Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz blasted Gov. Rick Scott for failing to use his clout to push the House to approve a Medicaid expansion that could cover 1 million uninsured Floridians.

The U.S. congresswoman from Weston also accused House Speaker Will Weatherford and the GOP-dominated House of “slavishness ideological dogma” behind their rejection of the Senate plan crafted by Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart.

“Sickness, illness and death…will be their legacy,” Wasserman Schultz told the Senate Democratic Caucus this morning.

Wasserman Schultz, a one-time Florida legislator who served in both the state House and Senate, also blamed Scott for “having a deathbed conversion” about the Medicaid expansion and failing to use his bully pulpit to push the House to pass it.

With three work days left until the legislative ends on Friday, Scott has focused primarily on his two priorities – $2,500 across-the-board pay raises for teachers and a manufacturing equipment tax break – and is scheduled to work from 8 a.m until 2:30 p.m. today, including photo opportunity for the last half hour of the day.

The final week is “the most frenzied, intense time of the entire legislative session,” Wasserman Schultz said.

“The governor and his staff should be in the trenches working the phones, working the halls, doing everything they can to pass their priorities,” she said. “It’s just demonstrative repeatedly of his utter lack of leadership.”

Scott, who is running for reelection, is “trying to have his cake and eat it, too” by publicly supporting the proposal to provide health insurance for the poor, which has broad support from voters, but doing nothing to force the House to act, Wasserman Schultz said.

“Leaders take the initiative. They don’t wait to be asked. We’ll need to elect somebody else.”

She sidestepped a question about whether former Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat, would be a better replacement.

“I have no idea and I’m not here to talk about that,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz also praised Florida House Democrats for “rightfully” slowing down the session with a procedural maneuver forcing all legislation to be read in full in retaliation for the GOP’s refusal to support the Senate Medicaid plan.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who also served as governor, also appeared at the Senate Dems meeting this morning.

He congratulated them for joining with several GOP lawmakers to defeat a controversial “parent trigger” bill and a pension overhaul for state workers.

Florida’s Democratic U.S. House members, including Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have asked the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to hold a hearing regarding Florida’s voting law that shrunk the number of early voting days, required more voters to cast provisional ballots and was intended to curb voter registration by outside groups.

The Democratic delegation asked for the hearing based on a report in The Palm Beach Post on Sunday that detailed how Republican Party of Florida consultants and staff sought to alter Florida’s early voting laws in the aftermath of the 2008 election to curb Democratic turnout.

“In light of these allegations, we are extremely concerned over the integrity of this law and the justification for its implementation,” U.S. Reps. Alcee Hastings, Corrine Brown, Kathy Castor, Ted Deutch, Frederica Wilson and Wasserman Schultz wrote to U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Chairman Martin Castro in a letter sent today. “As you know, trust in our democracy is what holds our country together. Voters must be able to trust that their elected officials are acting in their best interest.”

The commission held hearings in Florida in the aftermath of the protracted 2000 election and made numerous recommendations based on its findings, many of which were included in the Help America Vote Act passed by Congress in 2002.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz gave Post on Politics a glimpse into what her party will do next week during their national convention in Charlotte.

Wasserman Schultz, in Tampa to counter the GOP’s national convention, also had a few snarky words for what she’d seen far from the opposition.

“Our convention next week is designed as being the most open, accessible, inclusive, participatory presidential nominating convention in history,” Wasserman Schultz said over a mushroom omelet at the Spain restaurant in downtown Tampa.

“We made a decision that our convention was not going to be the invitation-only, exclusive, only-the-elite-need-apply affair that this one has been,” she said.

“Ours is going to be one that, when we finish on Thursday night, will have shot President Obama out of a cannon into the fall campaign and leave with an enthusiastic, fired-up, broad base of supporters who understand that he’s been fighting for the middle class and working families and that he is someone who hasn’t done things the same old way.”

Here’s DWS’s take on the GOP’s glitzy fete thus far.

“I think that they have bent over backwards to run a fact-free convention,” she said. “Their convention has been a pretty nasty barrage of criticism that if they took a mirror and turned it around would be reflective of many of the policies that they’re criticizing that they themselves have embraced.”

