balart release highlights came from us, the netroots, via ActBlue, and over $14,000 of that from our Blue Majority page. So now we're part of the Chavez and Castro regimes?

I'll take this opportunity to make the record clear--I'm a Joe Garcia small dollar contributor. No secret there, and hardly a cover up. How about you? Is your donation being "covered up"?

Let's show Diaz-Balart what good, patriotic American small donors can do in defense of our country--electing serious men and women who will fight for us on the real issues facing the country today, not the bogeymen from decades past. Contribute to Joe Garcia.

On the Web:
Joe Garcia for Congress
Blue Majority ActBlue page

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.

Mario Diaz-Balart and the Republicans have been caught in another moment of hypocrisy. Over the past few days they have been throwing out charges against Rep. Charlie Rangel, an important Chair of a committee who can bring financial assistance to Miami, and Joe Garcia, candidate for Congress, calling them "left-wing extremists" among other name-calling. As it is, Rep. Rangel served this country heroically in the military and was honored for it and Joe Garcia has been an consistent supporter for Democracy in Cuba and is a former Chair of CANF.

Well now it turns out Mario Diaz-Balart has accepted over $80,000 in campaign contributions from people who do business with Cuba and have advocated against the embargo. That’s right, he didn’t just meet with lobbyists opposed to the embargo, he actually took their money and has been using it to get elected.

Miami Democrat Joe Garcia, candidate for the U.S. House in Florida's 25th district and a recent addition to Blue Majority, seems to be doing quite well so far. He's doing all the things good candidates do, like raising money and cultivating relationships with powerful incumbent Representatives whose assistance he may need once he arrives in Washington.

Well, leave it to the 25th District's incumbent hack, Mario Diaz-Balart, to turn these things into negatives.

Garcia has scheduled a fundraiser in New York City for April 21, at which Representative Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, will appear.

That's innocent enough, I should think. But Mario Diaz-Balart, desperate to score political points by any means necessary, apparently feels that associating with Rangel, a longtime critic of U.S. policy toward Cuba, is some kind of unpardonable offense:

''Joe Garcia continues to align himself with left-wing extremists. The latest to join the ranks is Congressman Charlie Rangel,'' reads a statement from Diaz-Balart's campaign. ``He has a long and well-known history of supporting a radical left-wing agenda including supporting higher taxes on working families and appeasing our nation's enemies. Left-wing birds of a feather, tax and spend together.''

Gotta love that last bon mot, which I suppose is what passes for Republican creativity these days.

Lost in Diaz-Balart's fury, of course, is the fact that Garcia actually disagrees with Rangel on Cuba. But who needs facts?

''I'm not going to fall into the ridiculous red-baiting that my opponent does,'' Garcia said.

Garcia, who previously served as executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, said he has ''serious disagreements'' with Rangel on Cuba. But having a relationship with the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee would help him bring federal money back to the district, he said.

''I'm going to disagree with Charlie Rangel on a few issues, but agreeing on some other things will help me bring jobs to Miami-Dade County and put money in the economy,'' he said.

Hmm...bringing jobs into the district and putting money into the local economy...aren't those the kind of things a good Representative is supposed to do? How come Super Mario can't overcome his disagreements with Charlie Rangel to try and do the same thing?

One has to ask: how exactly does angrily flailing away at the House Ways and Means chairman help Diaz-Balart in his capacity as a Representative? Is he tacitly admitting his own inability to work with the leaders of the Democratic majority to try and do some good for his constituents?

I mean, I would think that cultivating some kind of relationship across party lines with the Ways and Means chair-or at least not alienating him by calling him nasty names-might be mildly useful in steering federal money and projects towards the 25th District, right?

There's always the chance, of course, that Diaz-Balart doesn't actually care about his constituents, and is merely concerned with scoring political points in order to hang on to his precious Congressional seat.

But come on, he wouldn't be that transparently cynical, would he?

The one-note politician toots it again: Run against him/them, and you’re a "left-wing extremist."

It’s in the Miami Herald Wednesday in all its silliness, but at least Joe Garcia got his smiling face pictured on the front of the Metro section.
MORE below, a version posted on www.miami-dade-dems.blogspot.com

Those who have been energized by all the recent fuss about Democratic members of Congress who aren’t 100 percent behind the new and strong candidates in South Florida: Have you taken the step of making a donation to the candidates?
HERE'S HOW under the fold

What strikes me the most about this year's election is that the Democratic infighting at the top of the ticket has done nothing to abate their continued deterioration further down the ballot and South Florida id no exception. According to  CQ, the Diaz-Balarts cannot rest easy.

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