Mitch Ceasar Easily Wins Re-Election
BY BUDDY NEVINS
Despite a massive effort to oust him run by a veteran professional consultant, Broward Democratic Chair Mitch Ceasar won re-election.
By winning a hotly-contested precinct race among his Democratic neighbors, Ceasar is eligible to be re-elected party chair for another four years.
Dissidents within the Democratic Party led by political consultant Barbara Miller attempted to strip Ceasar of his elected committee precinct post. If he wasn’t elected precinct committeeman in west Plantation where he lives, he would have been unable by Democratic rules to be elected chair in the December inner-party election.
A long-time political opponent of Ceasar, Miller and her supporters threw everything that almost four decades of politics taught her. The campaign against Ceasar included a grass roots operation and at least three professional mailings including a last-minute smear of him using edited newspaper articles that made it appear like Ceasar was guilty of sexual harassment and fixing party elections.
In other Democratic Party news, a dead man got elected precinct committee man. Bill Kling, who died earlier this month, was overwhelmingly re-elected to his long-time post in east Broward.
Donnie Ceasar, Mitch’s wife, got elected a committeewoman.
Longtime political consultant Robin Rorapaugh got defeated in her race for committeewoman.
And although Miller could not beat Ceasar, she easily got elected committeewoman from her own precinct.
August 15th, 2012 at 10:44 am
Among the losers for Democratic committeewoman yesterday:
Robin Rorapaugh
Beverly Kennedy
Joyce Julian
Theresa (George) Bograkos
Not that these are bad people, but did they even campaign?
August 15th, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Because there are over 1,000 registered Democrats in N027, there are two seats for Precict Committeeman. In order to oust Ceasar, two of Ceasar’s three opponents had to get more votes in N027 than Ceasar did.
Instead, Ceasar finished in FIRST PLACE with 38% of the vote. The second seat-winner got only 29%, and the two also-rans only got 17% and 16%.
Of the over 1,000 Democrats in N027, only 345 actually voted.
This was THE golden opportunity to oust Mitch Ceasar. Activists should have converged on N027 to personally visit each of the 1,000+ Democrats and help them vote for Ceasar’s opponents. This was their big chance to prove that the opposition to Ceasar, with its social media and other methods, really was better at mobilizing voters and getting them to the polls to vote. Instead, Ceasar’s opponents proved that they couldn’t actually deliver on that promise.
For this badly botched demonstration of voter mobilization capability, I rate Ceasar’s re-election in N027 as an Epic Fail for Ceasar’s insufficiently organized opposition.
This was a tragic outcome for Broward County, for the state of Florida, and for the Democratic Party.
August 15th, 2012 at 4:58 pm
The number of voters in N027 was less than 345. Because there were two seats at stake, in that race each voter could cast two votes. 345 was the total number of votes cast, not the number of voters.
In the Democratic primary race for US Senator, 240 Democratic voters cast ballots, 89-11 for Bill Nelson. That was the highest level of participation among N027 Democratic primary races, so the true level of Democratic voter turnout was just 240 (out of 1,000+ registered Democrats).
The race attracting the largest number of N027 voters was Ilene Lieberman vs. Katie McHugh, where 322 N027 voters backed Lieberman over McHugh, 57-43.
Combining the results from the Ceasar and Lieberman races, it seems clear that N027 voters have a VERY high tolerance for the appearance of corruption.
August 16th, 2012 at 12:33 am
Interesting how both comments appear to be written by the same person…just sayin