Sun Sentinel


Candidates Run Wild In 5th District Race

Colin McEnroe

To Wit

5:07 PM EDT, July 27, 2012


One fear we harbor about our dopey Aug. 14 primary date is that freakishly low turn-out will produce a winner who is some kind horrific political mutant.

This summer, in the 5th District, that fear is abated by the growing realization that pretty much all the candidates have something drastically wrong with them. This is the only congressional seat regarded as seriously in play. How did it turn into the "Island of Misfit Toys?" Let's look at those toys.

The Velveteen Rabbit With a Hacking Cough. (Chris Donovan) The Democratic Speaker's campaign has been stumbling around in a feverish daze especially since Thursday, when his former campaign manager and some of the best and brightest minds from the smoke shop industry were arrested in connection with an alleged conspiracy to falsify campaign contributions while trying to get a tax bill killed.

Best Scenario: Possibly with the assistance of the Magic Campaign Fairy, Donovan manages to hop away from his idiot staffers, just like a real bunny who is not totally diseased. Worst scenario: You're watching it. This is the Looney Toons version of "Sixth Sense." The bunny is walking around like a regular bunny. It doesn't know it's a dead bunny. Slightly Improved Scenario: The district is so messed up, a dead bunny could win the primary.

The Invisible Thin Blonde Doll. (Lisa Wilson-Foley) This is the other campaign with its own federal grand jury, because of the strange relationship in which John G. Rowland was (a) getting paid by Wilson-Foley's husband (b) "volunteering" for her campaign (c) attacking her opponents on his radio show (d) losing a Waterbury job he may or may not have been actually doing. There is probably nothing wrong here, but just to be on the safe side, federal investigators rounded up every last cocktail napkin anybody so much as doodled on. Meanwhile, Wilson-Foley has been roughly as visible as Khloe and Kourtney Sasquatch.

The Wooden Trump. You want to talk about fevers? Mark Greenberg told my WNPR colleague John Dankosky that the health care system worked better when he was a kid and his mother wouldn't bring him to the doctor until he had a 105 fever. Now his wife sees the doctor for every little cough. Dankosky failed to press Greenberg on (a) whether his mother really loved him and (b) how sick Greenberg's wife would have to get before she could seek medical attention with his blessing. He did however press Greenberg on other issues like the role of preventive care in lowering overall costs and the pre-existing conditions conundrum. And it turned out that Greenberg had thought about these things the way McDonalds sells chicken: not really and only in nugget form.

The interview infamously culminated with Greenberg calling Islam "a cult in many aspects." Dankosky made a heroic effort to find out from Greenberg what he meant by that, and Greenberg didn't have the heart to say to him: "Don't you get it? I'm like Donald Trump. I'm a rich guy who shoots his mouth off without really thinking."

The Seemingly Normal Rag Doll (Elizabeth Esty). There's nothing wrong with Esty unless you hold against her the fact that her entire family looks like a secret government cloning project of Extremely Tense WASPs. But at a time when the mostly progressive Democratic primary voting base is looking for somebody like Donovan but with fewer problems, she has positioned herself as exactly the kind of crypto-conservative one-percent-coddling Blue Dog Manchurian Candidate who freaks out the people she most needs.

Dan-in-the-Box. (Dan Roberti) There's some kind of wacky time travel sitcom here. He's Opie, but his father is the Emperor Nero. I just don't think we're ready for this, and I know Dan isn't.

GI Justin. (Justin Bernier) I don't know anything about Justin Bernier. If I were Mark Greenberg, that would not stop me from calling him an iron-fisted maniac whose objective is total control of the world's people.

The Odd Duck. (Andrew Roraback). I like Andrew Roraback. In other years, he might have struck me as a peculiar, doily-preserving Victorian waxwork. The Lost Havisham.

But this is no normal year.
