Just days after sending out a fiery letter calling for the resignation of Florida Democratic Party chair Karen Thurman -- a letter that made liberal use of his word processor's bold and underline features -- Miami-Dade Democratic chairman BJ Chiszar has been given the boot.
Chiszar's letter is five pages of "inside baseball," but here are a few highlights to give you an idea of the generally unprofessional tone:
- He calls the University of Miami Democrats "rich little snobs."
- Describing a phone conversation with executive director Scott Arceneaux: "Mr. Arceneaux then proceeded to rudely insult me and tell me to shut up. As you can imagine, I let him have it and put him in his place real quick. I will not be spoken to by these scumbags like that! I can only assume that you wouldn't either!"
- He calls the founder of the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of Miami-Dade, Millie Herrerra, "a gadfly who lost to a complete unknown civil rights activist in the election for State Committeewoman and still cries herself to sleep every night about it."
Chiszar, age 30, was elected last December, and as he all too often points out, is the youngest large county party chair in the nation, or so he claims.
He's being removed for the following: attempting to charge candidates and groups to access voter files (apparently in one instance to those rich little snobs at UM) despite that access being free; being rude; failing to hold a single meeting with a quorum present; and making threats against Democratic officials.
So Chiszar is gone. In his place is attorney Richard Lydecker, a close friend of Manny Diaz, who also has connections to Alex Sink and Bill Nelson. Blue in Miami, incidentally, is wondering if this means Diaz might be more likely to run for higher office.
