Update: Al Lamberti’s Campaign Trying Something Unique
BY BUDDY NEVINS
It’s hard to catch crooks and keep Broward County safe.
Now Sheriff Al Lamberti is trying something that might even be tougher: Getting on the ballot by petition.
Lamberti is seeking 10,417 signatures to place him on the November 2012 ballot. The figure comes from the state Elections Division.
That’s 1 percent of the registered voters in the last general election.
After this piece was posted, Democratic candidate Scott Israel’s campaign manager Amy Rose told me he also was trying to get on the ballot by petition.
“With Scott’s vast network of friends, volunteers and supporters, we’ve been at it a couple of months already and are well on our way,” Rose said.
I don’t remember a countywide candidate ever getting on the ballot by gathering signatures rather than doing it the easy way – paying a qualifying fee of over $10,000.
Lamberti paid a fee of almost $10,200 in 2008.
There is value in this for the sheriff. It is a test run for the campaign and cements his relationship with at least 10,417 voters.
To see his petition, go here.
October 28th, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Between hosting numerous Breakfasts with the Sheriff while he is campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime, it’s amazing he has any time to run BSO. No wonder corruption is rampant at the Sheriff’s Office and crime is rising in the areas BSO patrols.
Lamberti’s campaigning on the public’s dime is completely unethical and scandalous.
October 28th, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Lamberti is probably paying to collect these signatures. Maybe he is even getting them at the booking desk.
October 28th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Lambert isn’t the first one to campaign on the public’s dime. Every sheriff did the same thing. Navarro was the worst of the bunch. Jenne and Cochran weren’t far behind. They all had community relations, which is tax-paid campaigning. Bernstein runs around to condos solely to keep Lamberti in office.
October 28th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Good luck on getting the sigantures there Big Al. I mean sounds like a cheapskates to me. I mean this Sherriff w/ his demand letters to Ft.Lau, to his new scare tactics giving the 50 some odd staff(his)members the potential pink slip today(dispatch center). The Sheriff keeps bringing up th efact that Ft.Lau in regards to the 911 dispatch service had over a year to adress this, at the same time you sir also had over a year. I mean here he does a delegation 4 days before the fiscal year starts to the County. Don’t do a citizens presenation over at City Hall Sheriff , no use scare tactics that you’ll shut us off etc.Bottom line you will get your funding bozo. i am so sick and digusting on how this all played out. See Sherif in the private sector we call this extortion. And here we are reading that he is going to go what door to door to get his sigantures, I would think twice about knocking on my door though. Just disgusted w/ him. Run all you want Sherif but I think your in for a big surprise come election day. Although I doubt your Republican big wigs will tell you otherwise.
October 28th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Sheriff: at least you are trying. I’m sure it will work out…you got more than 10k votes last time 🙂 everyone is just soooo negative
October 29th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Didn’t Lois Wexler qualify by petition when she ran countywide for the school board? Or am I confusing that with one of her district county races?
FROM BUDDY: As I wrote, I don’t remember.
October 29th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Wexler can’t wait for Lieberman to leave so she can try to be the new “Queen” of the commission…PLEASE!
October 30th, 2011 at 12:04 am
Al Lamberti has been campaigning on taxpayer dime for months. he attends political club meetings on taxpayer time and does that total campaign dog and pony show called coffee with the Sheriff. He pays overtime to the police women of broward county, k-9 officers, corvette police car and hands out brochures paid for by taxpayers money. I and many others are sick and tired of him doing this type of campaigning on our taxpayer dime. He can get all the signaturs he wants, but ask around broward and they want a change. Lamberti can be on tv, facebook or collect signatues, but I think he is in trouble and won’t win the next election.
October 30th, 2011 at 9:28 am
I STAND WITH AL LAMBERTI FOR RE ELECTION AS DO MANY OF MY FELLOW DEMOCRATS
October 30th, 2011 at 8:38 pm
The Sheriff is getting bad advise from someone. Whose idea was it to get the petitions? Why waste the energy on getting these petitions when you can be raising money? Better still, who is securing these petitions? You will need around 12,500 of them. Isn’t it just cheaper to pay the filing fee? Bad advise from your campaign manager.
FROM BUDDY:
Kelly,
According to the Elections Division and the Broward Supervisor’s Office, the figure you mention is about 2,000 signatures higher than the amount needed to qualify. However, smart campaigns do get extra signatures to cushion themselves against the ones that will be declared invalid.
