{"id":307155,"date":"2010-02-11T11:05:50","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T16:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=76389"},"modified":"2010-02-11T11:05:50","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T16:05:50","slug":"rep-lincoln-diaz-balart-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/307155","title":{"rendered":"Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart Retires"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The nine-term Republican from South Florida, who had his first electoral scare in years back during the 2008 election, is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/0210\/32829.html\">retiring<\/a>. Josh Kraushaar has a good preview\/rundown, pointing out that the Obama-Biden ticket scored 49 percent of the vote in the district &#8212; it was one of the areas where Obama&#8217;s surge among Florida Hispanics caught the McCain-Palin campaign off-guard. As Reid Wilson <a href=\"http:\/\/hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com\/archives\/2010\/02\/diazbalart_to_r.php\">points out<\/a>, it&#8217;s one of the very few open Republican seats that Democrats could target. One simple reason: Obama&#8217;s popularity among Hispanic voters has remained stratospherically high even as white independents have edged away. And this district is almost three-quarters Hispanic.<span id=\"more-76389\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Also worth noting: Democrats have not been buffeted as badly as some expected since the implosion of Martha Coakley and election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.). By my count they&#8217;ve watched one Democrat retire in a swing seat (Rep. Marion Berry of Arkansas) and one retire in a safe seat (Rep. Diane Watson of California) and lost a big recruitment hope in Delaware (Attorney General Beau Biden). Republicans have responded with strong recruitment, but it&#8217;s far from the Democratic run-for-the-exits that some early punditry suggested.<\/p>\n<p>There are rumors that Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) may run for his brother&#8217;s open street, a strange possibility with an uncertain political effect &#8212; the presidential race was only one point closer in Mario&#8217;s FL-24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The nine-term Republican from South Florida, who had his first electoral scare in years back during the 2008 election, is retiring. Josh Kraushaar has a good preview\/rundown, pointing out that the Obama-Biden ticket scored 49 percent of the vote in the district &#8212; it was one of the areas where Obama&#8217;s surge among Florida Hispanics [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}