Moskowitz is Democrats’ best choice for Congress – Sun Sentinel

An open congressional seat in Florida comes along very rarely, and the departure of Democrat Ted Deutch after 12 years has drawn a crowd: Six Democrats and seven Republicans have applied for this seat, and two unaffiliated candidates will be on the Nov. 8 general election ballot.

The first order of business: On Aug. 23, Democrats will nominate a candidate in the redrawn 23rd Congressional District, which stretches from Port Everglades in the south to Boca Raton in the north and takes in all or part of about a dozen Broward cities. Redistricting has made this a more solidly Broward district and two of the leading candidates in the primary are government officials in Broward: County Commissioner Jared Moskowitz and Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Ben Sorensen.

Moskowitz, 41, of Parkland, is the best prepared candidate to start a career on Capitol Hill, and has earned the support of voters. His resume is the most impressive in this big field — and the most controversial, too.

The biggest issue in the Democratic primary has been Moskowitz’s past ties to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, first as the state director of emergency management and more recently as a DeSantis appointee to a vacant seat on the County Commission.

As the so-called “master of disaster” for the state, Moskowitz played a prominent role in the state’s early response to the pandemic, which included rushing vaccines to nursing homes, assisted living facilities, Black churches and retirement communities.

DeSantis’ stubborn and reckless resistance to mask mandates and ambivalence toward vaccinations was wrong, but Moskowitz didn’t agree with it and changed his Twitter handle to “MASKowitz.”

In a joint online candidate interview, Moskowitz more than held his own as Sorensen and a third candidate, civil rights lawyer Hava Holzhauer, 49, of Boca Raton, repeatedly teamed up to criticize him for working for the polarizing governor, a strategy that’s as revealing as it is risky.

Sorensen, 44, describes Moskowitz as DeSantis’ “friend,” an obvious exaggeration, and made nebulous allegations of Moskowitz’s agency mishandling contracts. But his criticism is undercut by the fact that he sent congratulatory text messages to Moskowitz during the pandemic, and at one point texted: “Keep up the good work!” He also thanked Moskowitz for rushing 100,000 bottles of water to Fort Lauderdale during a boil-water order in the city.

Holzhauer has also tried to link DeSantis’ “incredibly hateful policies” directly to Moskowitz.

“I didn’t vote for Ron DeSantis. I don’t support Ron DeSantis,” Moskowitz told the Sun Sentinel editorial board. “I was hired to do a job. I did that job.” He said he convinced DeSantis to visit the scene of the Pulse nightclub shooting.

[ RELATED: Jared Moskowitz, who helped oversee pandemic response, says he wasn’t involved in Florida’s most controversial vaccine sites ]

Growth, traffic and overdevelopment remain major issues in Fort Lauderdale, and Sorensen has been on both sides of those contentious issues. He…