October 30th, 2011 at 9:09 pm
Nice try!! Democrats are not supporting Lamberti and are strongly against him because they are all aware that the Sheriff is a staunch Republican that runs around town with Allen West a major T Party Republican. Lamberti can’t be a want to be Democrat and nobody forgets he was asked to endorse Alex Sink and refused several times, but as soon as Rick Scott was at the Diplomat, Lamberti was caught secretly meeting with him. Cat is out of the bag….
Lamberti in the last election was picked over the other weaker Republican Scott Israel. Israel’s run is over again. Waste of time.
It will be very different now that there is a life long Democrat Lou Granteed in the race. Look at the SOE contribution reports. Lou Granteed is a far superior than Lamberti and Israel.
Democrats for Granteed in 2012!!
October 30th, 2011 at 9:27 pm
Gee thanks, Buddy. I thought that this was a given since you mentioned the 10k number in your blog post. Since you’re so smart, who is Lamberti’s campaign manager? Would you not agree that this is a dumb move? Spend the money and don’t be so cheap.
October 31st, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Sheriff Lamberti is the best person in the race.
You should have seen one of his opponents out at Century Village today passing out palm cards after Debbie Wasserman Schultz spoke at the Town Hall meeting.
Century Village in Pembroke Pines does not even fall in Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Congressional District 20 and yet there she was trying to tell us that Obama is good for us in Century Village.
Henry Rose was the master of ceremonies and he was introduced with the politicians with the title of “Political Consultant.”
It was awful. All of us in the Village think that Mayor Ortis was too much. He is under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for going on his honeymoon with a vendor from the city that happens to have gotten all the landscaping business from the City of Pembroke Pines for years. The landscaping vendor’s girlfriend had her home searched by the FBI with a warrant. How crazy is that?
To top it off some American Patriots were outside the Town Hall Meeting with signs encouraging us to look into all of the corruption in Pembroke Pines.
They were also encouraging everyone to go online and look up all the shennanigans that the Obama administration was up to.
They made sense when they said that President Obama wants to redistribute the wealth in America to those that do not work.
That scared everyone I was with and we have been talking about it all afternoon.
Pembroke Pines Commissioner Angelo Castillo was not there and we were not surprised because of the big blow up he had with Mayor Ortis a few weeks ago over the secret deal that was penned by Pembroke Pines Commissioner Iris Siple and rubber stamped with an add on from the Town of Southwest Ranches that is going to cost the City of Pembroke Pines millions of dollars if we pull out of the deal.
October 31st, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Well Alberto,
You must have been in another world today at the meeting. It was an excellent meeting. If all you got out of the meeting was attacking the Mayor, Commissioners, Consultants and Candidates then obviously you are an out of touch Republican in a Democratic environment.
You friend Al Lamberti has big problems and will not win over Democrats not will he win in 2012. You ride is over Alberto.
I am not fans of the Castillo’s and think they are snobby rude people. They both walk around like the yown Century Village, but most people talk about hos the yare not well liked. As usual, he was probably putting his nose in somebodies or some other cities business and could not attend. He was announced that he sends his regards, but was unable to attend. How does that have anything to do with our Mayor. If it did, why would they have made that statement to the group on his behalf. The meetings was very well done.
You should have left if you didn’t like it. Who cares if two idiots were out front picketing. This is America.
You make false and very slanderous statements, which are all lies to begin with. You must be a big ignorant asshole.
Debbie in 2012…
October 31st, 2011 at 10:09 pm
Scott can collect all the petitions he wants. He will lose just like last time.
Al Lamberti in 2012 and 2016!
October 31st, 2011 at 10:33 pm
You can tell why Amy Rose was paid $11,000.00 from Israel already based on her quote “Scott’s vast network of friends, volunteers and contributors.” If that was true, where is all the financial support.
He was slammed by his opponent Granteed in fundraising. Last I checked the SOE site, Granteed raised three times in one quarter than Israel did in two quarters. WHERE ARE THE SIGNATURES COMING FROM, when your candidate does not have the support period???
As far as Lamberti, where is he trying to get the signatures, from Democrats because without them he can’t win. So why not try and capture 10k of them. He won’t win anyway, people know he is a stuanch Republican with heavy ties to Rick Scott and Allen West. Charlie Christ is gone and so is Scott Rothstein. He has problems.
