Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
The unsinkable Mindy Koch
Mindy Koch got her mojo back.
Three weeks after she was suspended as chair of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party, Koch turned the tables on her tormentors.
She fought back and won a tough, close election. Now that sets an example for Democrats in 2024.
Koch, 70, a retired teacher, union leader and longtime party activist, was suspended March 4 by state party Chair Nikki Fried, allegedly for not complying with party bylaws on contracts, spending and removing party members for absenteeism. Fifteen Democratic activists and party members sprang to Koch’s defense and urged Fried to lift the suspension, to no avail.
The accusations against Koch seemed nebulous or nitpicking, and they didn’t hold up. Koch vigorously defended her record and won her unpaid job back at a marathon online meeting of the party’s Central Committee Sunday, just as she predicted she would.
Koch’s removal required a two-thirds vote, or 82 members of the 122-member committee. The vote was 67-36.
‘A horrible mess’
Why does this matter?
It matters because Koch was elected, albeit by a single vote, to lead the local party in Palm Beach, which has become especially rough terrain for Democrats — a place where Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis easily won reelection in 2022.
In this presidential election year, and with the future of democracy at stake, Democrats have to be “rowing in the same direction,” said Daniel Henry, Duval County’s Democratic chairman, who voted for Koch.
One reason Henry said he did is that she was elected by party members.
The backstory is that Koch’s gruff demeanor gets the better of her sometimes and a small, disruptive group of progressive dissidents, who backed Koch’s opponent for chair, Maria Cole, continue to belittle Koch, bullying her with verbal abuse.
Some now use racial politics as a wedge to divide the party further.
On social media, dissident leader Leslie Wimes noted that two other suspended chairs, in Miami-Dade and Franklin counties, who both lost their bids for reinstatement, are Black.
“The racism in our party is shameful,” Wimes declared on the X platform, where she has more than 25,000 followers.
Like a certain former president, the dissidents won’t accept defeat. That’s why critics call them a “MAGA-left” faction.
Sunday’s vote fully exposed the limits of their influence. Even with the full weight of the Florida Democratic Party behind them, the dissidents lost again, and Koch won.
In Miami-Dade, Robert Dempster’s supposed mistakes included mishandling an endorsement and sending inaccurate party membership lists to the state. His suspension was denounced by the party’s acting chair in a Sun Sentinel opinion essay.
The time has come for Democrats to work together for common goals and for Fried to forcefully intervene again if needed — this time in defense of Koch.
For Democrats to win elections in a redder Florida, they must bury their petty divisions. It’s Fried’s job to make that happen.
“I made a promise that we would never have another election cycle like 2022,” she said in a statement after Sunday’s votes. “My hope has always been to get these local parties fully operational and back on track, and I trust that this process has helped them do that. We need our local parties to register voters, recruit candidates and raise money to ensure that we’re competitive in 2024 and beyond.”
The entire suspension episode, which included two other county chairs, has been “a horrible mess,” said Joe Geller, a former state legislator from Aventura who cast a proxy vote to reinstate Koch Sunday.
Geller was incensed that Fried made “20-something” late appointments to the Central Committee to ensure that her actions would be upheld, and claims that she held the vote open until enough people voted to remove Dempster as Miami-Dade chairman. The party said some people needed technical help casting their online votes.
Deep distress in Dade
Republicans themselves couldn’t have crafted a better script to undermine Democrats. Anger over Dempster’s firing has deepened in Miami-Dade, where Geller said three top party leaders have resigned in protest.
In Palm Beach, the infighting should finally be over, but it probably isn’t.
Simple arithmetic shows that Democrats have to overperform, and have broad appeal to independents, to be victorious.
On Tuesday, there were 327,129 active registered Democratic voters in Palm Beach, or 38% of the county’s total voter base, according to the Supervisor of Elections’ website.
The site also showed a total of 273,260 registered Republicans or 31%, with most of the other 31% holding no party affiliation.
Republicans have narrowed the registration gap considerably in the past year. But Koch, who celebrated her victory with a glass of champagne and late-night pancakes at an IHOP, will keep working to register voters and rebuild a mail-ballot database ravaged by a Republican Legislature.
“Our only mission is to elect Democrats,” Koch told the Sun Sentinel. “Now you know — I know how to get it done.”
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writer Martin Dyckman and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.