Miami-Dade a winner with these four in Congress
Here are the Editorial Board’s recommendations for Congress:
DISTRICT 23
There is absolutely no contest here.
Veteran U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz not only has been a powerhouse procurer for the 23rd Congressional District — and the entire state — she now is a good bet to become the next chair of the all-important Appropriations Committee, as long as Democrats retain the majority in the U.S. House.
Nothing should derail that, and it’s highly unlikely that her Republican challenger, Carla Spalding, a nurse who has been on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, will. Spalding’s candidacy — her third for elective office — seems to be more of a vanity run.
She is a pleasant and engaging candidate who clearly is aware of the challenges this district, state and nation face. She is a fierce advocate for addressing mental illness and erasing the stigma it brings. She also is ill equipped to replace the incumbent.
“Division is what is destroying our nation right now,” Spalding told the Herald Editorial Board. “I think we need an individual who will work together as a team, collectively, and bring more to the community.”
Actually, Wasserman Schultz has been that individual. She is a tenacious lawmaker, whose political heft has only been enhanced by being in the majority party. She is running for her eighth term in Congress.
Her concerns run the gamut: access to healthcare, climate change, gun violence, racial justice, income inequality, most of them issues for which South Florida is pretty much Ground Zero.
This year, of course, the coronavirus pandemic “blocked out the sun,” she told the Editorial Board. As a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, she played a large role in securing, among other things, personal protective equipment, rental assistance and financial help for small businesses. But challenges remain. “We need national testing, contact tracing and isolation programs,” she said. “And we need to make sure there is transparency.”
She is also proud of taking the lead to secure $235 million for Everglades restoration, an ongoing project critical to maintaining South Florida’s source of drinking water and expanding wildlife habitat. President Trump had budgeted just over $60 million. Wasserman Schultz, along with Republican Rep. Mario DiazBalart and a united delegation made the case for much more — and the Senate didn’t block it.
Also on her to-do list? Assembling a task force to address this country’s racial divide by examining how funding for federal programs in criminal justice, education, healthcare — you name it — is distributed. “There are deep-seated inequities in the way we spend federal resources,” she told the Board.
Beyond our borders, Wasserman Schultz is most concerned about Israel’s security. She says that the president “made Israel a political wedge and used Israel as a political football.” He broke the “ironclad rule” that our strongest ally in the Middle East is not a political issue.
Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the agreement to provide the United Arab Emirates with F-35s are threats to Israel’s already-fragile safety. The president’s anti-Semitic rhetoric doesn’t help, she said.
During her seven terms in the U.S. House, Wasserman Schultz has taken good care of her district and the state of Florida. As important, she has gained real power and is poised to acquire even more, which can only be to Floridians’ benefit.
There’s no contest. The Herald Editorial Board recommends
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ for the 23rd Congressional District.
DISTRICT 24
Constituent service is one of Rep. Frederica Wilson’s strongest suits. But she has several others.
When focused on the 24th Congressional District, which she has represented since 2013, Wilson has made sure that the low-income, working class and uninsured in her district are getting healthcare, especially vital in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit her district hard.
“I’ve already built a community health center,” Wilson told the Editorial Board. “I’m working to add a pediatric wing and dental wing.” Actually, she’s helped bring two health centers to her district. “One in Little Haiti and one in Liberty City,” she said.
Wilson used CARES Act money to install a coronavirus testing site at the Jessie Trice health center, easy to access for people who don’t have cars, she said.
Her constituents call her — she readily shares her phone number — if they’re looking for work (her website has job listings); if they can’t get information about a loved one in a COVID-quarantined nursing home; if their mom is a veteran having trouble getting benefits.
“This is the kind of work we do in the middle of the night for our constituents, to make life easier for them,” Wilson said.
And it’s the kind of work that has earned Wilson another term in office. She has a Republican challenger, Lavern Spicer, who runs a well known — and, this year, a heavily relied upon — food bank in Liberty City.
Spicer is seeking the veteran lawmaker’s seat because, “This is one of the poorest districts. It’s time for a change.”
She is most immediately concerned with helping small businesses weather the lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic. “When you strengthen your small businesses, they can hire people from the community. Once you start hiring from the community, you start helping people create generational wealth, you start helping people put food on the table for their kids.”
Spicer is a compassionate, engaged fixture in the community. She’s a licensed cosmetologist who runs Curley’s House of
Style. She says it’s a “one-stop shop” for people who need food, clothes or help finding someplace to live.
