Florida Congressional District 24 is currently occupied by Suzanne Kosmas the owner of Prestige Properties (real estate) and a former Florida legislature. The reason she will be losing this fall can be summed up in one bad vote for health care. She had previously flip flopped on this issue but when the final vote came last March and thousands of her constituents were pleading with her not to vote for Obamacare she caved in and that was all she wrote. Bad choice in an R+3 district. She’s gone.
Florida District 24 Congressional Candidate Sandy Adams
Of the three challengers with a legitimate chance I have mixed feeling about all of them. Adams has the least amount of private sector experience and a criminal justice degree in a time when we need to understand the money bomb the Federal Reserve has hanging over our heads. Craig Miller was the last to enter the race and is the least known of the three. Miller has also been endorsed by the far left Orlando Sentinel which gives Libertarians the chills. Karen Diebel is the Republican establishment candidate having been endorsed by Mike Huckabee. She clearly has the most potential but has not achieved what she is capable of. This is a contest of imperfect choices but here goes.
Sandy Adams has been a Florida House representative in District 33 for the last eight so she has excellent name recognition. She was a law enforcement officer for 17 years and her mannerisms reflect that ability to cut the small talk and get to the issues. Everyone likes her direct and helpful approach for her constituents. That is defiantly a huge positive for her.
She voted for the billion dollar boondoggle known locally as Sun Rail translated a huge government waste of money on a train through our communities that will snarl traffic and add to congestion. This is a huge negative on her record and why it is so painful to support her but the alternatives seem worse. What was she thinking?
On the positive side she is for states rights and she has pledged to not accept earmarks until the process is reformed. She is not the worse RINO in the Florida Legislature but no one will confuse her record with Marco Rubio’s.
When she is in Washington her door will always be open to the “small people.” And I guess that’s what it comes down to in this race. With Miller not even living in the district he will be surrounded by his business buddies in the restaurant industry. Diebel will be surrounded by her aristocratic friends in Winter Park and where does that leave the average guy? With no representation. I know Adams will be my representative and not my master. The other two?
Craig Miller is the former CEO of Ruth Chris Steak House
Craig Miller is the former CEO of Ruth Chris Steak House and very polished and concise in his discussion of issues. When asked by the Orlando Sentinel why he was fired in 2008 he was candid and up front that the new management didn’t like his performance. When he was asked did his companies ever hire illegals he was candid and said yes they did. That kind of honesty is common in the private business world but rare in government. He is a strait talker much like Adams.
On the negative side he was endorsed by the Orlando Sentinel. Anytime the Orlando Sentinel likes a candidate for national office you need to wonder what they know and question their ulterior motives. He is the least know candidate in the race. Both his opponents have a track record to look at. Miller doesn’t.
Miller seems like a hoarse trader who will swap this for that. We don’t need that kind of person in congress. We need cold hearted ideologues that will refuse to negotiate with the progressives infiltrating every orifice of the federal government. People who are repelled by progressives and feel violated being around them. We have a $13.3 trillion dollar debt and transfer payments are consuming 44.7% of the federal budget. The time for negotiation has come and gone. Miller seems like the guy always looking to get the best deal from the other side and the country has its back against the wall. He’s a great guy and I wish he had more of a public track record or was more economically Austrian in his approach. Living in the district would also help.
Winter Park Commissioner Karen Diebel
Karen Diebel is the biggest disappointment in this race. She has the best education and most compelling personal story but has repeatedly fallen short of her potential time after time. She is running a 1990 Republican campaign supporting Social Security and all the entitlement programs at a time when the national deficit is 92% of the GDP. Surly she understands that we cannot sustain Social Security without raising payroll taxes to at least 18% by 2020. Combined with a projected debt that if it continues might be 120% of GDP? 150% of GDP?
She is touted as a leader but shies away from controversy and can give a completely flat speech when the pressure is on her to deliver. There have been complaints about her following and not leading in her role as Winter Park commissioner. Todd Long is a leader. Adams is not afraid to lead. We don’t need a back marker in District 24 in congress.
You just have to stand back and wonder why her parents wasted their money sending her to Notre Dame for a business degree. Why is this lady refusing to acknowledge reality and at least give some sort of halfway plausible defense of Social Security. Please explain how the Ponzi scheme is going to work in 2042, I am all ears. Shall we let 60 million Mexicans and Central Americans enter the United States so we can continue paying into the system making it viable? Please let us know the plan. Inquiring minds want to know.
Deon Long is the most Libertarian an “Austrian” of all the candidates. The sentimental favorite for freedom loving voters.
Hey look I like to go to work during the week, drink some Jack Daniels and be intimate with the wife on the weekends. I like the American dream of being stupid and enjoying life just as much as the rest of America does. Times change, bad people get power and the widow to take back the country is narrowing and closing by the day. I don’t want to hear a 1990’s politician in 2010.
