Jesse Scheckner
A new political committee with a name that suggests it has Democratic leanings is sending a mailer to Miami-Dade County homes touting incumbent Rep. Vicki Lopez’s bona fides as a champion for women’s reproductive rights.
The message in and of itself isn’t untruthful. Lopez voted against Florida’s 6-week abortion ban in 2023.
But the mailer from a group called Florida Blue Dog Progressives targeting Democrats in House District 113 omits a key detail: Lopez is a Republican, though you wouldn’t know by reading the mailer’s text.
“Vicki Lopez trusts women and doctors on their healthcare!” the mailer reads. “When Republican extremists waged war on women’s healthcare and our right to make decisions about our bodies, Vicki Lopez went against the Republican establishment and stood with women.”
The mailer, first flagged Saturday by Miami campaign finance researcher and reform advocate Dani Rivera, is one of many being sent out to support Lopez’s re-election bid. It’s part of a robust, six-figure campaign to help her repel a challenge from first-time Democratic candidate Jackie Gross-Kellogg.
Rivera, a Republican, told Florida Politics that by Tuesday, she and her husband received 19 mailers either touting Lopez’s candidacy or bashing Gross-Kellogg. The Florida Blue Dog Progressives mailer was addressed to her husband, a Democrat.
Florida Blue Dog Progressives formed last month. Through Oct. 4, the most recent date from which campaign finance data is available on the Division of Elections website, it reported no financial activity.
So, where did the money come from to pay for the mailers? Lopez’s political committee, Common Sense Government.
On Sept. 5, Common Sense Government gave $100,000 to Florida First Forever, a political committee linked to consultant Brett Doster, to whose Front Line Strategies Lopez has paid nearly $62,000 this cycle — including $45,000 last month for advertising.
Florida First Forever, in turn, sent $100,000 on Oct. 2 to Florida Blue Dog Progressives, whose Chair, consultant Barney Bishop, is a self-professed “conservative Republican” who previously served as President and CEO of the powerful corporate lobbying group, Associated Industries of Florida.
Rivera explained the financial shell game in a short video on X Monday, which she added to a screenshot showing Lopez had blocked her on the platform.
Florida Politics contacted Lopez and Bishop for comment Tuesday but received no response by press time. Speaking by phone Thursday, Bishop told Florida Politics he’d chosen “Blue Dog Progressives” as a name for his political committee because he liked how the name evoked his prior political affiliation. He noted that he served as Executive Director of the Florida Democratic Party in the early 1990s and was a Democrat until three years ago.
“I thought it was a good name. I liked it, so I used it,” he said. “I can see how it could be twisted. But listen, that’s politics and it happens on both sides all the time, every day. There’s nothing unusual about it.”
“Blue dog” is a reference to the Blue Dog Coalition, also known as the Blue Dogs or Blue Dog Democrats, a caucus of moderate congressional Democrats who generally hold socially liberal but fiscally conservative views. In the nearly three decades since its founding, the group’s name has been adopted by others in the party at various levels of government in self-descriptive political shorthand. Republicans don’t commonly use the term to describe themselves.
“If Vicki Lopez wants to push back on the anti-abortion people and (Gov. Ron) DeSantis — if she really wants to be seen as a blue dog progressive — then she should switch parties and become a Democrat. She might still get elected in the district if she switched parties because it’s a D+ district and people like her. But if she did, she’d be in a superminority,” said Dr. Fergie Reid Jr., whose 90 for 90 initiative is backing Gross-Kellogg and many others in Florida and across the country.
“This blue dog thing is only happening when it’s convenient. It’s a lot of mind games. And you’re not spending the kind of money Lopez is spending if you’re not concerned and worried about losing your seat.”
Lopez has been an incredibly effective lawmaker over the past two Sessions, passing 40% of her bills in 2023 and 75% in 2024, including ambitious measures like the Live Local Act, “Condo 3.0” and one creating a pilot program that extended home-hardening grants to condo owners.
Her legislative success came even though she opposed so-called red meat measures pushed by GOP leadership, including the 6-week abortion ban and a proposal to lower the age to buy long guns. And it didn’t hamper her ability to secure close to $26 million in state appropriations for her district.
She’s also proven to be a powerhouse fundraiser, stacking more than $853,500 between November 2022, when she won by 825 votes to flip HD 113 red, and Oct. 4. By Oct. 5, she had about $556,000 remaining.
Gross-Kellogg, a regional coordinator for a Miami-Dade PTSA panel, raised $51,000 since filing in late May and had about half of it left by the second week of October.
Other mailers for Lopez’s campaign have also drawn the ire of progressives, including one featuring a picture of a trans athlete juxtaposed with an image of Gross-Kellogg. It read in Spanish, “Jackie Gross-Kellogg ensures that boys can compete in women’s sports. Don’t allow women to be erased.”
HD 113 spans a center-east portion of Miami-Dade, covering all of Key Biscayne and parts of Coral Gables and Miami.
The General Election is on Nov. 5.
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Editor’s note: This report was updated to include comments from Bishop.
