Does anyone remember Manuel Sykes?
He is the Pinelles County Pastor who was told by the Democratic Party to forget running for Florida's 13th District, the one which Democrats lost by a fraction in the special a few months back.
ST. PETERSBURG — Pineelles County's Democratic chairman left a bluntly worded voicemail telling well-known St. Petersburg pastor Manuel Sykes he would be "persona non grata" if he followed through with plans to run for Congress.
The Democratic Party had decided that running a former Soldier who had just moved into the area to barely meet the residency requirements was the best idea. The DNC did not want a long drawn out primary run, and couldn't because the Soldier in question hadn't lived in the district long enough to run as a Democrat. So
Ed Jany was running as a No Party Affiliation candidate.
Well it turns out that Ed Jany hadn't bothered to check his calender application on his phone. It turns out he's rather busy working on security for the World Cup in Brazil this year, and he won't have time to run for Congress after all.
So he's dropped out of the race he'd barely begun after forcing an actual Democrat to drop out.
Jany entered the race at the last minute — after Democrats more or less threatened a prominent African-American minister to keep him out of the contest. In a statement Jany said he has realized he does not have the time to run for office:
Now, I could rant and rave and shake my fist at the heavens. But what good would that do? There will be no Democrat running for the Florida 13 seat. It's too late to get someone on the ballot, and after chasing the actual Democrats off to get Jany on the ticket who would it be anyway? What would the DCCC do? Could they go to Pastor Sykes and say "hey, forget that whole Persona non grata thing, we're really behind you after all."
Before we can capitalize on the mistakes made by the Rethugs, we have to get our act together. Before we enter the race, we have to stop shooting ourselves in the foot. Right about now, I'd imagine that the members of the Pinelles County Democratic Party are doing the Team America secret signal.