Huge Palm Card Effort Opposes School Bonds: 500K Mailed, 750K E-Mailed
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Veteran political strategist Dan Lewis’ legendary Blue Card is back with some siblings this year.
Lewis has a Red Card for Republicans and a Blue/Red Card for independents.
The Blue Card has been fabulously successful in previous years. Passed out at the polls, mailed and e-mailed to voters, the cards have swayed elections. They are spiffier, better produced and distributed in bigger numbers than any other palm cards in Broward including the Democratic Party’s partisan effort.
Every wonder what one million cards look like:
That’s right. One million, of which 500,000 will be mailed to voters, according to Lewis.
In addition, a downloadable version will be e-mailed to 750,000 e-mail addresses in Broward.
This is more bad news for the Broward School’s pro-$800 million bonds because Lewis’ is recommending a vote against the new tax.
A long-time education activist, Lewis explained his opposition to the bonds in an article prepared for publication at a later date. An excerpt is below:
“It comes down to trust, and I just don’t trust the School Board to act in either a responsible or professional manner or neither should you. Evidence of their “culture” can be vividly seen in the many recent headlines and criminal prosecutions of school board members. Yet, in spite of so many public examples of the problems, they refuse independent oversight from the County’s inspector general. They even refuse to voluntarily be bound by the stringent voter established ethics code for all elected officials and public employees in the county in spite of harsh criticisms from recent grand juries.”
The cards are produced by The Democracy Project, which is part of Strategic Technologies & Research, Lewis’ Fort Lauderdale-based technology company. The Democracy Project is a fictitious name registered with the state earlier this month using Lewis’ home address.
“The project is independent of any candidate or committee,” Lewis said.
Lewis has been known to finance political literature out of his own pocket in the past.
When asked about financing the cards, Lewis said, he had “a very good year.”
He added, “I never share tactics and strategies until after an election.”
Lewis explained the selection method for the cards:
“For partisan contests, candidates are selected based on their party registration. For non-partisan races, candidates appear on the party slate card where the moderate party position most closely represents the candidates’ views. Candidates are excluded from being listed when they do not reside in their districts, and when they are disqualified on the basis of their political association with individuals who are regularly involved with public and political corruption.”
Democratic state Sen. Maria Sachs and County Commission candidate Ken Keechl are not recommended on the Democratic card.
There have been questions on whether Sachs has ever lived in her district during her career.
Keechl initially did not live in the proper district, but has now moved into it, according to his campaign and a Republican activist who asked his name not be used.
Below are the cards in PDF form:
October 16th, 2014 at 8:27 am
Where is the money coming from?
October 16th, 2014 at 8:32 am
Association with individuals who are corrupt??? In other words, Dan isn’t handling your mail and he might have liked to.
Or, nobody else knew wtf was happening in a particular race so it was easier to pick the likely winner.
The real million dollar question: who is paying for this?
October 16th, 2014 at 9:10 am
As usual, Dan Lewis is a little loose with the truth. Ken Keechl lives in Fort Lauderdale’s Coral Ridge neighborhood. That is in The commission district that he’s running for.
October 16th, 2014 at 11:50 am
In my opinion one entity has the money to fund such and effort Charter Schools USA (against the bond) and their Attorney Ed Pozzuli from Tripp Scott who are also major backers on LaMarca.
One problem here the “legendary blue card” 2 years ago was sponsored by a legitimate group, Broward Young Democrats and its impact was in non partisan races wherein Lewis exposed the party affiliations of non Partisan candidate.
Final note, looking at the pictures on here it would seem difficult to mail this out since there is nowhere on the card that you could put an address.
FROM BUDDY:
The reverse had a place for an address.
October 16th, 2014 at 2:50 pm
You call him an education activist. He is an anti-education activist because he has done nothing but work against the school system for years.
October 16th, 2014 at 2:51 pm
Big charter companies are behind this. They want to see the public schools in tatters so that parents are forced into their schools.
