Tonight, in Daytona Beach, the three Democratic candidates for Congress in Florida’s Seventh District spoke to a handful of Progressive Democrats. Well, two of them did.
Stephen Bacon entered the venue seemingly confused by the existence of other candidates for the nomination and it went downhill from there. Before the candidates were scheduled to speak, he was trying to speak over the PDA organizer who was running the meeting. He was asked to yield the floor and advised that he would have a chance to address the meeting along with the other candidates. Instead of ceding the point, he chose to argue. When the organizer’s father confronted him for his rudeness, he chose to leave. “Bacon fried himself tonight,” said Lisa Walker, Beaven’s campaign manager.
First to speak was Heather Beaven, the Palm Coast education activist. She spoke for five minutes, covering her biography and making the case that her bio gave her a better grasp of the issues than the out-of-touch Washington crowd. She fielded questions about single-payer health care (she’s for it) and tax policy (she has no litmus test for tax reform, but she’s pro-unfunded-mandate reform and concerned that PAYGO could be abused by conservatives) She was coherent and concise.
Next to speak was Faye Armitage, the 2008 nominee for the Seventh District seat. Her message was more fragmented, blending a laundry list of policies with a half-formed argument that her background as an economist presented an alternative to the out-of-touch Washington crowd. (See a pattern?) Still, this was a clear improvement over her performances in the 2008 cycle, and her more Progressive issue positions were a better fit for the room than the somewhat more centrist Mrs. Beaven.
The room was well to the left of the majority of Primary voters, however, and the evening did nothing to reverse my impression that Beaven is the more likely choice to beat John Mica in 2010.
#1 by Orion Maier on August 7, 2009 - 4:57 pm
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You forgot to add the thing I wrote at the bottom of that page.
#2 by Stephen J. Bacon on August 8, 2009 - 9:07 am
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Report of unattended Progressive Democrats meeting of District 7 canadates was inaccurate and self serving. Conduct of the meeting at times was menacing and was no democratic panacea.
#3 by Stephen J. Bacon on August 8, 2009 - 9:10 am
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Report of unattended P D meeting of Dist. 7 canadates was inaccurate and self serving. Conduct of the meeting at times was menacing and was no democratic panacea.
#4 by Rob Field on August 8, 2009 - 12:21 pm
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“Report of unattended P D meeting of Dist. 7 canadates was inaccurate and self serving. Conduct of the meeting at times was menacing and was no democratic panacea.”
The post was neither inaccurate nor was it self-serving. I do not mention myself in the post. The conduct of the meeting was not menacing. We simply had rules and an order of speakers. Those things exist in the House of Representatives as well, to which the gentleman aspires. The gentleman chose to ignore those rules and speak out of order. When asked to cease, he argued, and when someone confronted him, he chose to leave rather than give simple courtesy. There were witnesses to all of these events. The organizers respected these rules and imposed them on ourselves. It was perfectly reasonable to expect compliance.
The gentleman oddly uses the term “panacea,” a fix-all, which has the connotation of being a false hope. No one has made any such claims for Progressive Democrats of America. One suspects that the word has been plucked from a thesaurus without reference to connotation, which suggests that the gentleman is not familiar with the word. That casts doubt on his verbal acuity.
So there is a man who was unaware of his filed Primary opponents, will not respect the rules of host groups, and possesses limited verbal skills, who wishes to challenge an incumbent for a Congressional seat. The same man repeatedly talks up how easy four-time victor Mica is to beat and brags about his qualifications as a CPA. And somehow I’M the one with the problem? Yeah, … no.