October 27 Newsletter

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BALLOT RECOMMENDATIONS

US Senate - Val Demings
US Congress – Joanne Terry
Governor – Charlie Crist
Attorney General – Aramis Ayala
Chief Financial Officer – Adam Hattersley
Commissioner of Agriculture – Noami Ester Blemur
State Representative District 34 – Karen Greb
School Board - Cynthia Gibbs

Supreme Court recommendations: Vote to retain:
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Canaday, Charles T. - NO
Couriel, John D. - NO
Grosshans, Jamie - NO
Labarga, Jorge - YES
Polston, Ricky - NO

Amendments: Recommendations:

No on 1
Yes on 2
Yes on 3
Yes on Bond to Acquire Lands to Protect Water Resources



"No one can do everything,
but everyone can do something."


VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES

We need everyone to vote - only 25% of Democrats have voted as of this morning! Please tell your Dem neighbors to vote! Text all your IRC friends and tell them to vote Blue and to vote for Cindy Gibbs. Then tell them to text all their friends as well! We need turnout!

PLEASE HELP GET OUT THE VOTE!

Weekly GOTV Rallies

This Saturday, October 29 at 10:00 a.m. we will gather to wave signs to encourage people to VOTE! in Vero Beach at the corner of Hwy 60 and 58th Ave. Signs will be provided, and you are welcome to bring your own!


We will deliver GET OUT THE VOTE information to Democrats in Fellsmere Precinct 2 and Gifford Precinct 16 on Saturday, October 29 and Sunday October 30 9am - 4pm. We are reaching out to Democrats who have not yet voted in this election. Please contact us at the office if you are available to join the canvassing teams for any period of time between those hours this weekend.
We will also need help preparing the information packets on Friday in the office.

Contacting Voters

Volunteers have contacted tens of thousands of Indian River County voters via text and postcards, and we will continue to send text messages and postcards to thousands more potential voters in the coming weeks.

If you have an hour or two to help prepare postcards for the Cynthia Gibbs for School Board campaign, you can pick up postcards to be done at home or you can do them in the Democrats of Indian River office at 2345 14th Ave. Vero Beach 32960.

THANK YOU VOLUNTEERS!

CALENDAR

Saturday, October 29, 2022

10:00 a.m. - SIGN WAVING RALLY to VOTE BLUE in Vero Beach at the CVS corner of 58th Ave and Hwy 60. Signs are provided or you can bring your own.


Sunday October 30,2022

1:00 p.m. - Sign Waving for Cindy! Join the Cynthia Bibbs for School Board Rally on the 17th St Bridge. Signs provided.

Tuesday, November 1, 2022

For agenda and meeting information go to [link removed]
[link removed]




[link removed]

Thursday, November 3, 2022


www.cityoffellsmere.org/citycouncil


ANNUAL BIG BIRD BLESSING

We are collecting donations at our office at 2345 14th Ave Vero Beach 32967 to help provide 1000 Holiday meals to those in need in Indian River County. Especially needed:

CANNED CHICKEN BROTH
EVAPORATED MILK
IDAHOAN MASHED POTATOES
STOVE TOP STUFFING
CANNED GREEN BEANS

Please visit [link removed] for more information, to volunteer, or to make CASH DONATIONS.

THANK YOU!


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Democratic Women’s Club

The DWC Book Group will meet at the Indian River County Brackett Library at 6155 College Lane on Friday, October 28 from 2:00-4:00 p.m. We will discuss Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny's book "State of Terror." Any questions about the book group can be addressed to Maryann and Rita at ** (mailto:[email protected])
[email protected]


CANDIDATE DONATION SITES

** charliecrist.com ([link removed])

** valdemings.com ([link removed])

** JoanneTerry.com ([link removed])

www.KarenGreb.com

** [link removed] ([link removed])

Please donate to the Democrats of Indian River

We will appreciate any contributions you can make to help fund our GET-OUT-THE-VOTE efforts as we come down to the final stretch. You can donate at DemocratsOfIndianRiver.org or you can mail or stop by our office at 2345 14th Ave.

Many thanks to all of you who have donated in this current election cycle. It is very much appreciated!

VOTE BLUE in 2022!

LETTER TO THE EDITOR


All educators want parents to be involved in their children's education, but 'parental rights extremists' distort the issues.



Parental rights extremists have dragged down our school district for years.

They grab attention but don’t help our students and schools. They rush to break the system so they can "fix it."

