Watch political happenings in Florida very carefully.
Since Florida is a bellwether state, what happens here, in some fashion, sooner or later, will probably happen in your neck of the woods.
Currently, Florida’s ringleader status features Gov. Charlie Crist, a former Republican, running for the U. S. Senate as an independent. The party switch is due to a hard charge from far-right Republican candidate Marco Rubio, a 39-year-old Cuban-American lawyer and former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. Rubio opposed Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination as the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.
First out the gate in the 2010 Florida U. S. Senate race was U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Democrat from Miami. Meek, who is black, supported Hillary Clinton for president until the end, even though his overwhelmingly black constituency supported and voted for President Barack Obama. The worst low and moderate income housing scandal in recent history took place in Meek’s district, under his watch.
Recently, out of the blue comes billionaire Jeff Greene to challenge Meek for the Democratic Party’s U.S. Senate nomination. Greene is from California, where he had no political party affiliation. He has only been in Florida for the last two years.
Greene helped wreck Florida’s economy while making millions of dollars in the subprime mortgage market. He bet against bundles of risky mortgages through credit default swaps. Currently, Greene is pummeling Meek in all the polls.
Then, there is the meritorious mediocrity that engulfs the Florida gubernatorial race. Without one positive standout for governor, Florida voters are saddled with recent frontrunner and newcomer Rick Scott, a Republican multimillionaire healthcare executive who has so far spent $11 million of his own money on TV and radio advertising. Scott has jumped ahead of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, the 20-year, former congressman and heir apparent to the Republican nomination.
Florida’s Democratic Party placed its hopes on Alex Sink, the state’s chief financial officer. Sink is a former Bank of America president, and was at one time in charge of its Florida operations. Allegations abound that the bank has been heavily involved in predatory lending, especially to blacks and the elderly.
Sink is the wife of Bill McBride, who ran unsuccessfully for governor against Jeb Bush in 2002. Sink is running third behind Scott and McCollum in the governor’s race. She will face one or the other in November if she beats seven other minor Democratic candidates in the Aug. 24 primary election.
Now, all the above just represents the top of the primary election ballot. Smoldering somewhat imperceptibly are the judicial races in Broward County.
Including the circuit and county courts, there are 90 judges in Broward County. Of that total, there are only five blacks (there are six Hispanics). Seventy-nine judges are white. Of that total, 47 are Jewish. In your wildest imagination, do you see any way for that disparity to afford equity for people of African descent?
Suddenly, a pack of Jewish lawyers and prosecutors has decided to bankroll some of their group to run against all the black judges on the Aug. 24 primary ballot. Jewish “friends” of the black community plead that they are aghast at what’s happening, and profess their continued support for the retention of black judges.
Hey, you’d better wake up, black people. You know darn well what someone says before they vote, and what they do when they actually vote, could be two different things. Keep on trusting what other people tell you they will do as opposed to what you need to do for yourself, and you will forever be victimized by other people’s self interests.
Three of the five black judges will be on the Aug. 24 primary election ballot. Three of them are Circuit Court judges. They are: Kenneth L. Gillespie and Elijah H. Williams. County Court Judge Mary Rudd Robinson is the third. It’s time for black people to play offense. Go to the polls on Aug. 24, and vote for black people’s interests.
AlCalloway@Verizon.net
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