Mitch PerryIt’s been written about ad nauseum about the lack of a strong Democratic bench in Florida. That certainly was the case in 2014, when the party had to resort to a flawed former Republican to become its gubernatorial nominee against an equally flawed current Republican. That’s why Bob Buckhorn began raising campaign funds for a 2018 bid for governor in December, three months before his (inevitable) re-election victory for four (or three and a half?) more years as Tampa’s mayor.
What about this, though: the national Democrats lack of a bench?
This question is something that’s been evident for a while, but emerged in stark relief this week, with Hillary Clinton’s brand taking a major hit with the personal email account story dominating the news.
Now there are more stories being written about potential other Democrats who might challenge her for the nomination.
But where are they? As of now, only former Virginia Senator Jim Webb has formed an exploratory committee to run for president, though as far as I can see, he’s not doing very much right now with it.
Martin O’Malley? All you need to know about how some Democrats feel about Clinton today is that all of a sudden it’s big news that the former Maryland governor announced he wouldn’t run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Barbara Mikulski in 2016. He could be a player.
The candidate that the progressive wing of the party yearns for, Elizabeth Warren, absolutely does not want to run. That hasn’t stopped a serious MoveOn.org inspired movement to draft her for the nomination. But she trails Clinton by 38 percentage points nationally, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday. Vice President Joe Biden trails Clinton by 44 points.
However those numbers would change if either of those candidates actually announced they were running — maybe not substantially, but it would be a very different narrative than is currently playing out.
A few month from now this story may totally fade from the spotlight. But that doesn’t mean it’s good for the Democratic Party to have an uncontested primary, not when it means it will garner far less coverage than the GOP, which has been the case up until now. Now Hillary is getting attention equal to Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, but not in a positive way.
In other news …
If you truly look at it objectively, what does it say that Saudi Arabia doesn’t make the cut of the countries on the U.S. Department of State’s sponsors of terrorism, but Cuba does? And Marco Rubio wants to keep it that way.
There is looming doctor shortage arriving in Florida and the rest of the nation. Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor has just introduced legislation to stem that tide.
In St. Petersburg yesterday morning, we asked Gov. Rick Scott to address his deal with the feds regarding the LIP program. Did he believe if the state expanded Medicaid, the feds would release that money? He answered part of that question.
And at about 1:25 p.m. Thursday we realized that the next Hillsborough County Policy Leadership Group meeting was starting in five minutes, not an hour and five minutes. We got there just in the nick of time to watch … well, not much, actually.