Wasserman Schultz blasted GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who blamed Obama for an auto plant shutting down in Ryan’s hometown, Janesville, Wis. She said the plant was slated for closure before Obama was elected four years ago.

That was “a big jaw-dropper,” Wasserman Schultz said.

“It’s utter malarkey,” she said. “My overall sentiment so far is it’s really disappointing how cynical they obviously are and how willing they are to just say anything to get elected. We should aspire to better things in American politics,” she said.

Democrats continued Thursday to blast new voter laws in Florida and 13 other states which they say have been crafted by Republican leaders to blunt turnout and damage President Obama’s re-election bid next year.

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Davie, said the party has launched a new website www.protectingthevote.org aimed at informing voters of the new standards — and rallying support for having them overturned. Florida’s law is already the subject of  a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and voting rights organizations.

A U.S. Senate subcommittee also plans to hold a hearing in Florida in coming weeks on the new law, following a request by Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who said the state’s new standard violates “basic rights.”

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, Wasserman Schultz said Republicans are out to “rig elections.”

“By now, it’s well known they’re determined to roll back the right to vote and skew the 2012 presidential election,” Wasserman Schultz said.

Democrats and their allies have blistered the new Florida law, which reduces turnout by reducing the number of days available for early voting, while also imposing tighter reporting standards for third-party groups that register voters.

 A study earlier this year by the Brennan Center for Justice found the new laws could keep 5 million people nationwide from voting next year.

Supporters of the measures deny any partisan motivation, instead saying the stricter standards are intended to reduce voter-fraud.

Wasserman Schultz, though, isn’t buying that.

A 74-page report released Thursday by the Democratic Party concluded, “every major investigation into voter fraud in the United States has arrived at the same conclusion: There is almost none. The real fraud has been the use of baseless allegations to change election laws in ways that will lead to partisan Republican gains.”

 

 

 

 

Democrats unleashed an attack ad – “Trapped” – targeting Mitt Romney in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama. The movie trailer-style TV ad portrays Romney’s political career as “the story of two men trapped in one body” and directs viewers to a longer, online ad entitled “Mitt v. Mitt”

The ads characterize the former Massachusetts governor “for what he truly is: a flip-flopper, a candidate without core beliefs, and someone who’s simply without conviction,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters on a conference call this morning.

“The American people appreciate that there are many different points of view in our diverse nation. That is something that people expect. They just don’t expect one candidate to espouse all of them,” Wasserman Schultz, a Congresswoman from Weston, said.

Democrats are feverishly portraying Romney, in Florida on fundraising sweep tonight and tomorrow, as inconsistent in an effort to peel off support from conservative GOP voters with six weeks until Republicans begin choosing their nominee. They’re targeting Romney although recent polls show Newt Gingrich at the top of the GOP pack.

The DNC ad, showing contradictory clips of Romney on health care and abortion, is running in Albuquerque, N.M., Raleigh, N.C., Columbus, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Washington.

“From the creator of `I’m running for office for Pete’s sake,’ comes the story of two men trapped in one body,” the ad says.

The four-minute video, entitled “Mitt versus Mitt,” also includes clips of Romney reversing his positions on issues.

Barry Richard, the lawyer who was instrumental in keeping Al Gore out of the White House a decade ago, is hosting a fundraiser for President Obama at his Tallahassee home on Wednesday.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Congresswoman from South Florida, will be the guest star at the fundraiser (suggested donations are $100) at the home of Richard and his wife Allison Tant. Wasserman Schultz served in both the state House and Senate before going to Washington.

Richard, a silver-haired Democrat, was a key figure in the historic recount legal battle known as “Bush vs. Gore,” arguing on behalf of George W. Bush all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Democratic congressional candidate Lois Frankel still hasn’t unveiled any policy positions on a campaign website, but she quickly launched a site last week to capitalize on the uproar surrounding Republican U.S. Rep. Allen West‘s email rant against Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The Frankel campaign put up a site called WestHatesWomen.com.

Does she really believe West “hates” women? Read Frankel’s answer in this week’s Politics column.

U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, turned down several TV appearances Wednesday in the aftermath of his scathing email to U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. But he went ahead with a previously planned evening radio interview with conservative talker Mark Levin and said that, as a black conservative, he’s subjected to a double standard in the politics of victimization.

