This is the Sunrise Cinemas Gateway in Ft. Lauderdale, the Stork for Congress campaign is attending the 7:50 showing, or share some Stork Bakery food with them at 7:30. I've put here in the extended entry the same post as over on Daily Kos, from visiting the Stork campaign today.

If you are driving south on Highway 1 along Palm Beach or Broward County this summer, you might pass by Winston the Winning Bago, shown here with a couple of supporters of Jim Stork, the DailyKos candidate for the 22nd district of Florida. I spent this morning hanging out with Danielle Sylvester, she’s the campaign’s manager, and rest-assured, the Republican Shaw might have gotten his wish for a Shaw-mandered redistricting, but it’s not going to win him re-election with Danielle in charge of defeating Shaw, so give her a hand.

As of this morning, $4,777.27 had been raised through 126 donations, be sure to add a penny to those online donations so that it’s tracked back from Stork For Congress to DailyKos.

OK, so let me tell you about the campaign. The candidate Jim Stork is not your typical candidate. Jim’s sorta like this part of Florida’s version of Vermont’s Ben & Jerry’s-- not now, but back when they were starting out. Stork is a small businessman, the founder/owner of Stork’s Bakery, so he knows a bit about fiscal responsibility, and yet he’s a progressive-minded community activist, and was elected Mayor of Wilton Mayors, defeating the incumbent in 2002 by a landslide margin, so he knows about governing too. Part of what makes Jim's run for Congress so exciting is the potential replacement of the Republican Shaw’s vision with Stork's. Shaw was one of the main proponents of the Welfare 'reform' bill in the mid 1990’s, and would like nothing better than to 'reform' Social Security, all the while stating that he’s securing it's future. In other words, he’s your typical repug that votes with Bush 94% of the time, and yet claims he’s a moderate.

What makes Jim Stork’s campaign click, is Danielle. She's got a long history of working Florida campaigns and fundraising for the DCCC throughout the south, and left politics a few years ago, landing, in all places, with directing operations at the Stork Bakery in Wilton Manors. Stork's vision rekindled Danielle's political fire, beginning with his successful Mayoral race. Now, Stork has his eyes on winning Florida's 22nd CD. Knowing the map of this CD, the hurdle of name ID is a big one, and not only is it going to take a lot of financial resources for the media markets of Palm Beach in the north, and Miami in the south, it’s going to take a field operation that scares the shit out of Shaw, and I’ll tell you, I walked out of there convinced that the vision and know-how is there to win the 22nd. Here’s a few of the members of the campaign crew in the Ft. Lauderdale office. Bill Vaynes, who heads up the campaigns operations –the map man— is seated, Danielle is standing on your right, Baily Woolfstead, an intern from EMILY’s List, is in the middle, and Abby Ross, the campaign’s scheduler is on the left. We didn’t just pour over CD maps and talk the district politics, we also visited the Bakeries, so in the extended entry, I included a few more photos of those, and the campaign’s HQ’s, which is right on Hwy 1 in Ft Lauderdale, 2939 N. Federal Way.

The beautiful Las Olas bakery, which had it’s grand opening today!

Not only did I leave with a few t-shirts from the campaign, but also a box full of muffins and cookies from the first Stork Bakery. Here's Danielle again, Jim's biggest fan: