Wilson still the best choice for Democrats

Frederica Wilson, the Democratic incumbent in Florida’s 24th Congressional District, has five good terms to her credit. She has been hard-working and effective, and we enthusiastically recommend her renomination in the August 18 primary.

There are two other people on the ballot. One’s presence is premature. The other’s is simply preposterous.

Sakinah Lehtola is an attractive newcomer who seems well-motivated, but she is unready for so important an office.

However, she at least lives in Florida. Ricardo De La Fuente doesn’t.

He filed from California, entering three states’ congressional primaries this year: California, where he lost with only 2.5 percent of the vote; Texas, where he somehow won the Democratic nomination for what little it’s worth in a rock-solid Republican district; and Florida.

We would ask him whether he would choose Florida or Texas in the impossible event that he was elected in both, but he didn’t respond to our request for an interview or return our questionnaire.

This is his second stealth candidacy against Wilson. She thrashed him two years ago with 83% of the vote. His renewed presence on a Florida ballot is an insult to our voters.

Nuisance candidacies seem to be his family pathology. His father, Rocky de la Fuente, is a California investor who has staged multiple futile campaigns under various party banners for president and Senate. He ran insignificantly in the Florida Republican primary against Rick Scott two years ago.

Wilson, 77, is an ideal model of what a member of Congress should be: Someone who has spent her life in public service from the grassroots on up. She began as a public-school teacher before moving on to serve as an elementary school principal, a member of the Miami-Dade County School Board, and the Florida House and Senate, where she left because of term limits.

Public schools made this nation great and what is being done to them is an urgent concern of hers.

Betsy DeVos, she says in her questionnaire, “is the worst education secretary I have ever seen. Every proposal seems to be aimed at defunding public education and funneling billions of dollars to private K-12 schools and for-profit colleges.” She’s convinced, as are we, that destroying public schools is DeVos’s “primary mission.” Wilson is a strong voice in Congress for repairing DeVos’s vandalism.

Wilson’s top three issues are job creation, “economic and social justice for oppressed communities,” and health care.

She is highly critical of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature for reusing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, at a loss to the state of an estimated $64 billion.

Wilson has leveraged her membership on the House Transportation Committee to secure improvements for Florida’s ports, including Port-Miami, and is involved in pending legislation that would invest more than $500 billion in the nation’s infrastructure. That may have to await a new administration since President Trump’s commitment to the cause has vanished.

“He is who we thought he was,” Wilson says. “Everything he touches collapses.”

Lehtola, 25, is young enough to be Wilson’s grandchild and barely old enough to serve as a member of the House. But her only relevant experience consists of six months as a Washington intern dealing with migrant and refugee services. She also has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of South Florida, she says on her questionnaire.

Her life experience is impressive enough, as she has been working since she was 13 and became a McDonald’s manager when she was not quite 16. She is a waitress at Louie Bossi’s on Las Olas on Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale.

She is deeply committed to overcoming poverty and everything that contributes to or results from it. She also advocates Medicare for All. She argues that the district needs more “hands on leadership,” but doesn’t make an effective case that Wilson’s has been lacking.

We encourage you to read both candidates’ questionnaires and see our interview with Lehtola online. Scheduling complications kept Wilson from joining the interview.

While we admire Lehtola’s enthusiasm and awareness of the nation’s issues, there is an event that complicates her candidacy. On June 11, she was arrested by Hollywood police investigating a 3 a.m. noise complaint involving a parked car. Her attorney, Ariel Lett, said in a telephone interview that she will plead not guilty and file a complaint alleging excessive force. He said also that “the charges don’t even make sense. They charged her with battery on an officer but resisting without violence.”

That aside, Frederica Wilson is simply the much stronger candidate in this race.

Wilson