FROM BUDDY:
Many desirable charter schools in Broward have waiting lists.
October 16th, 2014 at 3:15 pm
Dan Lewis lies about Keechl not living in the District.
Chip LaMarca lies about giving back part of his salary to County Employees in their time of need.
Lewis & LaMarca liars to the end.
October 16th, 2014 at 4:42 pm
The list of charters that have closed is much longer than the ones who have waiting lists.
October 16th, 2014 at 6:34 pm
Most district schools are already in “tatters”. They should open up all boundaries and make all district schools “schools of choice”. This would at least save some of them through competition. Also—raise Teacher’s salaries way above ($10,000 above) charter’s salaries to keep or get better teachers…
October 16th, 2014 at 7:43 pm
Actually the school system has worked against itself for years. That’s how we got to this sad point.
Dan did a great job on this one. I remember when we worked against the 1995 billion dollar bond that lost 71-29.
Different year, same kind of people pushing this tax, same corruption and lies.
October 16th, 2014 at 9:44 pm
Hope I get one as a souvenir of the biggest VOTE DOWN in broward election history.
school bonds DOA on nov.4
CSC blank check in perpetuity DOA on Nov.4
and the biggest upset on Nov. 4 after watching Charlie and rick last night – Charlie moving to Tally in January 2017
(although I’ll vote for Adrian Wylie on principal!!)
October 17th, 2014 at 12:31 am
Make no mistake, Keechl may have his name on a house in the district he’s running in but he still LIVES in 7 in Wilton Manors. Just like paying his husband rent for that office last time… in his own words “I’m a lawyer. It isn’t illegal”. Ethics apparently don’t come into play much. And LaMarca has only 2 staffers as opposed to everyone else’s 3. Meaning he has to put in more time, and time is money. He saves the county anywhere from $50-$75K a year by doing that. I also found out he is not actually permitted to cut the county a check to give part of his salary back, so instead he cut a staffer. I’ll take it.
October 17th, 2014 at 11:47 am
@12: You’re telling me that if I walked into the county commission office and wanted to donate $15,000 to the county that I would be turned away. Doubtful…
October 17th, 2014 at 1:33 pm
I know of a couple school board members who refused to take the state granted raise and they only make $39k a year. Instead of returning the increase to the state many of them instead donate it to the Broward Education Foundation. Did Chip accept the raise and what precludes him from donating the increase plus the 12%?
October 19th, 2014 at 12:01 am
Got a Blue card in the mail today & assumed it was from the Dems. Just spent 2 hours checking out the recommendations after E Bogdanoff was listed, sponsored by The Democracy Project. Thanks for the info about this scam. “Democracy” pretty much belongs to the guy with the deepest pockets. Still…
October 19th, 2014 at 9:00 am
Okay Judy.
October 19th, 2014 at 2:49 pm
Why would Judy complain? Her most important candidate is on there. Right Chip, or are you still denying your relationship to Dan?
Don’t worry, Dan isn’t thinking clearly on this one. But we won’t get fooled again.
October 26th, 2014 at 12:12 pm
Ellyn Bogdanoff is recommended over Maria Sachs-good call.
Glad to see the “Blue Card” is fair.
October 26th, 2014 at 8:02 pm
According to the blue, red etc they all recommend Claudia and Rhoda. So Bailey and Richards are done then because of this
Unidentified donor. So who has over $300,000 to oppose School bonds, Bailey and Richards. I don’t think for a minute it is Dan Lewis. So who paid for it.
October 30th, 2014 at 6:17 pm
I received my “democracy project approved slate cards” today in the mail. I would love to know why the democracy project completely omitted the district for race 4 Pompano Beach? Surely it is just a coincidence this is the only predominantly black district in Pompano.
November 9th, 2014 at 8:03 pm
And this “fabulously successful” palm card opposed the School Board Bond issue and where did that get decent anti-Bond activists? 10 votes? 100 votes? against a torrent of pro Bond votes! Mr. Nevins, your blog took a lickin” this year!