MSNBC Broadcaster Backs Out Of Broward Democratic Dinner

 

BY BUDDY NEVINS

 

 

MSNBC host Ed Schultz cancelled his appearance at the Broward County Democratic Unity Dinner over the weekend after his role at the fundraiser was questioned.

The Democrats are now left with no keynote speaker less than three weeks before the March 15 fund raising event.

“We found out over the weekend. We’ve always had great guest speakers,” said Mitch Ceasar, chair of the Broward Democratic Party. “I’m working full time to make sure we have a terrific guest by March 15.”

Schultz quit after he discovered the event raised money for the local party. The long-time broadcaster backed out after a call to MSNBC by the Huffington Post.

But the host dropping out appears to have more to do with media wars than fund raising.  The action against Schultz comes a week after an earlier Huffington Post article stated that Fox News’ Sean Hannity raises money for the Tea Party.

The Unity Dinner is the main fund raising event for the local Democratic organization. In the past, Ceasar has had no trouble drawing well-known speakers because of Broward’s role as the biggest Democratic organization in Florida.

A range of national figures have spoken at the Unity Dinner in the past such as Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean and New Jersey Democratic U. S. Sen. Cory Booker last year.

Schultz, who is an admired liberal voice on MSNBC, was another high powered guest Ceasar managed to snag.  The two know each other because Ceasar is often a guest on Schultz’s show.

“Democrats will miss Ed. I’m sure we will have another exciting speaker in place soon,” Ceasar said.

Original Internet ad for the Democratic event with Schultz

BDP_Web_Events_unitydinner14_Banner_1



19 Responses to “MSNBC Broadcaster Backs Out Of Broward Democratic Dinner”

  1. Rub Roh says:

    Ed cancels on Mitch . . . too funny! All that face time on Ed’s show did not help Mitch one bit. Hope they have a Plan B.

    From what I’ve been hearing, the DEC has had a difficult time selling tickets, tables or ads because the Dems don’t have the people (or corporate donors) with money.

    There are 561,698 Dems in the County and the DEC has less than 20k in the bank. This means that a large chunk of those registered DEMOCRATS would not even donate $1 to their own local party, much less turn out for the mid term elections.

  2. I nominate says:

    Chaz Stevens, no one is better suited to address the Unity Dinner crowd. We may not leave with more Unity but you damn well know it would be funny as hell.

  3. count lf chodkiewicz chudzikiewicz says:

    I want to support my party but honestly as a Jewish American in small business I find MSNBC too left wing with, like the tea party, too much snide anti-Semitism. I hope lobbyist not activist Mitch Caesar comes up with a more centrist speaker

  4. Watchman says:

    @#3 It’s interesting that you point to the hard-core right (you say tea party) and indicate that they are anti-Semitic. What are you basing that assessment on? To my knowledge, they are very vocally pro-Israel especially here in Broward. On the national level, each and every Republican has stood in favor of support for Israel and has maintained that close relationship. Only under the Obama Administration have we seen that relationship become strained and torn, specifically with Benjamin Netanyahu. What “snide anti-Semitism” am I missing?

  5. Big D says:

    I hear that Schultz was getting $20,000. What happens to that money, Mitch?

  6. Margate says:

    Lets see. Broward DEC gets Buddy Nevins and Anthony Man to speak at a DEC meeting. Democrats vying for the Governor’s seat are 1) Charlie Crist who turned his back on the governorship to run for Senate. He lost. Now he has a book aimed at convincing Dems he flipped parties for good reason. Now Dems in Broward adore him. 2) Nan Rich. Poor thing. At last night’s Margate Dem meeting she hardly talked about herself. Just how bad Governor Scott is. Point being, Florida Democrats have no one in the race worth voting for. Scott’s a sure thing and many Dems will vote for him. In fact, I can’t even picture Crist or Rich on the ballot without chuckling. South Florida Democrats are a mess. The clubs are old, worn out and little like their counterparts in other parts of the country. Adult diapers, social programs, let grants do the work for you, spendthrifts. That summs up SoFla Dems.

    FROM BUDDY:

    I can’t speak for Tony Man, but I would speak to a Republican Club, too.