Also, one of his opponents Israel who got 190,000.00 from Rothstein, will take a big hit in fundraising while running around town like a little bitch telling everyone Lamberti and Rothstein ganged up on him with peoples money. YOU TOOK ROTHSTEIN MONEY TOO ISRAEL!! Your liar and hypocrit..
Lori Parrish has to make sure Ron Caccitore stops trying to fundraise on county time for Scott Israel. I was talking with a few friends last week who mentioned Ron has been hounding them for contributions and are about to file a complaint with the new county ethics department, so he will stop. They mentioned in the 2008 election he and Israel used the same bully tactics to raise money and it pissed everyone off. Best response, don’t give him any money.
October 31st, 2011 at 10:39 pm
I agree with you LEO on Israel trying to get signatures. he can’t and won’t win. I do disagree about Lamberti winning in 2012. I think the guy from Hollywood Granted is a solid candidate and will beat Israel and Lamberti. I like Lamberti on a personal level, but all my friends at the BSO want a change and feel Granted is a really good guy. A COPS COP and does the right thing by people. They are absolutely not interested in Scott Israel.
November 2nd, 2011 at 7:31 pm
Hey Buddy,
As a reporter, can you find out for your viewers how the Sheriff can go around Broward County on tax payer dime and hold “Coffee With the Sheriff” events and not be claiming any type of in-kind or other type of contribution. This is an election violation.
Plus, he pays Deputy’s tax payer money for overtime to do a campaign dog and pony show. This is so wrong!!! It’s illegal.
November 2nd, 2011 at 11:51 pm
Republicans offer proof that Democrat Scott Israel was one of them
Scott Israel, one of five candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for sheriff in Tuesday’s primary, is runinng a television ad proclaiming himself a supporter of democratic, but is absolutely not a democrat and republicans don’t want him either since he screwed Chip Lamarca by putting him down as a personal reference to get an interview with Governor Christ and didn’t get one. Then he dumps the Republican Party and switches to Democrat for about five minutes before running a losing campaign. He is done…
weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2008/08/republicans_offer_proof…
November 11th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
I agree Alberto – The Sheriff has done a great job and should he not be allowed to do petitions?? and save the 10K, a large group of Grass Roots Patriots back him too.
Debbie Wasserman represent no one here, she is too busy as head of the DNC — http://WWW.FIREDEBBIE.COM
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Alberto says:
October 31st, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Sheriff Lamberti is the best person in the race.
You should have seen one of his opponents out at Century Village today passing out palm cards after Debbie Wasserman Schultz spoke at the Town Hall meeting.
Century Village in Pembroke Pines does not even fall in Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Congressional District 20 and yet there she was trying to tell us that Obama is good for us in Century Village.
January 31st, 2012 at 3:48 pm
I think it’s very wrong that the Sheriff campaigns on the taxpayer dime. I do understand some parts is the job, but Sheriff Lamberti has gone way to far to a point it seems totally unethical.
Today, I went to the polls to vote and was aggravated by the on-duty BSO people standing at the polls trying to gather signatures for the Sheriff. Why aren’t they patrolling my streets where I was victimized. This seems very very wrong and an Ethics panel should investigate.
The Sheriff is not even on the ballot, but he has sixty on-duty BSO employees all over Broward County and the employees expressed it was wrong and that they were forced to do it. They are all afraid of losing their jobs. Most from the calls I made were ranking people.
Buddy, I think you should do a story on this shameful campaign strategy, the bill boards around town without permits posting coffee with the Sheriff and speak to Commissioner Castillo because he brought to light the Sheriff is in violation of Pembroke Pines city ordinances with the bill boards.
This is wrong and very frustrating.
FROM BUDDY:
How did you know they were on-duty? If they were in Pembroke Pines, I highly doubt that.
If they were in uniform, Lamberti should do something about it. It is wrong. It is intimidating for someone in uniform to gather signatures. It is also wrong for BSO deputies in uniform to be campaigning.
Many members of the media religiously read this website. Maybe they will see this comment. They still have time to get to the polls and get a picture of these deputies campaigning.
January 31st, 2012 at 4:45 pm
The above story is pure fiction
FROM BUDDY:
The story or the comment?