The article states:
But the party brass fought to preserve donations from private-prison contractors. Penalosa, the party's executive director, sent internal emails calling the provisions "problematic."
This misrepresents what actually happened. The original resolution called for rejecting donations from private prison companies
and also lobbyists affiliated with them and PACs that they help support. Penalosa agreed to rejecting direct donations but objected to the last two provisions and got the author, Juan Cuba, to agree to have the language on lobbyists and PACs removed from the resolution. After some turmoil, the original language was restored and passed.
Predictably, information surfaced after the election that PACs that received money from GEO also made donations to FDP. In another article on the subject Iannelli writes:
There's another group called Truth & Transparency, Inc., which took $40,000 from Book and $40,000 from the Future Democratic Majority PAC. Then, between October 3 and November 4, Truth & Transparency funneled a whopping $279,000 to the Florida Democratic Party in five separate donations.
Book is a lobbyist who represents GEO- and 70 other clients. Future Democratic Majority is a PAC for Democratic State Senators, including Book's daughter- that has taken money from GEO. Iannelli omits some really important information from this tidbit- namely that Clinton mega-donor Donald Sussman donated $300,000 to this PAC during the same cycle- more than enough to account for all the money given to FDP. Money is fungible.
The article notes that "major candidates failed to effectively reach out to Hispanic voters." This is true. Of course, the losing candidates and campaigns have evaporated, leaving FDP as the only available target for recriminations.
The unity resolution was pointless but, again, relevant information is omitted from the story. The meeting was called on short notice and the dissident group, which was also trying to enlist support for a no-confidence vote on Rizzo, released a "Draft Resolution for Florida Democratic Party Operational Excellence" just 3 days before the meeting. The unity resolution was crafted in the brief interval as a substitute.
The affirmative vote on the unity resolution was read as a vote of confidence for Rizzo and the draft resolution was withdrawn. Iannelli called the resolution a fuck you from Rizzo to Taddeo. The resolution could also be read as a vote of no confidence in Taddeo. The Miami-Dade machinations that made Taddeo eligible to run for chair looked like a replay of Stephen Bittel's ascension to the chair just two years earlier. And Taddeo didn't help her cause when, days before the meeting she was quoted as saying, "My goal is not to burn the place down. It's to make the place better. And I do not believe Terrie is capable of that."