I don’t want to be a super economist any more than Diebel wants to criticize Social Security but now is the time for all good men and women to rise up to the occasion. I was blessed with the ability for economics and math. I have the degrees in economics and math. I feel compelled to offer up the best analysis I can to anyone who will listen of the danger this country is in and offer solutions as best I can. I would feel like a complete jerk in 2020 when the USA has stagnated to USSR circa 1990 status if I didn’t do what I could to change the course that we are on.
That money bomb out there is real Mrs. Diebel and if you have any business talent we would like to see it. Defending the stats quo is not good enough. In ten years my kids will know what I did and what I stood for. Your kids are watching you and what you do today. Here is a video of the Austrian economics and the Keynesian economics in 2006. You are on the side of the Keynesian. Bad choice and you will look just as ignorant 10 years from now as these Keynesian clowns do now. I may not have a $1.9 million dollar house but I do understand business and use my degrees to help and explain to others what is happening today.
Former Top Gun fighter pilot Tom Garcia is the Tea Party favorite
Deon Long has been the biggest surprise in this race. He has come out of nowhere to raise a very respectable $161,000. He is probably the most “Austrian” economically orientated of the candidates. He supports the gold standard and does see problems with our nation’s debt structure. Everybody likes Deon and we all will be pulling for him come August 24, 2010. I wish he had a realistic chance and would jump up and down with joy if he won.
Tom Garcia is another disappointment in this race. He is the best fit for “Tea Party” candidate but never has been a factor to date. He has raised $55,000 to date. His volunteer army is modest but dedicated. He is a great public speaker and on paper he should have done much better. Diebel, Miller and Adams have all sucked the oxygen out of this race leaving very little for Long and Garcia.
Come August 24, 2010 it would not surprise me to see Miller pull this out. His fund raising is at $620,000 far ahead of Adams at $365,000. Adams best chance is for her name recognition and reputation to carry the day. If she does she can thank her tenacity and army of volunteers who have been working for many months to get her message out. Sandy is a very honest and hard worker and I would be proud to have her as my congressional representative. Good luck Sandy.
August 19th, 2010 at 9:44 am
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September 1st, 2010 at 9:35 am
While the court poets and media glitterati quibble over the ‘professional’ Left and Right, the country sinks into a greater recession, a deeper depression, and widening disdain among the flourishing rich, glaring down below at the languishing middle and lower classes’ descent into feudal poverty.
The protracted war crises, the deconstruction of education, the expanding fall-out of worker abuse that is culminating in mass unemployment, the degradation of the Gulf of Mexico and world environment – all results of decades of mismanagement and lack of political vision and expedience. Millionaires, billionaires and political royalty crowd the 2010 electoral system, hoping to get a crack at the wheel, in hopes of adding yet another peacock feather to one’s cap full of ‘accomplishments.’
And by all measures citizens grow increasingly uneasy at their state of affairs. Even accountants are increasingly glum about the American future. Elections are coming fast on the horizon – but no one is excited. Why not?
Perhaps because they sense that long after the elections have passed, nothing will have substantively changed. Some new faces. Maybe. But new policies? Voters should know better, when they elect representatives that think government is about sales, marketing and corporate business, and hence, put corporate motives and profits ahead of people. It’s not – government is about social justice and legal fairness in the commonwealth of society.
So why don’t they vote anew? Embrace a worthy risk, engage a new line of flight toward a different American progress that is not the same as the worn decades long passed, but still we suffer? All we need is a couple of hundred thousand votes in the right direction, no? Left? Right? Green.
Hope. It means something different than pulling the straight ticket we’ve collectively heaved for the last decades in recent memory. That idea has gotten us to – well, where we are – and whether we meant to or not, the ritual flushing of hope down the toilet every election cycle. America in absentia.
Hope. Seek out the option, the alternative, wherever you are – but mostly, cultivate the courage of the conviction most of us share, which is that we wish to cultivate better times for more people. It should be fairly evident which candidates not only stand for that kind of progress, but whom will actually make that kind of change and progress once elected – there won’t be many of them, so it should be easy to decide.
Hope is a concept that will move society forward, but only if the arrow shaft of new political will and activism is tethered to the arrowhead of hopeful justice via the election of new candidates. Progressive political activism only works when there are progressive political candidates to activate and elect, and voters in turn, uphold their responsibility to activate, support and elect them.
Please support our campaign for U.S. Representative in Congress, and be sure to check out our new TV ad. If you would like a bumper sticker, please send us a note!:
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Thank you,
Nicholas Ruiz III
Green Party candidate for U.S. Representative
Political advertisement paid for and approved by
Nicholas Ruiz III, Green Party candidate for Congress
Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
NRIII for Congress 2010
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Editor, Kritikos
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Director, Florida Forum for Social Justice
http://intertheory.org/ffsj.htm