  7. Alice McGill says:

    I recommend Walter and Lisa Duke as speakers. They are always open to an opportunity to showcase themselves. This sounds perfect for them.

  8. Graham As Speaker says:

    What about Bob Graham? He was the best governor the state has ever seen. We haven’t heard from him in a long time.

  9. Andrew Ladanowski says:

    Maybe Mitch could get one of his clients he lobbies for at the democratic meeting. Mitch on 12/6/2012 met with Katie Leach on behalf of RiverSide Science Inc, a charter school with ties to the Gullen movement. called Broward Math and Science Schools The website is http://bmsschools.org/ and their address is 6101 NW 31st St, Margate, FL 33063. The school director Fethi Goktepe M.S. spoke with a strong accent making understanding him
    difficult, who ran a school in Tampa. This school is linked with Islamic religious philosopher Fethullah Gülen.

    The schools have performed well in Texas. Good management techniques but accusations of bringing in foreign teachers from
    Turkey and exploiting them were reported; including have foreign teachers having to give cash back from their below market value. The teacher’s command of the English language was in question. The teachers were primarily foreign born.

    School field trips were reported to Turkey including visiting questionable religious sites.

    USA Today painted it as part of a secretive national collective of organizations tied to Islamic
    religious philosopher Fethullah Gülen.

    An excellent report was done by CBS news http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7408418n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox

    PBS has also an excellent story as well.

    http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/january-21-2011/the-glen-movement/7949/

    Read some more interesting links.

    http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/texas-education-agency/what-drives-high-achievement-at-harmony-charters-/

  10. Andrew Ladanowski says:

    Mr. Nevins could you do an interview with Mitch and get his comments on his client.

  11. cap peterson says:

    Glad to see Alice McGill has her brooom fixed and is back in action!

  12. Broward Democrat says:

    It should be noted Schultz spoke at the Miami-Dade Dems annual function not long ago. This is a new corporate decision by MSNBC to not have their employees too closely tied to political fundraisers. We will see if Fox news follows suit, not likely.
    It is unfortunate, but Broward Democrats will not doubt find a suitable replacement as we are one the strongest County parties in the nation.
    This extra bump in the news cycle doesn’t hurt either.
    You can still purchase tickets at http://browarddemocrats.org/bdp-events/unity-dinner-march-15th/

    That Margate poster has no idea what she is talking about.

  13. Ha Ha Ha says:

    @1 – you wrote “From what I’ve been hearing, the DEC has had a difficult time selling tickets, tables or ads because the Dems don’t have the people (or corporate donors) with money. There are 561,698 Dems in the County and the DEC has less than 20k in the bank. This means that a large chunk of those registered DEMOCRATS would not even donate $1 to their own local party, much less turn out for the mid term elections.”

    Actually, the DEC has had a very difficult time selling tickets, etc. because the effect of buying a ticket is that Mitch Ceasar gets your money.

    Given Mitch Ceasar’s autocratic ways, even hardcore Democratic activists would much rather give their money to people like Phil “Feet On The Street Democrats” Busey or Alan “”King of Voter Registration” Ehrlich.

    There are plenty of independent political organizations in Broward County that work very hard to elect Democrats but insist on doing so independently of Mitch Ceasar.

    Those independent organizations are the ones that deserve Democratic dollars and use those dollars super-efficiently.

    Even if a Democratic donor didn’t care about Mitch Ceasar one way or the other and only cared about the biggest bang for the buck in Broward County, the effect of that alone would ensure that zero dollars are provided to Mitch Ceasar and that all proceeds would go instead directly to these independent groups.

  14. Anonymous says:

    Answer the questions, Mitch. Where is the $20,000 (#5) and were you lobbying for Islamic activists (#9)?

  15. Ha Ha Ha says:

    @14 – Turkey is a NATO ally, and it’s perfectly legal to be of Turkish origin, like Turkish culture, and / or follow Islam. K-12 public or charter schools can legally study religion as a subject but they cannot endorse religion in general or any religion in particular.

