Press Release I Sent to Central Florida Media Outlets

Press Release

Where's Wes?

After repeated attempts by multiple parties to contact Wes Neuman, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for Congress from Florida's 7th District, it has become increasingly clear that Mr. Neuman has simply disappeared from view and can no longer be considered an active candidate for this election cycle. He has not been seen nor heard of for several weeks by any of his known supporters and even the heads of the three county Democratic Executive Committees that span the 7th Congressional District - Orange, Seminole and Volusia - are unaware of his current location.

Right now, there are no answers to the mystery. Only questions abound. For instance: Why has the "Wes Neuman for Congress" Facebook page been taken down? Why has his campaign website been inactive since late May? Why does his LinkedIn profile make no mention of his former candidacy? Why did his campaign manager, Shane Loorz, officially depart from the campaign and move back to Washington, D.C.? Why is Wes' voicemail message the only response to repeated phone calls to his campaign phone number? And why are all his Twitter feeds in Russian?!

So "Where's Wes?" No one seems to know. In fact, one of his former staffers, when queried recently via text message about Wes' whereabouts, replied tersely "Don't know. Don't care." While all hope that nothing tragic has happened to the former candidate, it is tempting to suggest that the rigors of the political arena, his inability to raise the amount of money he had been promised by overeager cohorts, and, perhaps, unidentified strains within his campaign structure, have all conspired to drive him from the race to points unknown.

While it would have been better had Wes decided to drop out of contention publicly, giving his supporters and his Party their deserved deference and respect rather than simply leaving town, for some unknown reason he chose not to do so. Again, it is hoped that nothing terrible has transpired. But the upshot is that the Democrat Party of Central Florida now has no active candidate representing the 150,000+ registered Democratic voters of the 7th Congressional District, and no one capable of defeating 22-year Republican incumbent, and poster child of the Do-Nothing 113th Congress, John Mica.

However, all is not lost. The bizarre and still unexplained disappearance of Mr. Neuman, notwithstanding, there actually exists a very potent strategy available to the Democratic Party that can overturn Mica's long reign of not representing the people of the 7th C.D.

For the past many months, Al Krulick, a former Democratic nominee for Florida's 8th Congressional District seat in 1996 and 1998, has been active in the race for the 7th C.D. seat as an NPA (Non-Party-Affiliated) candidate. He has assiduously courted the 100,000+ independent and registered NPA voters across the three counties and expects to make a strong showing with this heretofore unrepresented group of citizens who have no allegiance to either of the major parties and who often don't vote at all because they refuse to rubber-stamp Party candidates who offer nothing but warmed-over talking points and pallid defenses of their particular partisan ideologies.

Since Mr. Neuman is now considered to be a candidate in name only - that name, unfortunately, will still appear on the November ballot - it behooves the Democratic hierarchy to cut its losses and alert all the Democratic voters in the 7th C.D. to shift their allegiance to Krulick. The combination of NPA and Democratic voters actually outnumbers Republican registration by over 75,000 persons. So, mathematically, this race is clearly winnable.

If the Democratic Party leadership of Central Florida really wants to defeat John Mica in November, this is the best and only way to achieve that end. The combination of Democratic and NPA votes can put Krulick's candidacy over the top on November 4th and the 7th C.D. will finally have a champion who has the creativity, the courage, and the tenacity to truly represent the people of his district after he takes the Congressional oath of office, next January.

Time is of the essence. In the coming weeks, Mr. Mica will unleash his formidable campaign war chest in a flurry of ads designed to deceive the voters of the 7th C.D. into believing that he deserves re-election to a 12th term. We must deny him that possibility by uniting behind Krulick and bringing together a coalition of voters tired of Republican obstructionism and the petty partisan bickering that typifies modern politics in Washington, D.C. Victory is within reach. The only question is: will the Democratic Party now support Al Krulick and accomplish their mutually shared goal of removing John Mica from office?

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