(C) Florida Phoenix This story was originally published by Florida Phoenix and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Candidates for FDP Chair talk about uniting different wings of the party [1] ['Mitch Perry', 'More From Author', '- February'] Date: 2023-02-17 The four remaining candidates in the race to lead the Florida Democratic Party convened in a debate hosted by the Florida Legislative Black Caucus on Thursday night in Tallahassee. Former Miami-Dade County state Sen. Annette Taddeo, Broward County Democratic Executive Committee Chair Rick Hoye, and Carolina Ampudia, chair of the legislative committee of the Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida, met in person at the Destiny Church, while former Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried appeared remotely from Chicago (where she was attending a cannabis industry event). Fried is a late entrant to the contest but claimed on Monday that her list of public endorsements accounted “for nearly 2/3 the votes needed to win” the election under the party’s weighted vote count, which gives more power to voters representing large counties like Miami-Dade and Broward than to smaller counties. Taddeo’s camp responded on Tuesday that in their latest tally of votes “she is the undisputed vote leader for chair with 401 votes on the State Central Committee.” A fifth candidate in the race, West Palm Beach political organizer Alex Berrios, withdrew on Wednesday and has endorsed Fried. Moonlighting? The debate was moderated by Clarence Johnson, lead pastor of Destiny Church. He asked the candidates if they would commit to hire staff that would only work for the Florida Democratic Party, “and not outside groups or clients.” “I can’t believe that we do that,” Fried responded, committing “that will not happen at all” if she’s elected. “The fact that we have staff that is double-dipping and multitasking is not conducive to anybody, both to those candidates but most importantly the overall operations of the state.” “This has been one of my huge complaints,” said Taddeo. “I call them the ‘consultant cartel’ because it really has become a cancer within our own Democratic Party, where they are working for the party and also working for candidates, which in itself is a conflict of interest.” “One way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to pay them well,” said Hoye, who said the Broward County Democratic Party pays its staffers $25 an hour — compared to an average FDP staffer’s $15.90 an hour salary. “Imagine the morale in the office.” Ampudia said the problem is that consultants get paid “regardless of the results.” “They don’t put out a lot of effort, yet they’re going to get paid and they’re really not in touch with the community because sometimes they come from other places and they’re really not in touch with that community,” she said. Later during the forum, Johnson told the candidates that there are “some” in the Democratic Party who feel it’s moved too far to the left, and then asked how would they bridge the gap between the progressive and centrist wings of the party. “The Democratic Party is supposed to be the party of the big tent,” said Ampudia, who supported Bernie Sanders in his runs for president. The FDP hasn’t done a good enough job of reaching out to all groups inside the party, she added. “Not just centrists. Not just young Dems. Not just the older Dems. It’s everyone,” she said. Taddeo invoked the Tip O’Neil maxim that “all politics is local” in her response. “What works in North Florida doesn’t necessarily work in South Florida,” she said. “What works in one community doesn’t necessarily work in another community, which is why we need to make sure that we have people from those communities helping us connect with the voters.” She didn’t think supporting raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2020, when the measure was on the statewide ballot, “should have taken so long for the Democratic Party to say, ‘Yeah, we’re for it.’ We were all tepid about it.” Left unsaid was that among those Democrats who didn’t immediately come out in strong support for that constitutional amendment was Fried, who, the Tampa Bay Times reported, “remained on the fence” for months before the measure was voted on. Infighting Fried responded that Democrats need to stop fighting among themselves. “We are tearing each other apart, whether it is on social media, whether it is behind closed doors,” she said. “That has got to stop. We are all here because we care so much about our state.” If the party is going to get more Democrats elected, Fried said, members needed to “start respecting each other’s lanes.” “We can have debates on policies. We can have those things. But to then yell at each other is completely counterproductive,” she added. Hoye described himself as a progressive who supported Bernie Sanders for president in 2016. But he added that in his position with the Broward County Democratic Party at that time he made a point to reach out to people from the most extreme wings of every lane in the party to get them to the table. “We can’t be slapping at each other because we can’t beat Republicans,” he said. “We have to come together so we can hit them with the full force of the Democratic Party. … I don’t want to create an environment where anyone feels that they are not welcome to the table.” The Democrats will vote for their party chair on Saturday, Feb. 25. [END] --- [1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/02/17/candidates-for-fdp-chair-talk-about-uniting-different-wings-of-the-party/ Published and (C) by Florida Phoenix Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/floridaphoenix/