The midterms are finally over. Some conclusions.

By Gonzalo López Martí  – Creative director, etc    /    LMMiami.com

• Full disclosure: I worked for Senator Bill Nelson’s (D-Florida) reelection campaign.
• As you might’ve read, after a nail-biting recount, he lost for the slimmest of margins: 10,033 votes out of the 8.2 million total ballots cast in the state.
• Let me rephrase: we lost.
• To his and our credit, Senator Nelson almost defeated a two-term sitting governor who outspent him by almost five to one (Scott’s campaign burned through $27 million, whereas Nelson’s shelled out $6 million, according to some local media outlets).
• Boy, talk about mud-slinging.
• Gov. Scott’s strategy was to portray Sen. Nelson as a “career politician” and an “empty suit”.
• Which is not true: Sen. Nelson has served in the military and was even sent to outer space by NASA.
• Sen. Nelson wore an astronaut suit.
• Conversely, the Nelson angle of attack was to depict Gov. Scott as a spineless Trump puppet.
• Unfortunately, political campaigns these days mostly boil down to attempting to be regarded as “the lesser of two evils”.
• Anyhoo.
• Sour grapes.
• Water under the bridge.
• The unexpected news: in Miami, of all places, two Democratic candidates came on top.
• Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell beat María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Curbelo to earn seats in the House for the Democratic party.
• I didn’t see that one coming.
• Two political newcomers with relatively low name recognition against very visible moderate Republicans of Cuban origin.
• María Elvira Salazar is a faily centrist conservative who’s been a household name in Miami for years due to her job as anchor of a number of Spanish-language TV political talk shows.
• Carlos Curbelo was -is- a maverick moderste Republican who had no qualms at opposing initiatives coming directly from Washington and, moreover, had the autonomy to sponsor gun control an immigration reform bills (highly toxic topics in the current climate).
• IMHO: Curbelo’s campaign was way too aggressive.
• He must tone it down a notch if he wants to stage a comeback in the future, which he probably will.
• The good thing: Mrs. Shalala and Mrs. Mucarsel-Powell come from the field of higher education.
• They are NOT, strictly speaking, career politicians.
• They spent longs stretches of their professional lives in the private sector and only then moved on to serve in Congress.
• If you ask me, this is the kind of politicians we need.
• In this country and in every other country in the world.
• Especially if they come from a strategic field such as education.
• See, methinks the Democratic Party is making a mistake if its casts its lot with untested “rock stars” like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortés.
• Even Beto O’Rourke, who’s way more experienced than Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and did a terrific job challenging Ted Cruz in Texas, has to stand in line a little longer to earn his stripes.
• Beto: you might be president some day and I might even vote for you.
• But you need to earn it first, as governor or at least as senator.
• I know you’ve been a Congressman for a few years.
• I know that your recent flirting with a presidential run might just be a publicity stunt to gain momentum and stay relevant.
• But still.
• A little more experience would come in handy.
• The fact that the GOP has chosen to tarnish its brand with a politically untested has-been reality TV star as commander-in-chief doesn’t mean that the other side should pursue the same stunts.
• Politics is a serious business with no room for neophytes or opportunists, even if neophytes and opportunists win elections sometimes.
• It is just too risky for the rest of us.
• As to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, my opinion was and is described in my piece from a few months ago, here: https://hispanicad.com/agency/business/politics-predictable-rise-alexandria-ocasio-cortez