Martinez Endorsement Dogs Posey's Congressional Bid in Midst of Housing Crisis

For Immediate Release: March 26, 2008

TALLAHASSEE - It's tough being Mel Martinez. Ranked 88th most powerful out of 100, Florida's junior senator has less influence in the U.S. Senate than a colleague who recently admitted to frequenting a brothel in Louisiana.

But Martinez continues to fight for relevance. Today he announced that he had chosen State Sen. Bill Posey (R-Rockledge) as his preferred Republican candidate for the open Congressional District 15 seat. Curiously, the Posey campaign opted to have Martinez - who lives and held public office in Orlando, the media center of the 15th District - endorse him in Tallahassee.

"You'd think that the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development ought to be a natural leader on efforts to stem the economic downturn, but Senator Martinez is asleep at the switch. Unfortunately for the people of Florida, this is pretty typical of our peculiar junior senator," Florida Democratic Party spokesman Alejandro Miyar said. "And unfortunately for Senator Posey, a Martinez endorsement is less a badge of honor than a nail in one's political coffin."

Back at home, more of Martinez's constituents disapprove of the job he is doing as senator than approve. Seeing his numbers tanking even lower, he abruptly resigned from his side job as Chairman of the Republican National Committee after less than a year. In the Senate, he failed to lead President Bush's priority immigration reforms to passage.

When Martinez endorsed John McCain on January 25, barely anyone noticed. When Governor Charlie Crist endorsed McCain on January 26, the media made it seem as if the world stopped turning. Following the Arizona senator's win with 36% of the vote in Florida, Crist got credit as if he were already McCain's vice-presidential pick. Martinez got none.

It's been rumored widely that Martinez is considering not running for reelection in 2010. In his nasty 2004 campaign for U.S. Senate, one of the only positive points Martinez made was about his tenure as George W. Bush's housing czar, which at the time seemed successful. Yet in retrospect, grumblings existed in the market, and Martinez turned a blind eye to the devastating predatory lending practices he now decries. The nationwide housing meltdown and a developing scandal at HUD have raised concerns about his stewardship as secretary.

Martinez, who is quick to denounce partisanship despite serving as the GOP's National Chairman and chief spokesman, recently said, "Let's go ahead and get to work on something here for a while and not start that partisanship all over again so quickly." [Associated Press, 2/29/08]

In February, Martinez voted with other Republicans in the Senate to block the relief measure for homeowners. Siding with mortgage lenders, he helped block "consideration of a bill designed to prop up the struggling housing industry" and aid American families fighting against foreclosures, despite the fact that home sales in Florida are down 30% from last year and foreclosures are becoming more and more frequent. [Washington Post, 2/29/08]

With a leading indicator this week showing home values nationwide dropping 11 percent in January compared to a year before, fingers are being pointed in the direction of Martinez and his handpicked successor at HUD. Protégé Alphonso R. Jackson, the current secretary, earlier this month refused to discuss a pending investigation into suspicious dealings involving unethical politicization of government contracts. Inexplicably, Martinez defended Jackson, suggesting that he was in an "untenable position..." [New York Times, 3/13/08]

Additionally, Florida's housing market has been hit harder than almost every other state. South Florida tied for one of the two weakest markets in the nation in January as prices fell nearly 20 percent. [Miami Herald, 3/25/08] In the fourth quarter of 2007 alone, nearly 300,000 families in Florida were delinquent on their mortgages. [Joint Economic Committee Data, http://jec.senate.gov/Documents/Reports/030608 - MBA Q4 Release.pdf]