Another Death Knell For The Florida Democratic Party, Which Is Officially Worse Than The Ohio Dems

Billy Corben Switches Registration To Unaffiliated

In Florida, the party's over by Nancy Ohanian

Celebrated documentarian and a member of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party Executive Committee, Billy Corben isn’t just quitting the Executive Committee, he’s quitting the Democratic Party. Like anyone with two brain cells, he's sick of the corruption and incompetence of the state's Democratic Party. He has also called on Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried— preparing for her future disastrous run for the Senate seat Marco Rubio is abandoning— to quit her party position as well. It’s worth carefully reading Corben’s spectacular open letter of resignation:

November 12, 2024

An Open Letter to FDP Chair Nikki Fried and Miami-Dade Democratic Executive Committee Chair Shevrin Jones

Good Morning, Chairs:

This letter is to serve as notice of: (1) my resignation from the Miami-Dade DEC; (2) my withdrawal from the Democratic Party; and (3) my intent to register NPA (No Party Affiliation).

It is my sincere hope, if you have a modicum of pride or shame after last week’s electoral bloodbath, you will resign from your positions as well.

To be fair, you inherited a dumpster— but all you’ve done is light a match. This mess is entirely on you now. You’ve achieved the unthinkable: dragging the state and local party from rock bottom to the abyss. Sucking the last breath (and penny) from a moribund brand, putting the final nail in its coffin, burying it and writing its obituary. You’ve never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Your failure was historic.

• The first GOP presidential candidate to win Miami-Dade since 1988;

• An astonishing 1,207,216 voter turnout deficit statewide;

• Florida was home to the only Democratic U.S. Senate candidate who did not outperform top of the ticket; and

• Republicans not only maintained their legislative supermajority, they added another seat!

The Florida and Miami-Dade Democrats have been hijacked and held hostage by a consultant cartel and complicit leadership who exploit the hard work of dedicated members and volunteers to destroy the party for your own power and profit.

These are no longer legitimate political organizations. They are, at best, social clubs, and at worst, cesspools of incompetent grifters and opportunists. You have become the Washington Generals of politics. Controlled opposition paid to lose. You’re all about vanity and money, not doing the necessary work to win elections.

Your job is to recruit candidates, raise money and win elections. Instead, you recruit clients for an unelected monopoly of consultants to line their pockets, who don’t care about winning because you all still get paid. This lack of competition compels even strong candidates to pay up for subpar campaign services and forces local political talent out of town because they can’t compete with the corruption. We have been trying to save our state and local party; you’ve been trying to preserve your business model.

This is just another Miami Hustle. The kind of cabal I’d make a documentary about, not be a part of.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of intolerable malfeasance and malpractice (in no particular order):

• Chair Fried has turned the FDP into an exploratory committee for another future (failed) statewide run— employing over twice as many communications staff than outreach. It’s all PR and no VR (voter registration).

• Chair Fried removed the previous Miami-Dade DEC Chair for “failure to comply with the rules that govern all local parties,” you claimed, as “part of an overall strategy to get Miami-Dade back on track,” and installed Jones, your hand-picked successor, with absolutely no vision, plan or financing for the upcoming election cycle.

• Your misguided and wasteful strategy of misallocating limited resources to “contest every legislative seat” with Crash Test Democrats— instead of focusing efforts on select flippable statehouse seats to rack up some wins, rebuild confidence and regain relevance.

• Your Big Lie: “Florida Is In Play,” a desperate effort to gaslight our voters and donors while making little to no investment in outreach, registration or messaging, revealing a complete lack of political strategic thinking that has devastated what’s left of your credibility (which I called out in real time).

• A sci-fi poll by consultant Christian Ulvert and MDW Communications (who have been paid untold sums by the party), touted by you in August, that preposterously claimed Vice President Harris led Trump by 14 points in Miami-Dade; their methodology was either inept, or the poll was designed to induce unwitting donors to throw away even more money.

• Chair Jones and new Miami-Dade DEC officers routinely violate basic bylaws— among them, repeatedly neglecting to properly schedule and announce meetings— which I contemporaneously brought to Chair Fried’s attention, and you ignored.

• Intentionally scheduling mandatory in-person DEC meetings and elections on Jewish high holidays.

• Booking Get Out the Vote events on Halloween night and on Saturday after polls close.

• The disastrous self-serving tenure of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava— the de facto county party leader— and her political puppeteer Christian Ulvert, who monopolize local fundraising, yet fail to substantively contribute to party infrastructure, and do deals with Republicans to salvage her political career by selling out fellow Democrats.

• Levine Cava continues to employ Ulvert as her closest advisor on all campaign and policy matters despite his being a registered foreign agent for Qatar— the notoriously anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and homophobic regime that reportedly finances Hamas terrorists and communist Cuba— and on the payroll of local developers who are lobbying the mayor.

• Your complicity in Democrat county commissioner Oliver Gilbert’s endorsement of a Republican in the HD113 race by making him co-chair of your Loser Prom (aka Blue Gala), co-host of its official after party, and not properly supporting the Dem candidate.

• Petty Chair Jones banned members and deleted factual civil discourse from the DEC WhatsApp because they do not represent his personal views.