But the problem is them. They have long outstayed their welcome.

Parents like me want to focus on serious issues — school facilities, school funding, teacher support, mental health, meaningful school safety, and embarrassingly low national academic achievement.

Parental rights extremists, like Moms for Liberty, remain stuck on misguided crusades. More childish than any middle schooler, they show up to school board meetings with sticky notes marking book pages. They angrily list how many curse words or explicit scenes are in each book.

During their red-faced rants they never say what the book is about or why it was written. We just hear a laundry list of supposed offenses.

Books are doors to other worlds and experiences. Why do we need books that disturb, shock or even disgust us? These books have hard lessons to teach the reader. Maybe the book shows the horror of being trafficked or abused. Maybe it shows a twisted, bleak future is much closer than we think. Maybe it shows how someone falls prey to a cult.

There are all kinds of books in the world — happy, inspiring, shocking, depressing. No book is for everyone, but every book is for someone. Parental rights extremists don’t care about other parent’s rights. They want to decide what every child reads, learns and thinks, not just their own. That is the opposite of liberty.

Push back and tell them to keep their parenting to themselves. Do not co-parent with parental rights extremists, like Moms for Liberty.

David Dinan, Vero Beach

TCPalm

LOCAL

Republican Executive Committee Endorses Criminal for Sebastian City Council

The decision by the county’s Republican Executive Committee last month to endorse a convicted criminal, Damien H. Gilliams, in the supposedly nonpartisan Sebastian City Council race wasn’t the group’s first wrongheaded move.

Last year, the REC voted to publicly censure then-School Board Chairman Brian Barefoot – a lifelong Republican and former Indian River Shores mayor – because he dared support a school mask mandate in defiance of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ order.

The ill-advised attack on Barefoot, who commands respect in both business and academic circles, prompted more than 30 REC members to resign.

In May 2021, a jury found Gilliams guilty on three counts of violating Florida’s Sunshine Law and one count of perjury, all in connection with a clandestine meeting he held with Vice Mayor Charles Mauti and council member Pamela Parris at Sebastian City Hall.

Circuit Judge Michael Linn sentenced Gilliams to 300 days in jail and imposed a $1,500 fine, but the former councilman has appealed his conviction.

Despite a court-imposed, no-contact order that requires him to remain at least 100 feet away from some Sebastian officials – including the city manager and city clerk – Gilliams is back on the ballot.

And he has the REC’s backing.

Gilliams was among 14 Republican state and local candidates endorsed in an REC flyer mailed earlier this month.

““I don’t know why it was done, but it’s very inappropriate,”,” longtime County Commissioner and REC member Joe Flescher said of the decision to include Gilliams in the flyer. “I don’t think it reflects the will of a majority of the REC’s membership, just a small group that has seen its influence grow.

“It’s very discouraging.”

Several other longtime local Republicans, who asked that their names not be published, also were puzzled by the REC’s decision to support Gilliams.

One prominent Republican said the REC has lost its relevance locally since being “taken over by a fringe group of renegades.”

Indeed, many county Republicans say the tactics and tone of the REC have changed noticeably over the past two years, since the arrival of new members from the “We The People Indian River County” group.

“We lost 30-plus traditional Republicans after the Barefoot censure,” another now-former REC member said, “and they’ve been replaced by 30 new members from the fringe.”

REC Chairman Jay Kramer tried to distance himself from the flyer.

Kramer said last week not all local Republican candidates were included in the flyer. In fact, there was no mention of the Vero Beach City Council race, which includes Taylor Dingle, founder and president of the county’s Young Republicans club, and Shawn Frost, the county’s Republican state committeeman who is seeking election to the county’s Soil & Water Conservation District board.


Ray McNulty

Vero News

STATE


Crist and DeSantis Debate Highlights

Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist unloaded on each other Monday night in a debate that encapsulated the tumultuous last few years in a state wracked by the pandemic and highly-polarized politics, tussling over everything from abortion to inflation to COVID-19 policies.

Sharing the stage together at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce for their first and only matchup before a raucous audience, the candidates vividly brought to life a race that, at times, has seemed to be an afterthought nationally as DeSantis built formidable leads in everything from fundraising to polling and voter registration. The one-hour debate was broadcast live on TV stations across Florida.

Determined to take advantage of his last and best chance to change the trajectory of the race, Crist packed in plenty of punches, frequently returning to the abortion issue that his campaign has centered around. He said “right to choose” at least eight times during the evening in reference to women’s rights on abortion.

