It’s no surprise that former Republican State Rep. Ana Rivas Logan is switching colors and registering as a Democrat today.
What may be surprising is how the longtime GOP member is already campaigning for Democrat gubernatorial candidate and fellow turncoat Charlie Crist, for whom some suggest R
ivas Logan makes a good potential lieutenant governor nominee.
Rivas Logan, who has never been one of the good ol’ boys, has been openly bitter about the GOP since she lost that very hard fought race against State Rep. Jose Felix “One More Pepe” Diaz in 2012. In early January, she told Ladra that she was considering changing parties after that illuminating experience.
“My party has done me wrong,” she told Ladra. “There is no love lost between me and the Miami Dade Republican Party.”
But she also said that she was being recruited to do so. Rivas Logan met a couple of times with Miami-Dade Democratic Party Chairwoman Annette Taddeo about running against Miami-Dade Commissioner Lynda Bell. But because she was red, the blue party could not support her and instead is backing the unknown Daniella Levine Cava, who had the necessary D on her voter’s registration card. Ladra is quite sure Rivas Logan would have gotten that endorsement had she switched earlier.
She said Monday that she isn’t running for anything. But nobody believes that. Even if she has to wait a year after changing party affiliation and must sit out the state elections for 2014, as it states in the El Nuevo Herald story, there may be ways she can run for non-partisan seats. Rivas Logan did tell Ladra that she is having an attorney look at the law and requirements. She wouldn’t be lookin’ if she ain’t thinkin’ about it. And I know Dems are looking at her as a high quality challenger for 2016.
There is already a little underground buzz about Rivas-Logan making a good potential LG nominee to Crist because it’s not necessarily an elected position where that one year waiting period would be moot.
Rivas Logan, a longtime educator and former Miami-Dade School Board member, certainly spent some time talking about Crist and that race in the short conversation we had today.
“I’m not running for anything. I’m not closing the door on that, but I don’t have any plans now,” Rivas Logan said. “Right now, I want to make sure that we elect the right governor. Charlie Crist is the man who has done right by teachers.”
When I texted her about it after we spoke, she did not respond. Which only makes me go hmmmmm even more.
Having her on his ticket would be a huge plus because she’s a Hispanic woman and because she was a Republican. Yeah, they can both be hit with that turncoat and bogus argument that they are not “real Democrats,” but if they get through a primary, which they would, they would be the best bet to beat a Scott that even Republicans love to hate.
She’s pretty. She’s experienced. She is well-spoken. She a blonde, non-stereotype Hispanic. She has two last names. OMG! Rivas Logan is the female version of former State Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who is leaving his position as Miami-Dade Property Appraiser to be LG for Gov. Rick Scott.
And Ladra shouldn’t have to remind you how much fun she would have taking on C-Lo, who backed Diaz against her and has sort of become the poster boy of the local GOP postalita club.
In fact, she already did so by focusing on him in the El Nuevo Herald story about her party switch. She recalled the time C-Lo scolded her sternly for “not respecting the party block vote” on the Marlins stadium and how he had pressured other Hispanics in the Miami-Dade delegation to support anti-immigration legislation.
“Now incredibly López-Cantera is presented as more Hispanic than ever, but at the time I did not support this bill,” she was quoted as saying, adding that her unwillingness to tow the party line was one of the reasons why they worked against her re-election in 2012.
She said that the Republican Party had long abandoned her and that she realized that she maybe had more in common with the blue team than the red after those conversations with Taddeo.
“When she said they were committed to Daniella, I said ‘I won’t run,'” Rivas Logan told Ladra. “But it made me ask myself, what am I doing in the Republican Party? Number one, they are so radical now. Number two, they don’t even respect me.”
Rivas Logan told me that she is not changing to spite her former colleagues, who ganged up on her during her 2012 race — in which she and Diaz were drawn into the same district — and failed to defend her from baseless attacks that questioned her cubania because she was born in Nicaragua and spread lies about her family life. Not one of her former colleagues have called her since to see how she is doing, she told me last month. “How’s that for statesmanship,” she said.
In their defense, Republican cowards who spoke on the condition that I did not name them said Rivas Logan was never a team player and was abrasive from the get go. “She came at you with a chip on her shoulder,” one legislator said.
But, while she is not doing it because of them, it’s gravy if she can stick it to her former colleagues just a little, she told me.
“It’s an added bonus,” Rivas Logan said. “That’s the cherry on the ice cream.”
Ana Rivas Logan switches parties to back (up?) Charlie Crist added by Ladra on
View all posts by Ladra →
