The Florida Democratic Party hosted its annual state conference over the weekend at a Disney resort in Lake Buena Vista. This reporter was there for some of the events, including a debate between Dan Gelber and Dave Aronberg, the aspiring candidates to be the Party's nominee for Attorney General next year. I'll be writing a separate post on that later today.
Saturday, the conference was filled with speeches from some of the party's leaders, including the woman that so many Dems have their hopes on for next year to be the next governor, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink. In her address Saturday night, she lit into her possible GOP opponent next year, Bill McCollum, saying, ""A career politician like Bill McCollum only talks about jobs and growth, but a leader like me creates jobs and growth. McCollum pretends to have all the answers, a leader asks the right questions. He puts on a performance. A leader demands performance. He measures results by the polls he takes, I measure results by the progress we make."
That's quite possibly the strongest rhetoric employed so far by the CFO in her campaign against the current Attorney General, but if you can't get the grass roots of your party faithful up and cheering at your state party's convention, when can you?
I didn't arrive at the Conference until around noon on Saturday, which meant I missed appearances by Senator Bill Nelson and Congressman Alan Grayson, who has, pardon the cliche, become a rock star with Florida Democrats after having said Republicans want sick people to "die quickly" two weeks ago.
On Saturday, he said the GOP should be called "The Selfish Party," and the 2,000 or so delegates in the hall ate it up.
Saturday morning Senator Bill Nelson addressed the crowd, and there were many in the audience who got up when he spoke, calling out "health care now! " In the Senate Finance Committee, of which he is a member, Nelson did vote on an amendment sponsored by New York Senator Charles Schumer, and on Saturday he told the delegates and others in attendance that "I have heard you loud and clear" on the issue. Nelson's Committee votes on their bill tomorrow.
As a Quinnipiac Poll released last month revealed, Florida Democrats are solidly behind a government-sponsored public health care option in any bill that ultimately comes out of the Congress this year, so it's perhaps no surprise Nelson is getting with the program.
Yet the Democrats' potential standard-bearer, gubernatorial candidate Sink, still has not expressed her opinion on the matter.
This article appears in Oct 8-14, 2009.