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Colombian-(US)American Democratic challenger aiming for Ros-Lehtinen upset

Posted on Mon, Oct. 13, 2008

Democratic challenger aiming for Ros-Lehtinen upset

BY PATRICIA MAZZEI

Annette Taddeo was managing her translation business and raising her 9-month-old daughter in April of last year when she got an improbable phone call -- one that would lure her into congressional politics.
A Democratic political consultant was drafting a poll. Would Taddeo consider running against popular, longtime incumbent Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen?

The 41-year-old Taddeo, a first-time candidate, had always pictured herself taking a stab at public office -- a high-profile post, not a local community council -- so to her, the proposition made sense.

''I'm a woman, a Hispanic and a Jew,'' she told a group of Miami Beach seniors, to much laughter, while campaigning over the summer. ``I bring a lot to the table.''

What she is not is well-known -- unlike Ros-Lehtinen, who congressional observers say is well-entrenched in her 18th District seat, which covers a lengthy, diverse swath including Miami Beach, Little Havana, Pinecrest and Key West.

But Taddeo's campaign hopes that labeling Ros-Lehtinen as a George W. Bush rubber stamp -- and tying her to brothers Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, who are facing more stiff competition in their congressional races -- will give them an opening to pull off an upset.

Taddeo has gained some ground against Ros-Lehtinen but is still trailing by more than 10 percentage points, according to recent polls for WSCV-Telemundo 51 and the left-leaning DailyKos blog. In a poll released last week for WLTV-Univisión 23, Ros-Lehtinen had a 52 to 27 percent lead over Taddeo, with 21 percent of voters undecided.

But Taddeo's campaign says its internal numbers show that while a majority of voters still favor Ros-Lehtinen, that support drops when they hear more about her record. Taddeo's campaign started running TV and radio ads before Ros-Lehtinen did to pound on that record -- including an ad that shows side-by-side, bobbing faces of Ros-Lehtinen and Bush as ''two peas'' popping from ``a pod.''

Taddeo's fundraising is about half of what her opponent has banked. Taddeo loaned herself $350,000 of the $718,912 she reported through Aug. 6. Most of her contributors have been retirees, lawyers and law firms and Democratic political action committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Like the other South Florida Democratic challengers, Taddeo has criticized Ros-Lehtinen for being too focused on Cuba and for supporting tighter limits on family travel and remittances to the island. Taddeo also has tried to link Ros-Lehtinen to Wall Street and special interests, particularly in light of the current financial crisis.

WHAT SHE PROMISES

Taddeo, who was born with a cleft lip that required 19 surgeries to fix, has particularly attacked Ros-Lehtinen's votes against expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, and for supporting the war in Iraq. Those votes pushed her to run, Taddeo says.

Expanding S-CHIP would be her first priority if elected, along with creating jobs, she said.

Another force driving her candidacy: Congress' decision to narrow the scope of legislation that would have required 5 percent of government contracts to be given to women-owned businesses.

That topic might not make a sexy campaign platform. But Taddeo, who for years has served on the boards of several national small-business policy organizations like Women Impacting Public Policy, is most passionate and in her element when discussing the ins and outs of being an entrepreneur.

She started her small translation and tutoring company, LanguageSpeak, while living in a trailer with her parents after Hurricane Andrew blew away their Saga Bay home in 1992. The company handled translations during the Free Trade Area of the Americas conference in 2003.

At business groups she has led, Taddeo has increased the numbers and diversity of members and overseen organizational growing pains, say friends and colleagues who have known her for years.

''These are all successful women business owners, all type-A personalities,'' said Rebecca Boenigk, a Republican who worked with Taddeo at the Women's Business Enterprise National Council and has donated to her campaign. ``You have to be pretty good at getting that group to all go in the same direction at the same time.''

Even before the recent bailout, Taddeo said she would ask for a spot on the House Financial Services Committee if elected, to deal with the banking sector and to make it easier for small businesses to obtain loans and healthcare.