“I work with homeless organizations,” Spicer said, often doing women’s hair for free, especially if they have a job interview. “I want to help them get back in the mainstream,” she said.
Spicer is doing her own version of constituent service. But Wilson’s good works have a far broader reach, able to make an enduring impact nationwide.
Wilson is justifiably proud of her creation, the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Act. She got it passed in the House. Fellow Miamian Marco Rubio pushed it through the Senate. The Commission will sit in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
“It’s landmark legislation,” Wilson told the Board. “The Speaker (Nancy Pelosi) called it that,” she said. “There’s never been anything set up just to address Black men and boys. They’re hated and they’re feared.”
The idea is for the commission — to be made up of experts in a variety of fields, plus seven members of the Congressional Black Caucus — to develop policy solutions to help Black men and boys “advance through all kinds of speed bumps that society has put in place for them not to make it,” Wilson said.
Other challenges remain: lobbying Republican-run Tallahassee to get real and expand Medicaid; fighting the threat of oil drilling off Florida’s shores; continuing to strengthen ports in the state, which is why Wilson created the Florida Ports Caucus a few years back; and addressing sea-level rise, a clear threat to the entire state. “We have to save Florida,” Wilson said. “Otherwise, we lose our entire economy.”
Wilson has her priorities straight. The Editorial Board recommends FREDERICA
WILSON for the 24th Congressional District.
DISTRICT 26
In this battleground district in a battleground state, Democrats are fighting to keep the seat that they snatched from Republican Carlos Curbelo two years ago.
The race pits one-term incumbent Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat and assistant college administrator, against long-time local politician MiamiDade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, a term-limited Republican banking on his name recognition and good public service record to get him to Washington.
As with most races nowadays, where extreme partisanship rules, there is little gray between these two candidates. Gimenez and Mucarsel-Powell are polar opposites. He is a Trump-approved candidate; she is a Trump attacker.
She is too liberal, a “socialist,” ads for Gimenez suggest. He is a corrupt politician, ads from Mucarsel-Powell’s party say. Enough.
We are recommending Mucarsel-Powell for her strong, commonsense stances on issues that Miami cares about.
Mucarsel-Powell has plunged herself into good work. When immigrant children were being detained by the Trump administration in a Homestead facility, she was there with other local congressional members, demanding to be allowed in. While Gimenez, who also went to the facility at the time, said he saw nothing alarming there, Mucarsel-Powell was appalled by the conditions. She spoke out against family separations at the border; she wants to expand, not contract, health care accessibility; she pushed hard to score more than $19 million in federal grants for repairs still lingering after Hurricane Irma blew through in 2017. Funds will go to the Florida Keys Electric Cooperative, Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority and Marathon Airport, all in her district, which also includes parts of southeast Miami-Dade, Homestead, Key Largo, Marathon and Key West.
“I am in Washington to serve my constituents,” she told the Editorial Board.
The race is hyper-contentious for good reason. With 435 seats in the House up for election, and Democrats currently holding 232 seats to Republicans' 198, races in battleground districts such as this one are particularly consequential.
This is another reason why the Board supports Mucarsel-Powell’s return. If Democrats remain the House majority, Florida could gain even more muscle on the Appropriations Committee, on which five Florida lawmakers already sit. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has a good shot at becoming Appropriations chair.
When Gimenez announced his candidacy in January, the coronavirus pandemic did not widely exist yet. But he found himself juggling his candidacy, while having to shut down the entire county and oversee the safety of 2.7 million residents. He did a solid job overall, implementing stronger measures to protect residents that put him ahead of a sluggish Gov. Ron DeSantis. Still, he had to walk a political tightrope.
Consequently, Gimenez's response to the pandemic — more than his eight years as mayor — is being used by his opponent to suggest he isn’t fit to be in Congress.
“His handling of the pandemic has been a disaster,” MucarselPowell told the Editorial Board, an unfortunate overstatement.
Gimenez has largely followed mandates from the governor, but also has been more rigorous in heeding the guidance of medical experts he convened to advise him.
“We did a lot of things right,” Gimenez said. That’s true. Still, some of his mandates upon reopening lacked the heft of enforcement needed to stem the virus’ spread.
As mayor, Gimenez said he has kept a balanced budget and taxes down, tackled the multimilliondollar revitalization of the public housing complex Liberty Square in Liberty City and spearheaded the SMART plan to help prioritize the county’s transportation needs. Environmentally, he has held the line protecting the Everglades from developers, though his thwarted plans to extend State Road 836 came dangerously close.
