State Demos Court Keechl For House
BY BUDDY NEVINS
State Democrats are begging former County Commissioner Ken Keechl to quit the county commission race and run for the state House.
Ken Keechl
So far Keechl has resisted them.
Keechl says:
“I’m staying in the county commission race.”
Let me add, because I’ve been around politics awhile, he’s staying in it…for now.
The Democrats’ target is state House member George Moraitis Jr., R-Fort Lauderdale.
His seat, which runs largely east of U.S.One in central and north Broward, was redistricted to make it more attractive to a Democratic candidate. But state Democrats have no good candidate and time is running out.
(As an aside, if Democrats can’t convince someone in D-heavy Broward County to run, where can they?)
The state party tested various names in a poll against Moraitis. Keechl’s name got good results, according to a state Democrat.
So Keechl’s phone has been ringing non-stop.
“They have a lot of people calling me,” he said.
Others have visited him.
So far it hasn’t worked. Keechl wants his old job back.
I believe he has a good shot. He’s working hard. He says he knocked on 600 doors last weekend.
Keechl says his model candidate is Marty Kiar — a state House member running for commission and easily the hardest working candidate on the ballot this year. Kiar lives and breathes campaigns. He goes to sleep counting ballots rather than sheep. He is the consummate campaigner.
Keechl vows to do the same. That should make this county commission race very interesting if Keechl can resist the prodding and promises of state Democrats.
April 18th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
I don’t care what the traditional press says, I think Keechl was a good commissioner and made a very good Mayor, too. But I also like Rodstrom. It’s sad that two really good candidates will be running against each other when there are so many other places that could use a good public servant. Best of luck to both of them.
April 18th, 2012 at 4:40 pm
If you try and analyze the Democratic races in Broward County there is not much more room. After reading the article, I was thinking about the Sheriff’s race and Candidates that have been active countywide. Deep political insiders feel Lou Granteed from Hollywood has an excellent chance to put a Dem back in the Sheriff’s Office. It is widely felt Scott Israel had his chance and should move on because the support is not there for him.
However, it would not be a bad plan for the DEMS to all support Granteed for Sheriff and ask Scott Israel a Parkland resident, Former Fort Lauderdale COP familiar with the District to run for the Moraitis’s State House Seat and all DEMS support him at the same time. This will help Broward pick up two DEM positions.
Just a thought!!
April 18th, 2012 at 4:49 pm
If Keechl follows Kiar’s lead in the campaigning department, then the proof will be if he loses at least 60 pounds pounding the pavement like Kiar has.
Campaigning does a body good!
April 18th, 2012 at 10:57 pm
Keechl will lose either way. In 2010 Keechl got 6% fewer votes in his precincts than Alex Sink got. He’s a weak candidate.
April 19th, 2012 at 8:34 am
Louie Granteed is not a serious factor in the Sheriff race. Israel will easily beat him in the August primary because of name recognition alone. Israel nearly won last time except for the Scott Rothstein funded negative ads that got Lamberti elected.
Granteed is an unknown with insufficient resources or time to overcome those disadvantages. Worse his campaign message makes a very weak argument for change at BSO and is peppered with a list of concerns about personal behaviors.
The question in that race is not the primary but whether Israel can get the support he needs to beat Lamberti in the general election. It is nearly certain that there will be an Israel/Lamberti rematch.
April 19th, 2012 at 9:50 am
Ha Ha Ha must obviously be a Republican, given that they like to throw out numbers as facts with no basis for them.
True, Keechl lost to LaMarca 49.8% to 45.0%, while Sink beat Scott in the same precincts 50.0% to 47.5%.
However, I’d counter that Scott was the weak candidate, given that in the precincts where they overlap, West beat Klein 57.9% to 42.1%.
Further, I would counter that the 5.2% of the vote received by Chris Chiari in the race certainly skewed the results.
To try and paint Keechl as a weak candidate based upon the abonormalities that were the 2010 off year race has no bearing here, especially in a race that is going to be determined in the Democratic primary.
April 19th, 2012 at 10:36 am
Many will totally disagree with the Broward Democrat and his or her perspective on the Sheriff’s race. Granteed from Hollywood is a very serious factor and has the Israel campaign in turmoil and creating concern for the Lamberti campaign too. Israel might have name recognition, but it’s not good and is not generating support. The proof is in the money.
The fact is Israel LOST after being a Republican and not even getting an interview with a Republican Governor, then switched to Democrat and lost in a major Democratic county on a Presidential ticket. It doesn’t matter if he lost by one vote or a thousand votes, that was 2008 and this is 2012.
It’s over for Israel and the only ones that don’t realize it are him and his fired friends from the BSO working on his campaign.
