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She seems to have emerged as the frontrunner, although I'm not sure that's such a good thing. Better than Alcee Hastings and probably better than a disturbingly inflammatory and mean-spirited guy like Peter Deutche.
However I don't know whether Alex Penelas wouldn't be a better choice. He can get a really bad rap in liberal circles for being a centrist mayor. But I think it's worth being a centrist(and successful) mayor if he, as I beleive would end up being a John Edwards/Bob Graham type of moderate/liberal senator.
I've met and spoken to him several times, and I think he correctly knows, like Harold Ford knows, that a hard-left big-city minority cannot win a southern state, state-wide, particularly in an election year with Bush running. If you heard him speak about Bush, which he seems to focus on, on the campaign trail, it's clear he has no love for the Bushes at all.
When he spoke to my class at college, he said most of his bad press comes from one guy, Jim Defede of the Miami Herald. Defede told Penelas that he would "regret" not giving Defede a long interview when he was first running for mayor. And he's right, Defede spins everything even minorly questionable against Penelas to demonize him and never reports anything he does, (like leading the state in job growth or instituting extensive pre-kindegarden and afterschool programs) in a positive light or at all.
One thing that some on the left in FL has been throwing at him is that he was somehow behind the police overstepping their bounds at the FTAA protests. Despite the fact that Penelas went above and beyond the neccessary bounds to investigate and acost officers who broke the rules(both my roommates brothers are on the Miami PD, and said the city council democrats who are allies of Penelas have been pressuring them for firings, showing up on a bi-daily basis for weeks after the protests)
Not only that, but something at isn't hersay from me but well reported is how much of an enemy he is of FTAA organizer, and former Jeb Bush bussindess parter Armando Cordino. Penelas has been the number one person stopping people like him from growing their power in Miami Dade county.
Anyway you should consider how hard it is, as he told us, to be a prominent Cuban DEMOCRAT.
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