MIAMI GARDENS – As Election Day nears and with early voting set to begin October 18th, Miami Congressman’s Kendrick Meek’s challenge is to keep Democrats with him in his three-way battle for the United States Senate against Republican Marco Rubio and Republican-turned-independent, Gov. Charlie Crist. Rep. Donna Christensen, the Congressional representative from the Virgin Islands, doesn’t need convincing.
Christensen, who currently serves with Meek in the House as a non-voting delegate from the U.S. territory, calls the Congressman “the best person to put in the Senate,” and “the only candidate in the race who’s committed to Florida, to the Caribbean, to the middle class, and to creating pathways out of poverty for people.”
Congresswoman Donna Christensen
“We voted for change two years ago,” Christensen told South Florida Caribbean News on Monday, after a weekend of campaigning with Meek in Miami and referring to the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. “Now it’s time to protect that change.”
Christensen acknowledges that some Democratic voters have been disappointed with the pace of the economic recovery, but she blames Republicans, particularly in the U.S. Senate.
“To the extent that we have been able to achieve the things we have wanted to do, we have stood shoulder to shoulder with the president,” she said of Democrats, “but the Republicans, especially in the Senate, have tried to block everything.”
“That’s why we need Kendrick there [in the Senate,] not a Republican camouflaged as a Democrat,” she said, taking a swipe at Crist, who is pushing hard for Democratic support.
Crist has made some inroads with Democratic officials, including a handful of African-American state representatives. On Sunday, he received the endorsement of former Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler, a popular figure in South Florida’s Jewish community, who served with Meek in the House. But Christensen said it’s not clear who Crist, who “has always been a Republican,” would caucus with if elected, and he’d be ineffective without a party infrastructure, committee assignments, or a clear political allegiance.
She said Democratic voters, and especially Caribbean-American voters, should stick with Meek, who she says has shown leadership on issues important to the English- and French-speaking Caribbean.
“Kendrick Meek called six years ago for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haiti,” she said. “And he was fighting for it throughout his time in Congress. He and Rep. Alcee Hastings led the charge for TPS, and the fact that it was done so quickly after the [January 12] earthquake is largely due to his influence.”
Christensen, who represents the island chain that includes Saint Croix, Saint John and Saint Thomas, plus several smaller islands, and a population of just over 108,000 people, says Caribbean issues often take a back seat in Congress, where Latin America often dominates hemispheric issues.
“With Kendrick in the Senate, that won’t happen,” she said.
Christensen cited the renewal of the Caribbean Basin Initiative, a trade pact dating back to 1984 designed to stimulate the region’s manufacturing economy by allowing duty-free access to the U.S. mainland markets, and a push to loosen restrictions on the percentage of export manufacturing that must be done in the U.S. as important goals for the region that she would like to see move forward in the Senate.
Mainland politics in the last two years has seemed “crazy” to many in the Virgin Islands, according to the Congresswoman, who faces her own re-election fight against a Republican who she says is “spouting the GOP party line, including calling for a repeal of healthcare reform,” and two unaffiliated candidates.
But she said healthcare reform is a big reason Democrats should fight hard to retain the House and Senate.
“We have children with diabetes, sickle cell, and many of those children can now receive treatment. Young people can remain on their insurance until they’re 26 years old. We have already begun to close the ‘donut hole’ [the prescription drug funding gap] for seniors,” she said, calling the reforms important victories for the president, and for Democrats.
“Why would anyone vote for people who are vowing to try and repeal that?”
As for the polls, which show Meek gaining on Crist, but still in third place, Christensen says voters should ignore the numbers.
“Kendrick was down in the polls in the primary and he won,” she said. And alluding to Rick Scott’s running-mate, Jennifer Carroll, who is Trinidadian, she said Caribbean-American voters should look to the “platform and agenda of the people who are asking for their vote,” not the island background.
“All it takes is for people to vote their best interests,” she said. “Kendrick has been fighting for Florida all his adult life, and he’s not going to stop now.”
Special to South Florida Caribbean News
Joy-Ann (Joy) Reid
Editor, www.ReidReport.com – political news and commentary
Political columnist, The Miami Herald
