Yet ROB FIELDS ululates as only a wannabee apparatchik can, like a hog caught under a gate.

Why do the heathen rage?

Because Faye Armitage is “the real deal” and HEATHER BEAVEN is a fake, just like CLYDE MALLOY before her. Like CLYDE MALLOY, BEAVEN seems like a “Stealth” candidate, with no detectable pre-existing positions that would make one believe she is a Democrat.

Is HEATHER BEAVEN a shameless opportunist?

With some of the same staff (and funders), FIELDS is mistaken to dubBEAVEN “the frontrunner” when no one has ever voted for BEAVEN, and 2008 Democratic nominee Faye Armitage earned nearly 150,000 votes last year against reprobate Representative JOHN LUIGI MICA for the Seventh Congressional District race.

Beaven has no staff in common with Malloy. There’s also not more than a thousand bucks worth of donor overlap.

Beaven and Malloy are both lifelong Democrats.

What Mr. Slavin fails to mention is that elections are not tests of character or fairy-tale struggles against evil, they are numbers games, technical exercises in the mobilization and utilization of resources.

It’s rather bizarre that Slavin repeatedly refers to Malloy and Beaven as “stealth” candidates, because it is Ms. Armitage who is running a stealth campaign. Filing in April, she has missed two FEC reporting deadlines. She illegally refuses to report her fund-raising totals and sources. What is Armitage afraid for us to know?

Ms. Armitage has failed to put together the team necessary to beat Mica. This General Election will be more difficult than last cycle, because turnout will be lower. Armitage is serving as a spoiler. She will not campaign, will not raise money, but she refuses to drop out, making it more difficult for Beaven to attract support from people waiting to see what the previous nominee will do. Since the Primary is only two months before the General, this could potentially swing an otherwise contestable election in Mica’s favor.

Ms. Armitage is the stealth candidate, pretending to be a Democrat while helping keep John Mica in office.

By the way, my name is “Field,” not “Fields.” It’s written right in the comment field and everything. I already knew you can’t write, but I thought even a disbarred attorney could read.

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.