My warnings about these issues, and the inevitability of this election outcome if we failed to address them, were loud and clear at the Miami-Dade DEC Chair Forum last April. It fell on deaf ears.

It’s obvious to me now why the Democrats have been a virtual nonentity in Florida for a quarter century and lost so much ground in Miami-Dade.

When I joined the DEC, I was prepared for the disarray but I’ve been profoundly disappointed in the bad faith and hypocrisy of your leadership. The dysfunction you’ve perpetuated guarantees this vicious cycle of losing will continue for the foreseeable future.

Good Luck and Good Riddance,

Billy Corben

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Corben isn't the only Democratic Party official calling attention to the problems inherent in the party's dependence on the consultant class. Former DNC Executive Committee member (2001- 2017) James Zogby wrote an opinion piece for Common Dreams on Tuesday, My Fury Is Aimed at the Democratic Consultancy Class Which Runs the Party. He wrote that his overriding emotion to Trump’s victory last week was anger, “anger at the Democrat’s political campaigns and consultants who brought us this disaster. And anger at the collapse of the political parties as vibrant organizations that once brought people together, empowered them, and were responsive to their needs. There was a time when it meant something to be a member of the Democratic or Republican parties. There was a structure to the party from the local to the national level. People belonged, went to meetings. and were proud of their association. Today, for most Americans, being a Democrat or a Republican means being on lists that get emails, text messages, direct mail, phone calls, or targeted social media messages. Most of these are asking for money. There is no organization, no sense of belonging, and no real opportunity to make your voice heard.”

The parties, which once represented voters and empowered them, are now fundraising vehicles that amass billions of dollars each election cycle. These dollars go to consultant groups who use the money to raise more money to pay for advertising, conduct polling to shape messaging either to define and promote their candidates or to define and discourage support for their opponents.

Because they control huge amounts of campaign dollars, it is these consultants who set the agendas for the campaigns. They have effectively replaced the parties as the forces driving American politics. This class of consultants are today’s power brokers and they operate without accountability.

One of the byproducts of this situation is that there is increasingly less voter identification with the parties. The parties themselves have become less membership entities and more fundraising vehicles. This is why it was so easy for Donald Trump to take over the Republican Party and why the Democratic Party has become captive to its big donors and consultants who spend their money. This problem has become aggravated by the emergence of what are known as super-PACs— independent committees that can receive and spend unregulated contributions from billionaires who, hiring the same groups of consultants, now hold even greater sway over the political process than the parties themselves.

One problem with the political consultant class isn’t just the power they wield, it’s the judgements they make, and to whom they are ultimately answerable. It’s not to the political parties, or the voters. It’s to the donors who are paying their tab.

Another problem is how overly cautious, unimaginative, and out of touch these consultants are with voters and their needs. A former Obama official once decried the “foreign policy blob” which he described as a self-perpetuating cast of characters who had served in past administrations. They now populate the think tanks and the commentariat. They are out of touch with a changing world and yet offer the same ideas— a kind of groupthink of conventional wisdom— which failed before and are destined to fail again. The same is true of the political consultancy blob. They are out of touch with a changing electorate and have nothing more to offer other than the same old ideas that may have succeeded once but, given the changes that have occurred in the electorate, are destined to fail.

For example, those who ran this year’s Democratic campaigns failed to appreciate the economic insecurity of white working class voters, instead focusing their attention on what they called the “Obama coalition” of young and non-white voters, and college educated women. They rejected as too leftist increasing taxes on the richest 1%, providing universal health care, and raising the minimum wage. Instead of attending to the needs of working-class voters in key battleground states, they had Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaign with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney believing that she would help win over moderate Republicans, and suburban women— which she could not. And of particular note, they failed to understand the impact of the genocide in Gaza on not only Arab American voters, but also on key components of their Obama coalition, in particular young, progressive, and non-white voters.

Sensing the opening created by the Democrats’ miscues, Trump embraced the white working class promising new jobs, while preying on their feelings of abandonment by railing against immigrants whom he accused of taking jobs and bringing crime to our cities.

Instead of breaking with this failed approach, Harris embraced it. She backtracked on her earlier left-leaning policies favoring universal health care and support for a green economy. Instead of engaging white working-class voters, her campaign largely ignored them, opting instead to campaign with Liz Cheney. Instead of meeting with Arab Americans, she left that field wide open for Trump to exploit. And instead of using the short time available to her to introduce herself to key constituencies by personally meeting with leaders and winning new allies, she made do with mass rallies of supporters.

This is where the consultants failed. Democrats lost the White House and both houses of Congress. Harris won far fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. And lost votes with almost every demographic group, including Hispanics, Asians, white women, and, of course, Arabs.

In the aftermath, the Democratic pundits will find fault with the voters and their choices, not with the poor decisions they themselves made. They will denounce White voters as racist or misogynistic. And they will ask, how could Hispanics vote for Trump after what he and his supporters said about them? And how could Arabs and Muslims forget what Trump did to them during his first term?

In hearing this, I am reminded of one of the sayings attributed to St. Augustine— that in the contest between the church and the world, it’s the church that must go to the world, not the world to the church. In other words, don’t blame the voters. If you want their votes, you must earn them.

That’s why I’m mad at the campaign, the party, and the consultants. They made their money, they made poor choices. And now we will pay the price.