| I love it when they eat their own, EFL: |
No one who follows South Florida's tangled politics expected Al Gore to endorse Alex Penelas, the mayor of Miami-Dade County and one of four Florida Democrats running for the Senate. But when Mr. Gore attacked the mayor last weekend as "the single most treacherous and dishonest person I dealt with" in the 2000 presidential campaign, even the most blasé politicos gasped. | And AlGore knows dishonest |
Mr. Gore was responding to an inquiry by The Miami Herald about Mr. Penelas's role in the election, in which Mr. Gore, then the vice president, lost to George W. Bush in Florida by just 537 votes. | Still touchy about Florida, Al? |
His comments, made through a spokesman, drew national attention to a Senate race that has been little followed outside the state. Since an article about Mr. Gore's statement appeared in The Herald on Sunday, Democratic leaders here, including Senator Bob Graham and Representative Kendrick B. Meek, have leapt to Mr. Penelas's defense, while his rivals have scrambled to capitalize on Mr. Gore's words. Mr. Gore's animus toward Mr. Penelas is rooted in the showdown around Elián González, the 5-year-old Cuban boy who was found clinging to an inner tube off Florida's coast on Thanksgiving Day 1999. Over the furious objections of Miami's large Cuban community, the Clinton administration seized Elián from his relatives here and returned him to Cuba to live with his father, setting off some of the fiercest protests this city has seen. Many Cuban-Americans took out their anger on Mr. Gore, vowing not to support him in the presidential race and creating a sticky situation for Mr. Penelas, a Cuban-American reluctant to alienate the exile community. Mr. Penelas sounded upbeat in a telephone interview Monday, saying that Mr. Gore's comments had given him a boost. He said he had spent much of the day on the phone with donors who were newly eager to contribute to his campaign. "A lot of people think Al Gore has gone over the top," he said. "He thinks he is doing a favor to Peter Deutsch, but, quite frankly, the last 48 hours have turned out to be a rally for Alex Penelas. This has been great; I think it's been very positive." | It's the AlGore Law, if he's for something, it's sure to die. Seems like the reverse is true also. |
| I'm going to laugh my ass off if the Dems move all their heavy lawyerly artillery into Florida and then they lose the election in New Mexico or Idaho or Wisconsin. And they talk about generals fighting the last war...? |
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