Asked about Florida’s affordable housing problem in the first question of the debate, Crist led off by declaring that the race is “a stark contrast between someone who believes in a woman’s right to choose” and a governor who “has signed a bill that would restrict that right, even in cases of rape or incest.” DeSantis signed a bill banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy with no exceptions.

DeSantis also was quick to pivot to his preferred political terrain, and was more aggressive in attacking Crist than at any point in the race so far, which has mostly featured the Republican governor ignoring his Democratic opponent in favoring of jabbing at President Joe Biden.

DeSantis didn’t abandon Biden as his foil, though, instead working to tie Crist to the unpopular president who has seen his poll numbers plummet amid historic levels of inflation.

“Charlie Crist has voted with Joe Biden 100% of the time,” DeSantis said in his first remarks of the debate, arguing that what he described as the “Biden-Crist” agenda is driving up costs across the board.

Crist tried to turn DeSantis’s focus on Biden into a liability, saying the governor cares more about running for president and trying to unseat Biden than solving Florida’s problems.

“Gov. DeSantis has taken his eye off the ball; he’s focused on running for president in 2024,” Crist said.

That line of attack continued throughout the debate and appeared to catch DeSantis off guard at one point, with Crist pressing him to declare he’ll serve all four years of a second term as governor.

“Ron, Ron you talk about Joe Biden a lot. I understand. You think you’re going to be running against him,” Crist said. “I can see how you might get confused but you’re running for governor. … Why don’t you look in the eyes of the people of the state of Florida and say to them, if you’re reelected, you will serve a full four years as governor. Yes or no? Yes or no, Ron?”

DeSantis stood stone-faced without answering as Crist pressed him, with the debate lapsing into silence at one point. The moderator, WPE C-CBS12 news anchor anchor Liz Quirantes, reminded Crist that the candidates had agreed not to ask each other questions, before turning to DeSantis for a response.

“I just want to make things very, very clear,” DeSantis said. “The only wornout old donkey I’m looking to put out to pasture is Charlie Crist.”

The aggressive back-and-forth continued as the candidates fielded questions about CO VID-19 policies, the state’s property insurance crisis, the inflation problem and culture war battles over education issues.

DeSantis is emphasizing his COVID- 19 response as he runs for reelection, touting the “free state of Florida.”

DeSantis said he “rejected Charlie Crist’s lockdown” rhetoric, arguing Crist would have pursued COVID-19 policies harmful to Florida’s economy.

“Ron, that’s rich. You’re the only governor in the history of Florida that’s ever shut down our schools,” Crist responded.

While DeSantis has been eager to emphasize his COVID-19 policies on the campaign trail, he has largely avoided another key economic concern for many: the state’s affordability issues.

Crist turned a question about property insurance into an extended attack on the governor’s record on pocketbook issues, saying he has done nothing to stop increases in electric rates while labeling his gas tax cut a month before the election “so political it’s, it’s disgusting.”

“The Charlie Crist plan for homeowner’s insurance is to ... chase the private insurers out,” DeSantis said, arguing that allowing state-run Citizens Property Insurance to keep growing would “end up capsizing the state of Florida.”

DeSantis also tied the property insurance issue to inflation, which he said is driving up property insurance costs by making home repairs more expensive.

“These are the effects of the Biden-Crist policies, the worst inflation in 40 years,” DeSantis said.

Asked what he would do to tackle inflation, DeSantis pointed to his efforts to cut taxes for baby items such as diapers and reduce tolls.

Inflation has put Democrats on the defensive, but Crist tried to go on attack, saying: “You should have done that the first year you were in office, I mean aren’t you supposed to be helping us all four years instead of just the last year?”

Republicans also believe they have an advantage on cultural issues and have been aggressively pushing policies on transgender children, something the debate moderator asked about.

DeSantis approved HB 1557, the Parental Rights in Education act, which is derided by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The bill outlaws teaching about gender identity or sexual orientation in grades K-3.

The governor also has pushed to outlaw certain medical procedures for transgender children in Florida and signed a bill banning transgender girls from playing girls sports.

“It’s all about culture wars, it’s all about dividing us,” Crist said. “I’m a uniter.”

“I think denying girls and women athletes the right to compete fairly, I think that’s divisive,” DeSantis responded. “I think it’s divisive to rip opportunities away from our girls in the state of Florida.”

The debate marked the start of the closing two-week campaign stretch before Election Day on Nov. 8. Early voting started Monday across the state, while mail voting began weeks ago.

