Never Trade a Vote for a Vote
Years ago, an old county power broker, the kind who could count the votes before half the commission knew there was a vote, gave me one of his rules of politics:
“Never trade a vote for a vote.”
The point is simple. Political influence should add, convert or protect votes.
Moving one of your own votes from your index finger to your pinky gains nothing. But that's exactly what political parties do when they endorse two or three of their own candidates in the same race.
A party is supposed to make choices that help elect candidates who wear their jersey. A dual endorsement doesn't do that. It just divides the votes you already had.
PLANTATION ALREADY SHOWED US
Broward Republicans seem to love making this mistake.
In the 2020 Plantation City Council Group 3 race, the Broward GOP voter guide recommended longtime Councilman Ron Jacobs and Jennifer Izaguirre.
Jennifer Andreu, a literal superintendent of DEI for the school system, won with 44%. It couldn't get worse for Plantation Republicans.
They had the votes to win but just recommended two different places to put them. And found out the hard way that sometimes in politics 1+1 = -1.
CAN DEBBIE HEAR JIMI?
You don't even have to go back that far. Look at this year's race for Congressional District 20.
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz jumped into a district with more than three decades of Black congressional representation.
Four Black candidates met privately to discuss consolidating the field down to one or two candidates because they knew exactly what a split field could do — help Wasserman Schultz win! Yet, all four stayed in.
Wesley Snipes had a line in “White Men Can't Jump” about the difference between listening to Jimi Hendrix and actually hearing him.
Sheila, Dale, Luke and Elijah may all be listening to Jimi on the campaign trail, but Debbie is the only one who can hear him. And right now, he's playing her song.
NOW DO IT ON PURPOSE.
The fact this just went down makes the latest Democratic Party chatter even stranger.
There's been talk among various County DEC members that local county parties could lose their candidate assessment money if they choose one Democrat over another in a nonpartisan race this November. Maybe it's Nikki's version of “no child left behind?”
So I asked Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried.
Her response: “I make those assessments and look to see if there is a violation of our bylaws.”
That's not exactly a denial. Maybe no money ever gets withheld, but it almost doesn't matter.
If you're sitting on a local DEC, you just heard enough. Why take the chance?
Put everybody on the voter guide. Stay neutral. Split your own vote and everybody gets through another meeting.
Everybody gets a seat. Nobody gets thrown overboard??
Choosing one Democrat over another means somebody has to make a choice and somebody else is going to be angry.
Maybe that's really the point. The DSA crowd is organized, active and loud. They usually are. They show up and make noise. They run candidates and make life harder for everyone, especially Democrats, clubs and caucuses. We used to call that “all smoke and no fire.”
Choosing an establishment Democrat over a 'progressive' one means somebody has to take the heat. So they don't choose.
“We'll worry about that then.”
Maybe that keeps the DSA crowd from screaming at the chairman. That works until “then” becomes “now.”
Back “then,” Florida Democrats led the GOP in voter registration by more than 97,000.
“Now” Republicans are ahead by more than 1.5 million.
Florida Democrats are losing seats, yet their strategy seems to be that 'everybody gets a seat!'
You can keep everybody on a sinking life raft and still drown.
Nobody wanted to throw the DSA kids overboard. So Debbie gets to throw Black voters overboard instead.
That's one way to save room on a sinking ship. But it's not a very good way to win elections.