    From the PBS article (link @9 above):
    ——
    PROFESSOR HELEN EBAUGH (Dept. of Sociology, University of Houston; Author of “The Gülen Movement”): When Fethullah Gülen began preaching in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s in Turkey, his message was we don’t need more madrassas [Islamic schools]. We need schools that would promote science and math and secular subjects, and his contention was that one can be modern and one can be scientific and still be a good Muslim.

    SEVERSON: Bill Martin is a senior fellow in religion and public policy at the James Baker Institute at Rice University. He says the Gülen movement is different from fundamentalist Islam because they respect all faiths and believe religion is compatible with science.

    WILLIAM MARTIN (Senior Fellow, James Baker Institute at Rice University): I think it’s fair to say that Islam has had difficulty in coming to terms with modernity, and in that I think that the Gülen movement offers a much more positive picture of what Islam can be. … Gülen has always emphasized education, and that really lies at the core of this movement. To be a good Muslim meant to be well educated, and to be a good Muslim who participated in modernity meant to be conversant and well educated in science, math, and technology.

    OKSUZ: Education helps you overcome ignorance, poverty, corruption, hate, extremism, racism, whatever, all the illnesses of the society. Because of that education is very important. … Gülen—not only he urges teachers to go and work at these schools, on the other hand he urges people from all walks of life to go and support all these schools. Build up schools instead of mosques. Build up universities instead of mosques. Build up cultural centers, interfaith organizations, aid organizations, hospitals instead of mosques. …

    SEVERSON: Alp is a volunteer in charge of the Institute for Interfaith Dialog in Houston, which is located in the Raindrop Turkish House. This is a mockup of the projected interfaith center, which will include a Jewish synagogue, a mosque, and a Christian church. Gülen has always stressed the importance of interfaith dialogue to promote peace and has met with Pope John Paul II and reached out to leaders of many religious minorities. And he may have been the first Muslim leader to condemn the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

    ASLANDOWAN: He immediately posted an ad clearly saying that this was an anti, a non-Islamic act. It’s not even a human act. The people who committed this are not Muslims; they can not even be called humans. He said Bin Laden is a monster and people around him are monster if they think like him.

    SEVERSON: Alp Aslandowan says Gülen teaches that suicide attacks cannot be justified in Islam.

    ASLANDOWAN: Some people try to justify the killings, homicidal killings, by saying that those people who are engaged in those, they don’t have any other means, and he said that this is not a Muslim’s view. It cannot be a Muslim’s thinking, because for a Muslim if the end result, if the end goal is virtuous, worthwhile, holy, then the means should also be holy.

    SEVERSON: Professor Ebaugh says the movement could do better by placing women in leadership roles. Gülen is not without his critics.

    EBAUGH: The big issue in Turkey for the critics is the fear that the movement is becoming very powerful, very wealthy, and that there is a sub rosa agenda to create an Islamic state, and they always compare it to Khomeini and Iran.

    MARTIN: I think there’s no warrant to the charges that Gülen wants to take over and impose Sharia law. I think that, frankly, is an absurd fear.

    OKSUZ: The movement is neither sect nor cult. It is a civil society movement.

    MARTIN: Sometimes they are accused of being a missionary, a missionizing entity. As far as I know, I don’t know anyone through the schools or otherwise that they’ve tried to turn into a Muslim. …

  16. Mona Lisa says:

    Nevins the way you unfairly attack Commissioner LaMarca and pal around with Keechl’s campaign manager Aturd you will never be invited to spew your lies at any Republican Club in Broward County.

  17. Andrew Ladanowski says:

    @14 if you doubt my information please go to Broward schools website link http://www.browardschools.com/School-Board/Search-BCPS-Lobbyist-Database
    Change the start date to prior 12/6/2012 and in the last name put ceasar. This is public record.

  18. Phil Busey says:

    I paid $150 for a ticket to the March 15 Broward Democratic Unity Dinner, to support the Democratic Party in helping elect Democrats. And I volunteer my feet on the street to help elect Democrats.

  19. Ghost of Chairmans Past says:

    @Mona Lisa –
    If after supporting Barbara Sharieff (aka Obamacare Supporter of the Year) and Stacy Ritter against a republican opponent
    Eddie Pozzouli can be invited to speak to BREC about how republicans should unite to defeat democrats, anyone can. What a joke.