Nearly 1.2 million mail-in ballots have been cast so far and Democrats only lead by 47,000 ballots, a small margin for a party that needs to dominate in mail-in voting to make up for the GOP’s advantage in in-person voting.

DeSantis has a dramatic fundraising advantage, with $106 million in cash on hand as of Oct. 14, compared to $2.2 million for Crist. Meanwhile, registered Republican voters surpassed registered Democratic voters this cycle for the first time in Florida history. The GOP also benefits from a favorable national political climate.

The two most recent public polls by Florida Atlantic University and Mason Dixon both showed DeSantis leading Crist by 11 percentage points, a huge margin in Florida, where the last three races for governor have been decided by a percentage point or less.

DeSantis won the governor’s mansion in 2018 by the closest margin in Florida history.

A Telemundo/LX News survey of Florida Hispanic voters released this week even found DeSantis winning that demographic by seven percentage points, a bad sign for Democrats who carried the Hispanic vote in losing 2016, 2018 and 2020 campaigns, according to exit polls.

Large contingents of DeSantis and Crist supporters packed into the 1,200-seat theater for the debate, cheering loudly for their candidates.

The intense audience reactions sometimes interrupted and overwhelmed the action on stage, and led to two Crist supporters being escorted out by law enforcement.

The intensity of the political moment also was illustrated by the scene outside the debate venue, where groups of De-Santis and Crist partisans faced off in the street before entering the theater.

DeSantis supporters arrived early with signs and flags. Crist supporters arrived later, marching through the street in pink shirts and pink signs reading “For Choice, For Charlie.” They chanted “No Charlie, no choice” and “Hey hey, ho ho, Ron DeSantis has got to go.”

A DeSantis supporter with a bullhorn responded by declaring that “abortion is murder” and “baby killers are in the house.”

Eventually, DeSantis supporters mostly gravitated to one side of the street and Crist supporters mostly congregated on the other, with police officers in the middle. A visual representation of a divided Sunshine State.


Zac Anderson

USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA

FEDERAL

Armed Individuals In Tactical Gear Are Showing Up At Ballot Boxes


Armed individuals dressed in tactical gear are surveilling ballot drop boxes in ** Arizona ([link removed])
, raising concerns about intimidation during early voting in the midterm elections. The Maricopa County Elections Department said two people with weapons were spotted at a ballot drop box in Mesa on Friday. The two wore masks to obscure their faces and left the area after the county sheriff’s office responded.

On Saturday night, four people ― two of them reportedly armed with handguns ― got into a confrontation at the same drop box when another individual arrived and attempted to record their license plate information.

“He chased over at me and pushed me and grabbed me as I was pulling the cloth of his license plate to video his license plate,” the woman, who was dressed as a nun, ** told KTVK News ([link removed])
.

“I just felt fair is fair — they’re videotaping voters’ license plates, so I didn’t think it was really a big deal to photograph theirs.”

Garrett Archer, a data analyst at Arizona’s KNXV-TV News, shared a photo of the obscured license plate in question, noting with some irony that the ballot-box watchers don’t want their own plates photographed.

Right-wing groups have been staking out ballot boxes across the country and taking photos of people and their license plates as they cast votes in next month’s elections, all with ** the explicit encouragement ([link removed])
of Republican politicians.

Arizona GOP lawmakers have repeatedly urged the ** self-styled vigilantism ([link removed])
, even calling on followers to install hidden cameras at ballot boxes and to trail voters to and from their cars.

Last week, the Arizona secretary of state ** referred a report of voter intimidation ([link removed])
to the state attorney general’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice after a voter reported being “approached and followed by a group of individuals” while trying to drop off a ballot.

“We are deeply concerned about the safety of individuals who are exercising their constitutional right to vote and who are lawfully taking their early ballot to a drop box,” the Maricopa County Elections Department ** said in a statement ([link removed])
.

“Uninformed vigilantes outside Maricopa County’s drop boxes are not increasing election integrity,” the department added. “Instead they are leading to voter intimidation complaints.”

Ryan Grenoble
** HuffPost ([link removed])



VIDEO of the WEEK

SNL Weekend Update
DeSantis' White Go-Go Boots and
Herschel Walker's Fake Badge

[link removed]


Office Hours

Monday through Friday 10am to 3pm

2345 14^th Ave. Suite 7
Vero Beach 32960

(772) 226-5267

[email protected]


STAY SAFE OUT THERE!


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