On healthcare, Gimenez said he would not get rid of the Affordable Care Act. “We need to improve it; I would work to fix it.” This, apparently, is the new Republican talking point to soften the image of a party that’s been hell-bent on wiping Obamacare from the face of the Earth.
Mucarsel-Powell has been consistent, pushing to expand the ACA, adequately funding police and offering economic assistance to small businesses trying to survive a pandemic.
None of this adds up to Mucarsel-Powell being the “extreme, completely partisan and a member of a progressive caucus" that Gimenez said she is. It’s another overblown Republican talking point.
Mucarsel-Powell, indeed, is in the liberal wing of the party and has had a visible first term, joining forces with the large number of women elected to Congress two years ago.
In her first term, MucarselPowell has been a responsive and tireless champion for the people of her district. They should send her back to Congress to continue her good work.
The Editorial Board recommends DEBBIE MUCARSEL
POWELL for the 26th Congressional District.
DISTRICT 27
For the second time in two years, Democrat Donna Shalala and Republican Maria Elvira Salazar are duking it out for the 27th Congressional District, which includes coastal southeast Miami-Dade, Miami Beach and parts of Miami and Kendall.
Shalala won that first round, and district voters should give her a second victory. Shalala has a wealth of experience — as a cabinet secretary, the president of two universities and, now, as a member of Congress — that should not be lost. Her knowledge of a range of pressing issues, especially healthcare and, better still, her ability to work toward practical solutions are invaluable.
“I pay attention to issues that concern our community — small business aid, unemployment,” Shalala told the Editorial Board.
That’s why, working with Republican colleague Mario DiazBalart, she was able to pass a bill in the House to give Venezuelans and Haitians Temporary Protected Status. Unfortunately, it never got a hearing in the Senate.
“The administration just doesn’t want more immigrants in this country. It comes down to that,” Shalala said. “Unless the president says, ‘Yes, I’ll sign the bill,’ they will not move.” Sad.
It’s also why she has been integral to child-exploitation legislation, working closely with the Miami-Dade state attorney.
Salazar, a well-known Spanishlanguage television personality, told the Editorial Board that she took to heart our comment two years ago that she was not ready for such a big job. Up against a powerhouse such as Shalala, she still isn’t. But we give Salazar credit for boning up on issues.
Two years ago, she told the Board that she wanted “capitalism to invade the health care industry.” Now? “If you like your Obamacare, you can keep your Obamacare,” she said, concluding that the Affordable Care Act should be part of an array of market-based healthcare options.
Salazar said she would add her own congressional salary to the funds lawmakers receive to run their district offices and establish an employment center in her office. It’s an interesting idea that was marred only by a tone-deaf Salazar telling the Board that she wanted “my African Americans” to be the first in her district to benefit from this service.
Shalala is a healthcare pro, having been President Clinton’s secretary of Health and Human Services. She has sponsored or cosponsored legislation to build on the ACA, including the Protecting People from Surprise Medical Bills Act, Lower Drug Costs Now Act, Disaster Relief Medicaid Act and Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act.
“COVID has reminded us about disparities in healthcare,” Shalala said. “I’m making sure we have coverage for everyone, high quality healthcare. It doesn’t have to be always insurance, as long as it is an integrated healthcare system.”
“We’ve got to find a way to stop these gaps in our healthcare system. I certainly intend to lead this effort.”
For all of her pluses, Shalala has had a couple of surprising missteps. She failed to publicly report two stock sales, a violation of federal disclosure law, for the second time in five months. Earlier this year, she acknowledged that she had failed to report 556 stock sales. Then in September, Shalala said she failed to disclose two stock sales of Tegna, a broadcast, digital media and marketing services company based in Virginia.
She said she was unaware that Tegna stock was sold on her behalf and only discovered the transaction when her lawyer was compiling income information for her annual financial disclosure, which was due in August. Both incidents have given her opponent an opening to charge that she is “corrupt.” We don’t believe that; neither should voters. Shalala told the Board she has put accounting mechanisms in place to prevent future sales from going unnoticed.
Shalala's experience running large government agencies and large institutions will be invaluable as Congress tries to help America recover from the coronavirus pandemic. She played a major role in shaping initial COVID-relief legislation and is already a member of the powerful House Committee on Rules and the Committee on Education and Labor — all crucial as the recovery gets underway.
Shalala's savvy and political know-how should continue to serve the district and help, as they say, bring home the bacon.
The Editorial Board recommends DONNA SHALALA for Florida’s 27th Congressional District.