First off, let me be clear we are voting for Dan Gelber for Attorney General here. We admire him very much.
However though this is not an actual "I tried to tell you moment"....it is very close. I have often said that Florida Democrats have been too long under the thumb of some really crazy right wing Florida Republicans who control everything here.
I believe that if long ago they had stood up and made themselves different from the Republicans instead of trying to be like them for so long....that things would be different in Florida.
Pam Bondi is the Republican running for attorney general. She is the highly photogenic prosecutor whose cases often get on the news. She is pretty much a zero tolerance type who thinks Florida needs an AZ type immigration law. She is the frontrunner by about 5 points according to a recent Mason Dixon poll.
From the St. Pete Times Buzz:
Pam Bondi hits Dan Gelber on the Scarlet Letter LawOf course she fails to note that the Republicans supported the law as well.
The biggest surprise Saturday came when Bondi criticized Gelber for voting in 2001 for the so-called "Scarlet Letter" law, which required women placing children for adoption to identify their sex partners if they could not identify the infant's father.
"You say you stand by your record? This record?" Bondi asked Gelber.
The law was supported by Republicans and Democrats and was rescinded, but it was an issue in the 2006 attorney general's race when Republican Bill McCollum defeated Democrat Walter "Skip" Campbell, who sponsored the Scarlet Letter law as a state senator. Gov. Jeb Bush signed a repeal into law in 2003.
Gelber noted that Marco Rubio, the Republican nominee for governor, and Jeff Atwater, the Republican nominee for chief financial officer, also voted for the bill.
My words to Mr. Gelber, whom I admire....we expect stuff like that from the Republicans. We do not expect our Democrats to support it.
Yes, really, the law would have required a woman to list her sex partners in the newspaper if she wanted to put her child up for adoption...and if she did not know the father.
And even worse, Democrat Skip Campbell sponsored the bill. Bill McCollum ran ads against him in 2006 on the very same topic.
Florida's Scarlet Letter lawRepublican attorney general nominee Bill McCollum is running a new ad attacking his opponent, Democratic state Sen. Walter "Skip" Campbell for his sponsorship of a wide-ranging adoption reform bill in 2001. The ad can be seen on YouTubeThe ad features Charlotte Danciu, the adoption attorney who sued to overturn the law. The law became known for its most controversial element, which required women who wanted to put a child up for adoption to run detailed listings in newspapers with their names and descriptions and the names of potential fathers. It attracted national media attention and the Scarlet Letter moniker.
That part of the bill was eventually ruled unconstitutional and repealed in 2003. Campbell initially defended the provision.
Here is what else Campbell had to say on the bill.
Campbell's Scarlet Letter lawThe law became known for its most controversial element, which required women who wanted to put a child up for adoption to run detailed listings in newspapers with their names and descriptions and the names of potential fathers. It attracted national media attention and the Scarlet Letter moniker. That part of the bill was eventually ruled unconstitutional and repealed in 2003. Campbell initially defended the provision.
A 2002 Miami Herald article quoted Campbell:
"The statute’s very clear," Campbell said. "They have to give their names. They have to give the potential names of the fathers, if they know them. They don’t have to say, ‘We had kinky sex in a hotel room.’"
Soon after, Campbell said the bill had unintended consequences. Today Campbell’s campaign released this statement from the senator: "We all worked hard on this legislation, and did a lot of good. No bill is ideal and no individual is perfect.
Florida Democrats are at times almost afraid to be really Democrats in their views. I am not sure when it started to be that way. In the 90s many became Republicans to win because you could not win running as Democrat. Before that though Republicans had run as Democrats because that was how they won.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Florida was one of the earliest states to embrace the policies of the DLC. In fact the party chairman declared at the Democratic convention in 2000 that the DLC was the "wind in their sails."
Florida chair claims DLC is wind in their sails.Making his way through the Florida delegation, for example, he's greeted by the state party chair, the head of the state DLC, and a gruff lawyer from Lakeland named Bob Grizzard. Defiantly wearing a t-shirt from Clinton's 1992 campaign over his checkered oxford shirt, Grizzard tells me he's a "proud member of the DLC." When I ask him about the prominence of liberal speakers on the convention docket, he says, "We're the party of diversity and inclusion," then pauses before adding, "and if they don't want to swallow DLC, we'll stick it to 'em." A minute later, he grabs the shoulders of an African American delegate and pulls him over. "He's not quite with us yet," Grizzard confides to me jokingly, "but we'll give him time." Grizzard's friends are a little embarrassed by the gesture but share his triumphalism nonetheless. "The DLC is the wind in our sails," says Bob Poe, the state party chair.
We are voting for the Democrats on the ballot with one possible exception.
I just firmly believe that the few Florida Democrats in the legislature gave Republicans like Bondi and McCollum ammunition to embarrass them and the party by voting for such an outrageous bill.
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