In the District 40 Senate primary, trust fund baby Andrew Korge has sent the single Democrat voter in Ladra’s household
12 mailers in the past couple weeks. That’s more than all the other candidates on my ballot — combined.
It’s gotta be some kind of record.
Korge, who is running against incumbent Sen. Dwight Bullard and former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan (like it or not) in the Aug. 30 election, is the richest of the three candidates by far, with a $700,000 war chest amassed.
It’s no wonder he has sent 12 mailers. He has money to burn. Whoever is doing those mailers for him is going to have a good year.
Read related story: Andrew Korge PAC attacks Bullard finances in mailer
Five of those mailers have been negative attacks.
Two attacks in both Spanish and English against Bullard, for campaign finance violations and campaign spending. And one in just Spanish attacking Logan. Because he knows where he’s weak.
The other seven are positive, and two of them are in both Spanish and English. They talk about creating jobs and raising the minimum wage and “protecting Democrat values” and improving our public schools. But the most important part, for the campaign, are the pictures of Korge with both Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
In fact, it’s not enough that Korge has Democrat photo ops.
One mailer promotes his “Democrat roots” with vintage pics of his grandfather George Korge with former super blue Congressman Dante Fascell, for whom grampa was campaign treasurer. You have to appreciate the old timey album feel of the photos with corner sleeves. There’s even one of Kid Korge as a 3-year-old wearing a Fascell shirt at one of the legislator’s famous Labor Day picnics.
Why’d he skip a generation? Ladra is sure there are pics of Papi Chris Korge with all these Democrats and then some. Could it be because Chris Korge made all his money in the sweet concession deals at Miami International Airport that he got during the Alex Penelas days?
Read related story: Alex Penelas crowd hosts Andrew Korge Senate kick-off
All but two of the mailers — one positive piece and the hit piece on Rivas Logan — were paid for by the political action committee Friends of Andrew Korge. The PAC had raised a total of $385,129 as of the end of July and still had $217,940 to spend. But, while it looks like he has spent at least $87,000 on TV commercials, none of the expenses so far account for the intense mailbox activity. It must be coming in the next report. The candidate’s own campaign account also listed zero mailers under expenditures and it only had $90,442 of the $343,516 raised.
But there’s another campaign finance report coming soon. Korge will likely spend $1 million before the Aug. 30 primary.
His opponents have a fraction of that. Bullard has less than half of the $126,883 he raised as of July 29. And Rivas Logan, who has suspended her campaign, had less than $10K of the $17,500 she raised.
Ladra doubts her mailbox will be seeing anything from either of them — but more from Korge.
Whoever wins this contest, will have to go up in November against State Rep. Frank Artiles, who now wants to be a senator. Artiles has $251,428 left of the $411,893 he raised. Plus he has access to multiple PACs and will likely get help from the Republican Party of Florida to win a seat they so desperately want to flip.
And while he doesn’t have a primary opponent, Artiles has already sent two mailers from his campaign.
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We all know that Frank Artiles plans to run for the Senate against incumbent Dwight Bullard.
The question is “Why?” He has another term in the House left so why
would he risk a sure thing for a seat that that went to President Barack Obama by 7 points in 2012?
Well, because redistricted seat 40 may be more Democrat, bu it is also waaaaay more Hispanic, with a 74 percent Latino vote pool. And it includes a little of the area once represented by Sen. Anitere Flores, who promised to move after she and Bullard were drawn into the same district and will instead run for a newly created open seat (District 39; because the numbers play musical chairs, too).
That’s why former State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan was in Tallahassee last month, talking to folks about running in that seat against Artiles. Bullard knows he’s vulnerable. Several sources confirmed that Bullard has been approached about stepping down and letting Rivas Logan take on Artiles. And they all say he same thing: He has an emotional attachment to the seat, which belonged to his mother, the late Sen. Larcenia Bullard, who died in 2013. He sort of inherited her seat in 2012 (though he beat off four other Dems, including former State Reps. Ron Saunders and James Bush, III) like he inherited his dad’s House seat before that.
It’s a pride thing. And it could become a black thing. His has been an African American legislative seat at least since 2002, only one of two black Senate seats in the 305.
Bullard, who replaced Annette Taddeo as chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, might think he has a good chance to defend himself in a district that voted last time for
Obama by 54 percent. But Obama is not on the ballot this year and black voters may not turn out as heavily for Hillary. Everyone is worried about that. And half of the district’s Democrat voters are Hispanics anyway. Artiles could peel some off there. Most likely, however, he’ll grab a bunch of the Hispanic independents, enough to make a difference.
The newly redistricted seat represents South Miami Heights, West Perrine, Richmond Heights, Fairway Heights, Howard, Country Walk and West Kendall. It also includes portions of the Westchester, Cutler Bay, South Miami and Coral Gables.
There’s also this: Artiles won his old district (which used to be Bullard’s old House district) which went to Obama with 51% in 2012, by double digits against a Democrat in 2014 — albeit a Democrat nobody and on an off, non-presidential year. But Gov. Rick Scott only got 49 percent of the vote there, so Artiles got 8 percent more votes than the Republican at the top of the ticket.
Trust me, Artiles did not give up his likely re-election to the
House for his last term with full tenure if he didn’t have a poll that shows what consultants call a path to victory for a coveted Senate seat.
He has also shown a better knack for raising campaign funds, accumulating a total of almost $800,000 between his campaign and his PAC, Veterans for Conservative Principles, since 2012. Bullard raised $85,000 for his 2012 race.
Is defending the Bullard legacy worth the risk of losing a Democratic seat in the Senate? Especially against Magilla Gorilla? A man who is best known for punching a college kid in the face, pushing a law that regulates bathroom use and living outside his district? That’s what state party leaders are grappling with.
Rivas Logan told Ladra that yes, she had, indeed been in Tally last month
talking to interested parties (read: the Democratic Party) about running again, but she said there were a number of seats discussed — and for both 2016 and 2018, which is conveniently when she retires as assistant principal at Robert Morgan Technical High, where she prepares seniors for college and life after high school.
“All the pieces line up for me in 2018,” said the one-time Miami-Dade School Board member, coyly leaving the door open for Bullard to bail: “However, should something become available that is a good fit, I would seriously consider it.”
There it is. She’s just waiting for Dwight to make a difficult decision.
Meanwhile, the party keeps grooming her for something. That’s why you see Rivas Logan commenting on immigration policy on MSNBC and Spanish-language TV or why she delivered a message to the
audience at the Democratic debate at Miami-Dade earlier this month. That choice — she spoke right after Florida Democrati Party Chair Allison Tant and before DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz — says something about their confidence in and hope for her, because she’s really only been a Democrat for about five minutes.
Last time, Rivas Logan held office, she was a Republican House rep. But a falling out over immigration policy and the fact that the party went with State Rep. Jose Felix Diaz against her when they were drawn into the same district sort of put the ice on that.
Wouldn’t it be just so Florida and like the 305 if Diaz, who is termed out next cycle, faced Rivas Logan again in a 2018 Senate race?
I said it first.
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