State Sen. Annette Taddeo dropped out of the race for governor Monday and will run for a South Florida congressional seat held by Republican Maria Elvira Salazar.
Taddeo, who trailed fellow Democrats Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried in raising money and early polls in the gubernatorial race, said in a statement the decision was about the need for federal leadership on issues such as gun violence, inflation, and abortion.
“Families in Miami need a representative in Congress who will stand up for them, hold Washington politicians accountable and make sure we finally tackle issues like the cost of living, gun violence and defending a woman’s right to choose,” Taddeo, D-Miami, said in the statement. “I’m a small-business owner and a mother with a daughter in Miami-Dade public schools, so I live with these issues every single day.”
She also pointed to the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, as influencing her decision to run in Congressional District 27.
“After the tragedies in Buffalo and Uvalde and a conversation with my daughter about the realities our kids face daily, I knew what I needed to do,” Taddeo said. “We are at a pivotal moment in our country, and we desperately need leadership in Washington that can be trusted to put politics aside for the best interests of Miamians.”
On Tuesday, the RNC said not so fast, pointing to a March 21, 2020 tweet where Taddeo called for Governor DeSantis to lock the state down, referencing a New York Times post.
“Annette Taddeo clearly wants a new job, but Floridians don’t want to give her one. Maybe it’s because this is what she’s trying to sell,” said the RNC on Tuesday in an emailed statement.
“Annette Taddeo supports Draconian COVID restrictions like the forced-masking of small children, vaccine mandates, and lockdowns. She’s also obsessed with Joe Biden in spite of his record-high gas prices and stifling inflation. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how many different races she runs for; her positions will never be popular among freedom-loving Floridians,” said the RNC in an emailed statement.
In March of this year, the New York Times rescinded some of the COVID narratives that was pushed by media outlets throughout 2020.
The New York Times said vaccinations, booster shots, and masks have not caused a major difference in case rates between parts of the country with different levels of COVID-19 precautions in a morning newsletter in March 2022.
The article compared COVID-19 case rates for Democratic and Republican areas, noting that Democrats were more likely to wear masks, get vaccinated and boosted, avoid public spaces and shut down in-person schools over virus fears.
“These factors seem as if they should have caused large differences in case rates. They have not. And that they haven’t offers some clarity about the relative effectiveness of different Covid interventions,” David Leonhardt wrote in the NYT newsletter.
Restaurants in America’s most liberal cities are still seating customers at only 40% of pre-pandemic levels, while restaurants in cities like Miami, Austin, Texas, Nashville, Tennessee, and Charlotte, North Carolina, have fully recovered, according to the NYT.
“Nationwide, the number of official Covid cases has recently been somewhat higher in heavily Democratic areas than Republican areas,” the NYT newsletter read. “There is a strong argument for continuing to remove other restrictions, and returning to normal life.”
“Desperate, weak, and on the wrong side of every issue that matters to Floridians. That’s why Florida Democrats are on a never-ending job search,” said RNC Spokeswoman Julia Friedland.
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