“The thing that really most aggravates me is that there’s this double standard in that the people on the hard left can continue to attack conservatives and especially minority conservatives and female conservatives, but yet when all of a sudden you stand up and you say that you will not tolerate this any more, then they claim to be a victim, which I find just absolutely laughable,” said West, whose attack on Wasserman Schultz has been branded “sexist” by some of his foes.

West also said: “People who are black conservatives — I grew up in the inner city, strong values, came from a strong military family and background — you know, what we do is we totally invalidate the liberal social welfare policies and programs.

“And you know, I’m a threat because I’m the guy that got off their 21st century plantation and they cannot afford to have a strong voice such as mine out there reverberating and resonating across this country. And even more so, they’re not used to anyone that says ‘I’m going to fight back against you.’ That is absolutely reprehensible to them.”

UPDATED with response from West’s office.

EMILY’s List, the political action committee that backs female candidates (almost exclusively Democrats) who support abortion rights, accused U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, of a “sexist, ugly attack” for his scathing Tuesday e-mail to U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston.

Not long after the PAC put out its statement, Democratic candidate Lois Frankel — who has been endorsed by EMILY’s List and used it for money-raising help in her primary against Patrick Murphy — weighed in with a statement criticizing West’s “out of control, rude, sexist and completely inappropriate remarks.”

Murphy piled on this morning, saying the House should censure West.

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U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, fired off an e-mail calling U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, “the most vile, unprofessional and despicable member of the U.S. House of Representatives” after she criticized West without naming him on the House floor late this afternoon.

The exchange between South Florida’s two most prominent congressional talking heads came during the House debate on a Republican “Cut, Cap and Balance” bill to slash the size of government in exchange for increasing the federal debt ceiling.

Wasserman Schultz, who’s also chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, blasted the GOP legislation and, clearly refering to West, called his support for the measure “unbelievable for a member from South Florida” because she says it will “end Medicare as we know it.”

West wasn’t present for Wasserman Schultz’s remarks, but quickly got wind of them and sent an e-mail to her a few minutes later, sending copies to House leaders from both parties.

“You are the most vile, unprofessional ,and despicable member of the US House of Representatives. If you have something to say to me, stop being a coward and say it to my face, otherwise, shut the heck up…You have proven repeatedly that you are not a Lady, therefore, shall not be afforded due respect from me!”

Read Wasserman Schultz’s remarks, West’s e-mail and other reactions after the jump…..

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Democratic National Committee Chairwoman and South Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz pounced on Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney‘s remark to some out-of-work Floridians this morning that he’s “also unemployed.”

Romney “chuckled” about his employment status while visiting a Tampa coffee shop and chatting with unemployed people about the economy, The New York Times reported, adding that “The eight people gathered around him, who had just finished talking about strategies of finding employment in a slow-to-recover economy, joined him in laughter.”

Wasserman Schultz was not amused.

Read her comments after the jump…

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Palm Beach County Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel, who invited U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner to be the keynote speaker for the local party’s annual fund-raising dinner last fall, had a Sophoclean take on today’s news that the crotch-tweeting New York Democrat is resigning.

“This is like a classic Greek tragedy — great hero, fatal flaw, hubris, disaster,” said Siegel, a former New York state Senator who has known Weiner for more than a decade.

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HOLLYWOOD — Ending a week of silence on the matter, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston today called on crotch-photographing U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., to resign.

Here’s her statement, just released by the DNC:

“It is with great disappointment that I call on Representative Anthony Weiner to resign. The behavior he has exhibited is indefensible and Representative Weiner’s continued service in Congress is untenable. This sordid affair has become an unacceptable distraction for Representative Weiner, his family, his constituents and the House – and for the good of all, he should step aside and address those things that should be most important – his and his family’s well-being.”

Wasserman Schultz called the controversy over Weiner’s use of his Twitter account a “personal matter” before Weiner admitted sending a lewd photo to a 21-year-old college student. After Weiner’s admission, Wasserman Schultz was silent on the matter aside from a spokesman’s statement that she agreed with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s call for an ethics investigation.

Pelosi today also called on Weiner to resign.

Wasserman Schultz is expected to speak here later today at the Florida Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner.

Former Democratic U.S. Sen. and former Florida Gov. Bob Graham said on Fox News’ Hannity tonight that crotch-tweeting U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., should resign.

