a little fun with iMovie

With apologies to Craig Ferguson, I think Bush was drinking a bit when he sat down with George Stephanopolous a couple weeks ago.

Video thank you card

What a great day! Our good friends at Down With Tyranny!, Blue America, and Christy at firedoglake posted this for everyone, youtube honors us with 53rd most watched video in one day, and Where's Moo loves it.

Oh, and the 110th Congress will still be a Democrat Congress in both Houses, which is remarkable, considering we ran elections even in a time of war. and all.

The video itself was quite fun to produce. Again, one man, a laptop, iMovie, stock footage, and lots of time between Blues Brothers shows can do a lot, with a little help from his friends.

St. Mel comes to do his faith healing

Central Floridians know Mel Martinez. Like most people nationally, the Schiavo memo from the junior senator's office reminded folks of the craven machinations of many people during the Schiavo debate. What's more insidious are Senator Martinez' actions during his 2004 primary battle with Bill McCollum. During this bitter struggle for the nomination, Martinez and McCollum were very close in the polls, until the fundamentalist McCollum painted Martinez as a liberal trial lawyer. Martinez hit back with a blistering series of negative attacks that caused the St. Petersburg Times to rescind its endorsement of Martinez.
The Orlando Sentinel related how "Martinez attacked McCollum as 'antifamily' and untrustworthy for his support of expanded stem-cell research and favoring a failed federal hate-crimes bill that would have protected gays and lesbians. The Martinez ad accused McCollum of appeasing 'the radical homosexual lobby.'"
(Bill McCollum, it should be known, is the least likely person in Florida State Government to wave a rainbow flag at Gay Days. McCollum is also staunchly pro-life, and will likely illustrate his passion for this position in his upcoming tenure as Florida's new attorney general. Even if one disagrees with McCollum, it can be said that at least his positions are solid, and not carefully analyzed for inherent political machinations.)
Martinez is a fast climbing political hack. He shot from the Orange County Commission into a cabinet post, and used his favors culled from the Bush administration to seek Senator Bob Graham's vacant seat in 2004. Given the trouncing Bush and company have taken not only in the polls, but the midterm elections, it seems ridiculous that Republicans would want this guy to continue in what has been such a failed direction. Then again, check out what Howie has to say about the decision to make Trent Lott the minority whip.
Martinez says he will keep his Senate seat during his tenure. Which means he will farm out all those nasty memos to disposable staffers.

Jane at FireDogLake is posting about our version of "Have You Had Enough?" Howie Klein posted about it with a new update here. I guess ol' Tip O'Neil didn't know how prescient he was when he said that all politics were local.

Favorite comment:
silverleaf says: (in a discussion about the Rahm Emmanuel effect)
November 8th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
umm, while I’m thrilled to give Howie loads and loads of props for his efforts in these elections, I doubt Rahm would have paid attention to a state FL election anyhow…. OTOH, Rahm is CLEARLY on notice that he’d better take notice of Scott when he decides to “go federal”.

Thanks, Howie!! You ROCK!



Thanks again to firedoglake and downwithtyranny!

We arrived at Room 39 just a few blocks from the Bill Nelson victory party around 8:30. Scott and Susannah Randolph were walking up the street behind us, when Scott received a concession phone call from Sheri McInvale. He walked in to a chorus of cheers and gave a great victory speech. The best quote? "The people of Orlando have spoken and they have stated that our votes are not for sale!" Thank you's were given, and then all gathered could concentrate on the other races still in limbo.

I introduced my father around, introducing him to the various people inside our campaign, and then the people outside of it that helped us out so much. Commissioner Patty Sheehan (who knows how to win elections), Orlando Weekly columnist Billy Manes (who my dad thinks looks like Rod Stewart), and a couple guys from the I.B.E.W. all were happy to be celebrating with us. I asked Billy to put me in his column, but now I'm afraid he will.

Cheers went up when the Democrats took the House. The slide show was well received, but in a twist of irony, the projector we used had no audio output. Sadly, Charlie Crist won the gubernatorial race, and Ric Keller will be our representative in the House. Bill Nelson won, which is also sad, only because Kitty Harris will fade off into obscurity to go work on that tell-all book.