Granteed has plenty of resourses to include four times the money Israel has and did it in less time. Just look at the SOE reports. Granteed has $137K left after expenses and Israel has $40K after expenses….. Israel took $190,000.00 from Scott Rothstein in the 2008 election and tries to tell everyone he lost because Lamberti took hundreds of thousands from Rothstein and thats why he lost. Over 60,000 DEMS didn’t vote because they did not like the Democratic candidate “Israel.” What does that say!!! You didn’t lose by a few, you lost by a lot.
Israel will not beat Granteed in the primary and Broward feels strongly Granteed will beat Lambert in the Geneeral election. He is highly qualified and much more experienced than Israel, who had been out of police work for over 5 years.
Israel will never beat Lamberti and that’s the fact. All Israel is doing is hurting the Democratic Party and should just put his massive ego aside and do whats right, get out of the race. He had his shot and it didn’t work.. Move on!!!
This is going to be a Lamberti/Granteed General Election without a doubt and the BSO will be 100X better off after Granteed wins.
April 19th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Broward has 30 some Democratic Clubs. Only 4 are showing any support for Israel. All the other clubs support Granteed. It looks like Granteed will make a home run.
April 19th, 2012 at 5:33 pm
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/11/why_mayor_ken_keechl_lost.php
[…] Election records show, however, that Keechl […] could have won if his name were Alex Sink.
Sink, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate who lost in a statewide squeaker to Rick Scott, garnered 26,134 votes in Keechl’s district.
That’s 726 more votes than LaMarca, who performed similarly in the district to fellow Republican Scott. So if Sink, a politician from Tampa, could win Keechl’s district, you’d think the mayor, after four years in office and a whole lot of free publicity from his title this past year, could have done so as well.
But it didn’t happen. Instead, 3,119 voters who inked in the spot next to Democrat Sink’s name decided not to do the same for Democrat Keechl. Remember that only about 50,000 people voted in the election, which means that 6 percent of voters chose Sink and then shunned Keechl down the ballot. […]
FROM BUDDY:
You can look at election results from many different angles.
Each race is unique and LarMarca’scommission district had elected a Republican in the past. In fact, it was drawn for a Republican — Jim Scott.
Gov. Rick Scott was a weak candidate who only won because he had millions and Sink had a lousy campaign. He remains unpopular in polls.
LaMarca was riding the same Tea Party train as Allen West. LaMarca won in a district covering some of the same Broward terrain as West’s district.
Also, I would love to know what was the drop off? What was the number voting in the governor’s race compared with the number voting in the commission race, which is way down ballot? Much more dedicated voters go that far down ballot and there is usually a substantial drop off. Which another reason the races are hard to compare.
I can name numerous races where a Republican won in the same district that a Democrat won in. I can also name numerous races where a candidate got beaten, like Keechl, and came back and won.
Allen West is perhaps the most notable recent example.
April 19th, 2012 at 6:42 pm
Do I have to quote the whole article here?
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/11/why_mayor_ken_keechl_lost.php
[…] Those voters turned to Chris Chiari, the no-party candidate.
In all, Chiari got 2,634 votes and that looks to be the difference, since LaMarca’s margin of victory over Keechl was just 2,393 votes. […] There was a sizable group of voters that was dissatisfied with Keechl, that found the mayor’s performance unacceptable. Those same voters also found LaMarca unacceptable for whatever reason, likely because they didn’t want to vote for a Republican. Chiari in effect gave them a relief valve, a way to vote against Keechl without participating in that GOP tsunami.
Chiari, to his credit, ran a solid campaign in which he pointed out the foibles of both candidates. I contacted him after I ran the precinct numbers, and he told me that he considered it a “happy result” that he had played a crucial role in defeating Keechl and helping to make $600,000 in mostly lobbyist-generated special interest money backing the mayor go to waste.
The bottom line, though, is that Keechl simply wasn’t popular in his district and had clearly alienated thousands of voters. The reason Keechl lost?
Keechl himself.
April 19th, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Didn’t those very same clubs that are supporting Granteed give their full support to Sharoukh Dhanji last time. They really do mean a lot, don’t they?
Get real, the public remembers and loves Israel. Democratic clubs don’t matter any more. They all have the same people as their members.
April 19th, 2012 at 8:40 pm
Bob Norman is no political analyst, Chip. Your 15 minutes of fame are almost up.
April 20th, 2012 at 9:37 am
Anyone thinking of running or a candidate already in needs to face the music that Broward and S FL are not the same as 3, 5 or 8 years ago. The demographics are different as census confirms, the voter rolls are different, with many still listed although gone (not updated) and when 20% or more residential properties are for sale county wide, candidates can’t bank on votes or voter turnout, just contributors that will fund a campaign.
August 13th, 2012 at 3:36 pm
what makes Ken Keechl think that I am OK with those unwanted campaign phone calls to my cell and using my minutes? I have elderly ill parents that call me and I jump when I hear the phone ring only to hear his stupid pre-recorded message that I have already tried several times to get stopped.