“I think that he needs to recognize reality and move on,” Graham said.

Weiner’s prospects for political survival appear to be diminishing with the emergence of a new lewd photo today and at least half a dozen Democratic House members calling for his resignation.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman and Broward County U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who repeatedly called Weiner’s troubles a “personal matter” last week, has not commented since Weiner confessed Monday to sending a lewd picture to a 21-year-old college student. A spokesman said Wasserman Schultz supports an ethics investigation of Weiner.

As of late Tuesday, Broward County U.S. Rep. and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had not made a public statement about the Twitter sexcapades of U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.

But her congressional spokesman, Jonathan Beeton, told a Miami TV station that Wasserman Schultz supports House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi‘s call for an ethics investigation of the crotch-tweeting congressman.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus pooh-poohed the investigation idea on NBC’s Today show this morning and said Wasserman Schultz and Pelosi should press Weiner to resign.

Before Weiner’s admission Monday that he sent a sexually suggestive photo to a 21-year-old college student and had engaged in “inappropriate” Internet communications with about half a dozen women, Wasserman Schultz repeatedly dismissed the controversy as a “personal matter” for Weiner to deal with.

Wasserman Schultz was similarly evasive Tuesday night when she entered the White House dinner for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. A pool report credited Wasserman Schultz with the “best non-answer/ biggest dodge of the night” after she was asked “Who are you wearing tonight?”

Her reply? “Thank you very much.”

Broward County U.S. Rep. and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz says the crotch-shot controversy surrounding lawyered-up Democratic New York Rep. and Twitter enthusiast Anthony Weiner is a “personal matter.”

In fact, Wasserman Schultz used the phrase five times in just under a minute in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Read the Blitzer/Wasserman Schultz transcript after the jump…

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MIAMI — Air Force One just landed here as President Obama prepares to attend a fund-raiser in Miami Beach for Democratic Senate and House candidates.

Obama stepped off the plane about 5:30 p.m. with Sen. Bill Nelson and greeted a passel of Democratic elected officials on the tarmac at Miami International Airport: Chief Financial Officer and gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink; U.S. Rep. and Democratic Senate frontrunner Kendrick Meek of Miami; U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston; Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach.

Obama is to attend a fund-raiser at the Fountainebleu Hotel, then go to a solar energy plant in DeSoto County on Tuesday.

South Florida Democratic U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler, Ron Klein, Alcee Hastings and Debbie Wasserman Schultz today endorsed state Sen. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, to succeed Wexler in a special congressional election.

In addition to the display of endorsement firepower, Deutch’s campaign said it has already raised more than $200,000 in its first 10 days. And Deutch has about a dozen fund-raisers scheduled for the next six weeks, including one in Washington hosted by his congressional endorsers and events in New York and Cleveland.

Wexler is resigning in January to head the nonprofit Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation. A special election is expected in early 2010.

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A Republican hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz literally set his sights on the Broward County Democrat at a shooting range, according to press reports.

Robert Lowry was one of the Southeast Broward Republican Club who went on a shooting spree at a gun range and fired assault rifles at targets including a man in a headdress holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Lowry’s target was a silhouette of a human figure with the initials “DWS” next to the head.

The target practice drew criticism from state Sen. Ted Deutch, a Boca Raton Democrat, who issued a statement condemning the event.

“In a nation that has a tragic history of violence against our leaders it is unconscionable that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz’s opponent would fire an assault rifle at a silhouette bearing her name,” Deutch said.

“Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz is a dedicated public servant who has earned the respect of her constituents. She deserves far more than a halfhearted apology. The Republican Party of Florida should condemn this candidate in the strongest terms. Unfortunately, this is just the latest example of outrageous vitriol in our political discourse and it needs to stop,” he concluded.

Democratic St. Lucie County Commissioner Chris Craft, who’s challenging freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney of Tequesta, will attend a fund-raiser in Washington, D.C., Thursday at the home of a lobbyist whose clients include ACORN and other liberal groups. The invitation lists liberal U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, as a host.

In a Republican-leaning congressional district that favored John McCain over Barack Obama last year, the National Republican Congressional Committee is using the event to paint Craft as an out-of-touch liberal.

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