The most important thing to celebrate, of course, was our victory. So many great things were accomplished in the course of the campaign. We beat an incumbent that raised $1.2 million dollars, attacked us in every way and flooded the airwaves with a crappy commercial. We beat an incumbent by 22 points by getting help from people like Ms. Sheehan and Mr. Manes, and other people who believed in us, like Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny and Blue America.

Most importantly we won because we walked the streets and knocked on doors. We talked to the people of Orlando and listened to their concerns. Like Commissioner Sheehan said to me, "People are more likely to vote for you when you look them in the eye and ask them for their support." We got 13,000 of those people supporting us now.

Final Unofficial results from the Florida Department of Elections
State Representative
District 36
Sheri McInvale (REP) 8,777 38.9%
Scott Randolph (DEM) 13,758 61.1%

Election Day was quite tiring. It started early for me on Monday night, staying up until five in the morning, feverishly editing the music for a slideshow I was presenting at the victory party for Scott Randolph. I laid down all the tracks in a shareware program, and then right before I hit the save button, the program crashed, losing everything I had accomplished. Dejected and hoping this wasn't an omen, I went to bed to get an hour and a half of sleep, and then went to the precinct to wave my sign for Scott.

When I arrived, I cast my vote and laid out our campaign signs. No one from any other campaign was out front, so I went home to change shirts and grab the laptop to finish in between talking to voters. On my return, I met up with Joely, another volunteer for our campaign, and three workers from Equality Florida, who were documenting any voting irregularities. Turnout was strong at Precinct 524, and I saw many smiles and thumbs up signals from the voters as they exited. About twenty people told me they had voted for Scott, and I felt very confident throughout the morning.

My father drove over from Tampa around noon to help wave signs. With all the troubles I had trying to get the Carpenter's Union to come out and support us, I was very happy to see my dad represent his Union proudly. After a quick bite at Steak N Shake, we went back to 524 and snagged a parking spot right outside the 100 foot no-solicitation zone and got ready for a continuation of the great turnout I had experienced earlier. Then it started to rain.

My father rigged a campaign sign to stand upright on his white station wagon and set his hard hat on top of the car, "to wash it off and send a message to the people." Every voter that ran in the polling place under their umbrellas looked at our display, and we still continued to see the signs of support I had seen earlier in the morning. We continued to huddle in the wagon, listening to the blather of Rush Limbaugh and Bud Hedinger until the tornado warning came. We headed home around 6:30 and got ready for the party.

I was a bit worried the rain had prevented a lot of folks from voting in other percents, making it a closer race than what we thought. Thankfully, the results of the race had alreay started to come in when the three of us left. The Florida Department of Elections already had us up by a considerable margin as I slid my blazer over my campaign t-shirt to walk out the door.

reposted from October 20th, 2006

I recently talked about the upcoming elections with my mom, and as I started typing this email, I thought it would make a great blog. I've been very busy through the last few weeks, and I'll try to keep a current diary of the Scott Randolph Campaign up until the election, as well as some post-election analysis.

I also thought this would be a great bulletin for all my Florida friends to help out with Decision '06. Who knows? I may make a few new policy wonks after this is through.

My mother lives in Tampa, and her State House District I used in the example is 58. Look on your voter registration card, or just look on the torrent of campaign mailers you've recieved so far. Those people know which district you live in, because they want your vote. If you live in District 36-VOTE SCOTT RANDOLPH, of course. Make him your friend. He has a myspace page.

Okay. Bear with me, because they obviously don't make
it any easier for us to figure this stuff out.

First, go to
this website from the Florida Department of State. You
will see a field in which you are supposed to type the
candidate's name. Let's do Crist, who of course is
the Republican candidate for Governor. Hit enter, and
you will see the candidates with the last name "Crist"
who are running in elections this fall. Looks like
another Crist is running somewhere, but we'll focus on
Charlie. Click on his name.

The next page will give you general information about
his campaign office, and his running mate. You will
see a button for campaign finance activity. Click on
that, and the next page will be a list of dates with
corresponding radio buttons, and a series of drop-down
menus with different options. Let's select all dates,
and then for the drop downs, "contributions"," name,"
and "display on screen."