Her other target: the Foreign Affairs Committee, a less surprising choice, in part because Ros-Lehtinen -- the first Cuban-American woman in Congress -- is on it, and in part because Taddeo's world view was shaped by being born and raised in oil-rich Barrancabermeja, Colombia.

Taddeo's American father, Anthony, a World War II and Korean War veteran from New Jersey, ran a helicopter school in that city, where he met her Colombian mother, Elizabeth.

Taddeo talks about living through Colombia's turbulent violence, like when a teacher stopped coming to school because people found out the teacher was a member of the now-defunct M-19 guerrilla group.

And like the day her father, while at the family ranch, was captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. He talked his way out of a kidnapping, but Taddeo said that experience made her more hawkish on national security than other Democrats, including Barack Obama.

''I'm much more conservative when it comes to terrorism,'' she said. ``I've lived it. They had infiltrated into every aspect of life. Everything became so scary.''

She also disagrees with her party on passing a free-trade pact with Colombia, which she supports, and is critical of the Democrats' achievements since becoming the majority in 2006.

''I wouldn't call it success,'' she said, saying she wanted them to stand up to the president more. ``They have disappointed a lot of us.''

Her father's brush with danger prompted Taddeo's parents to send her to Huntsville, Ala., where the 17-year-old lived with family friends. She spent her senior year of high school there and then graduated from the University of North Alabama.

ON THE OUTSIDE

In college, Taddeo ran her first campaign for student government. The morning of the election she found her ''Annette Taddeo for Secretary'' posters had been crossed out to say ''Annette Taddeo for Deportation,'' she said.

''I never thought of myself as an outsider as much as I did that day,'' she said.

Never having been a candidate otherwise, Taddeo is hardly the insider now, despite displaying on her living room tables photos of herself with Sen. Hillary Clinton, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Taddeo's experience in Democratic Party politics is mostly limited to being a member of the Democratic National Committee's Business Council and co-chairwoman of Businesswomen for John Kerry. And Taddeo, who converted to Judaism in her 20s, was set up with her now-husband, Dr. Eric Goldstein, at a fundraiser for Sen. Bill Bradley's presidential campaign in 2000.

Still, she brushes off any suggestion that her chances of winning are slim or that she ran just for the Democratic Party to have a name to put on the ballot.

''I'm no one's sacrificial lamb,'' she said.

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By Simon on Oct 13, 2008, 16:52 in Friendly Talkzone.

Pappassito says on Oct 13, 2008, 18:42:

I sincerely hope she whacks Ros-Lehtinen in the election.. Whole I am certainly no democrat or republican,the Diaz-Balarts & Ros-Lehtinen have been shoveling their horseshit in Miami far too long.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

miamimike says on Oct 13, 2008, 21:27:

It would be nice if all three of these Cuban republican congress people lose their Seats(as they like constituents with cuban only issues) but the truth is, only the 2 males, Garcia&Martinez, really stand a chance to rid Miami of the Diaz Balarts. Ros Lehtinen isn't quite as detested as the Two Diaz Balart brothers so she will fare somewhat better. It shouldn't matter and wouldn't to me, but the fact she converted to Judism only a few years ago will be interesting to see how this plays out with the Voters she is trying to win over. She should do great in the Beach Areas as there is a large number of Jewish Voters but the Latin Jews here are almost all Cubans. And the rest of the Older Cubans are all devout Catholics. It will be interesting and I wish her well. If she has a Streetcorner Get Out The Vote Group, I'll go! Lots of fun! BTW She lent herself, her campaign, $350,000 to finance it! And she has run some great TV ads depicting Bush and illeana as two bobbleheaded peas in a Pod,,,

On Sept 17, 2008: Senator John McCain said, as he had many times before, that he believed the fundamentals of the economy were "strong."Hours later he backpedaled, explaining that he had meant that American workers were Strong.

0 funny, 0 helpful.

Monpirri says on Oct 15, 2008, 04:55:

Pleases do not forget to vote for Annette Taddeo in November!

Thank you

The life spam of a taste bud is ten days

0 funny, 0 helpful.