Let’s pick up in Miami-Dade where we left off a couple months ago, when we saw an obvious legislative “flip opportunity” for the hard-pressed Democrats to pick up. Remember, Florida’s severely gerrymandered House has 84 Republicans and just 36 Democrats— a Democratic “Super-Minority”that has engendered Stockholm Syndrome in Tallahassee. HD-113 is a nice blue district in southern Miami-Dade that includes Key Biscayne, Dodge Island, Shenandoah, part of Little Havana and the part of Coconut Grove. Depending how it gets calculated, it’s either a D+12 or a D+17 district, pretty solid blue in either case. 57.9% of the registered voters are Dems and just 40.7% are Republicans. And yet… the local state Rep. Vicki Lopez, is a Republican, first elected, narrowly, in 2022 when DeSantis won the state by nearly 20 points.
Lopez is a shady political operative/lobbyist from Lee County who moved to Miami to further her political career after a year in prison. Several of of the Miami-Dade power brokers, led by consultant Christian Ulvert, declared her nice blue seat out of bounds and prevented careerist type Democrats from challenging Lopez, attempting to hand her a reelection without a contest. In fact, one of the county’s top Democratic grifters, County Commissioner, Oliver Gilbert III, outright endorsed Lopez, on the day that Democratic progressive activist Jackie Kellogg jumped into the race after her recruitment by grassroots activists. Oliver Gilbert suffered no negative repercussions from his “cross-party” endorsement, and is even hosting a “Miami Dade Dems - Blue Gala - After Party” with none other than state Senator & Miami-Dade DEC Chair Shevrin Jones later this month.
As far as I’ve been able to gather, the local Democratic establishment, aside from being nothing at all but a gang of hopeless grifters, thinks that helping Lopez keep her seat is somehow going to help Miami-Dade Mayor Daniela Cava Levine— an Ulvert client— in her absurd and hopeless bid for governor. Complicit cabal members in this shameful morality play demonstrating how Florida went from blue to purple to blood red include— aside from Ulvert, Oliver Gilbert III and Cava Levine— Shevrin Jones, a state Senator and chair of the Miami-Dade DEC (Democratic Executive Committee), Nikki Fried, chairman of the state party, Fentrice Driskell, outgoing chair of the Florida House Democratic Party caucus, Christine Hunchovsky, incoming chair of the Florida House Democratic Party caucus and Phillip Jerez, Florida Democratic Party Executive Director. (Jones, Driskell and Fried, among other delusional Florida Dems, harbor their own 2026 gubernatorial ambitions.)
Polling shows Kellogg leading Vickie Lopez by 3 and Jones was so embarrassed by the barrage of questions about why the local party wasn’t supporting Jackie that he rushed out a press release endorsing her. Big deal if it comes with no substantive help for her campaign— which it doesn’t. Nikki Fried just runs away in terror if anyone asks her about it and says she has nothing to do with it. You can help Jackie with a donation to her grassroots campaign here
Billy Corben, aside from being active on Twitter, is a celebrated documentary film maker (Cocaine Cowboys and the just released From Russia with Lev) and a Miami-Dade DEC member who doesn’t buy into the establishment crap and is fighting for Jackie and against the corruption that has inundated local Democratic Party politics— and, yes, the Republicans are just as bad or even worse, but we’re not talking about them here.
Maybe the Miami-Dade Democratic establishment isn’t excited about her because she says things like “Our responsibility is to the next generation, which both parties are failing. My heart races when I hear Sen. Sanders; he is the soothsayer of our times, we can not allow greed to win or we will lose Democracy. As a mother of three, what else is there but to fight for them?” On the other hand, as we saw, even without them, polling shows her 3 points ahead of the Republican.
Florida Dems only need to pick up 5 state House seats to get out of the super-minority in the lower chamber. HD 113 is one of the 5 “most flippable” state house districts, 2 of which are essentially in the bag already, with 51 days remaining. Thus far, the Florida Democratic Party’s attitude toward this great HD 113 flip opportunity seat can safely be described as “scandalous”… if not treacherous. I wouldn’t put it past them to be taking money under the table from the GOP… yeah, that bad.
Please consider giving her a hand here on the ActBlue Florida page. Florida, more than most states desperately needs a Democratic bench— of non-grifters.