Wow. This is going to take some time. Might be a
really huge file. Go get some tea, and come back. I
started at 12:23 A.M. Okay. It's 12:30, and now we
can see who donated to Crist for the entire election cycle. Unfortunately, the
database does not separate businesses from private
citizens, but most of the big $500.00 donations will
come from businesses. Or you can take a quick scroll
at the type of business in the far right corner.

Let's have some fun. Do a word find on the page for
"Tobacco." Hmm. Only eight donors that have tobacco
ties, half executives, some cigar manufacturers and
Phillip Morris. Now let's do "racing." There's a lot
more here, with about 16 donors being either horse or
dog racing clubs or executives. Do "State Farm" and
you'll find over one hundred agents that gave $500.00
to Charlie Crist. Do you think that those agents are
throwing their money away by giving to Crist?

Let's try it with easier candidates. Your State House
district is District 58 and your State Senate District
is 12, I think. Since I'm not sure, let's look at
your House race.

First, the Democrat, Michael Scionti. His website says he is a Captain
is the Reserves, and a JAG. I'll bet there's some
attorneys in his campaign donations. Repeat the steps
(don't worry this list is shorter) and we will see.
Yes, many trial attorneys, union PAC's and Derby Lane.
Oh, and George Steinbrenner, as well. Interesting.
But, you'll see many of his donations are smaller, and
from retired folks and even a waitress.

Now let's take a look at Ruiz, his Republican
opponent. I can't find his website, but if these two
are your candidates, you're probably inundated with
mailers by now with his website. Wow. He's got no
contributions, not even from the Republican party.
You'll also pass by a statement from him. My
prediction- this guy's going to get rolled up and
smoked like a Hav-A-Tampa cigar. It also looks like
he paid the qualifying fee outright, instead of
collecting signatures. That's not necessarily a bad
thing, but it can bring huge support once the election
starts.

Remember all that stuff you always hear about "every vote counts?" OF course it's true, but you probably won't be the deciding vote in any National election. However, in local races, you ARE the deciding vote, and your State Representative will have more effect on how much you pay for property taxes, insurance, health care and even your cable bill. Those representatives decide on where roads are built, the quality of education and the condition of our beaches and wetlands.

Which is why voters need to make the best, most educated decision before heading to the polls, and rely on more than what their newspaper's editorial board tells them to do.

reposted from October 26th, 2006
I was set to go canvassing voters today (knocking on people's doors, for those of you not hip to the political lingo) but Scott Randolph wanted to know if I would like to go to a fundraiser at the Mills Market at Mills and Gore. I don't need to go on about everyone there, but I saw some old friends, some folks I met before and some people I need to see more often. After buying my city commissioner a glass of wine, we wound up the evening by traveling to this guy Russ' house, where we had an old fashioned sing-a-long. A couple Sagitarrians, a lovely couple, and the Randolphs rounded out our chorus, with Russ on guitar and the Nebbiolo. It was one of those nights you didn't want to end.

Anyway, the new Scott Randolph commercial debuts on YouTube tonight. Sheri McInvale has raised much more more than we have, and she received a huge amount of television airtime courtesy of the Republican party. Her total is closing in on a million dollars spent, all for a $30,000 a year part-time job. Once you examine her campaign donors, you understand why her seat is so important to retain. It seems like many people will stand to make a lot of bread if re-elected.

Of course, this is why we put together old fashioned door knocking with good research, public domain footage and music and mix it all together in iMovie in a day.
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We just learned that Sheri McInvale has surpassed the $1.2 million dollar mark. That's basically $80.00 per voter in Orange County. All for a $30,000 a year job. Watch her become a lobbyist sometime in January.

The second of our internet ads is on youtube behind this link. Finding the footage was great, and I highly recommend the Internet Archive for all your open source needs. As far as any commercials go, word of mouth is our best advertising, so if you like it, send it out to anyone you wish. Also, feel free to discuss or ask questions of any of my claims. I'll lurk around the comments section, like I always do.

Get out there and vote on November 7th! I'll be posting like crazy until then!
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