On Monday, U.S. congressional candidate Keith Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota, announced the firing of new communications director Ana Maria Rosato barely 90 minutes after Sunshine State News brought to light a string of recent pornographic and anti-Catholic tirades on her blog.

Fitzgerald is running against Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan for Florida's 16th Congressional District.

Rosato, who was hired just last week to be Fitzgerald’s chief spokesperson, is the operator of “Sassy Political Insights,” a leftist blog containing numerous rants accusing Republicans of being racist, sex-repressed misogynists. The blog promotes and sells "Coochie Compliance T-Shirts" which identify the Republican Party (i.e., the GOP) as the "Grand OB/GYN Party," and contain the caption, "Demanding government small enough to fit into your coochie."


In a May 1, 2012, entry -- “Do Republicans Hate Sex?” -- Rosato wrote of Republicans:

Today’s Grand Ob/Gyn Party is obsessed with sex -- mainly ensuring that the rest of us have the same apparently miserable sex lives that they themselves endure. Just look at them. Do they look happy? Do they look like they are being romanced and courted? Do they look like they have happy, fulfilling, fabulous-can’t-wait-to-get-to-my-honey relationships? Nope.

They sure seem like a cranky, irritable, miserable lot to me. They ain’t getting any lovin’, and they damned sure spend a lot of time devising ways to prevent the rest of us from happy lives and in particular, happy sexually fulfilling lives.
 

The entry gets progressively more pornographic.

Similarly, a June 8, 2012, entry, “Republicans, Communists, and Sex”:
 

Republicans hate women, immigrants, African-Americans, firefighters, police officers, teachers, citizens who vote for Democrats, the poor, the middle class, anyone but each other. Republicans simply hate ... hate ... hate. I might feel sorry for them save for the fact that they are in positions of political power making life miserable for the rest of us.

While I'm not a psychologist nor play one on TV, I do have a theory about what makes Republicans tick in such a hateful manner, and the biggest clue is with the dot that connects together what seems to be an extraordinary amount of their venom and time. That connecting dot is sex.

Sexually immature and frustrated, Republicans lash out at everyone and everything.

Rosato’s vitriol for the GOP is matched by that for the Catholic Church. In another June entry, “Republicans: The Vatican’s American Inquisitors,” she repeats some of the harshest traditional anti-Catholic tropes, accusing the Church of instigating the early medieval Dark Ages by systematic persecution and brutalization of women:

Throughout our own nation, the Republican Party leaders and elected officials continue to embrace fully and with great zeal their role as 21st century inquisitors hell-bent on returning to the days when the Catholic Church's twisted view on sex and government ruled the planet. Together these men work diligently to take our great nation back — all the way back to the Dark Ages: that time in history when the Catholic Church ruled the planet bringing violence to women — and the men who love and respect us.

During the Dark Ages, the men of the Catholic Church marched throughout Europe using violence to expand its blatant power grab.

Nearly 24 percent of Americans, including 26 percent of Floridians, belong to the Catholic Church. None of Rosato’s entries cites any psychological or historical scholarship.

Fitzgerald’s campaign did not provide comment until some 90 minutes after Sunshine State News brought these blog entries to public light. At about 2 p.m. Monday, campaign manager Adam Scott emailed the News a terse statement: “[Rosato] is no longer with the campaign.”

Scott declined to comment on whether Fitzgerald concurred with Rosato’s comments about Republicans or Catholics; nor would he go on the record to distance Fitzgerald from those comments.

"When you run a sleazy, negative campaign you attract people like this," said Buchanan spokesman Max Goodman to Sunshine State News. "Professor Fitzgerald didn't do his homework when he hired a person with so little respect for the people of our district. Fitzgerald's campaign symbolizes everything that's wrong with Washington and that's why it's unraveling before our eyes."

This is not the first time Rosato’s rhetoric has cost her a job with a Democratic politician. In 2006, the "Metro Silicon Valley" reported that she was “canned [after] less than five months on the job” as chief of staff to San Jose, California City Councilwoman Nancy Pyle. The paper said Rosato “was known to be as combative with other council offices as she was during the election,” citing one staffer who “described Rosato's conversational approach as ‘random’ and ‘odd.’”

The Rosato kerfuffle is the latest to plague Fitzgerald’s campaign. The former state representative has faced repeated accusations by Buchanan of running a smear campaign. In exclusive interviews with Sunshine State News Sept. 15, Fitzgerald was denounced by Habitat for Humanity officials for falsely accusing Buchanan of “misleading” the world-renowned Christian charity in a 2008-2009 land deal. A few days later Fitzgerald’s sister, Linda Fitzgerald-Huber, announced her endorsement of the Republican incumbent.



Reach Eric Giunta at egiunta@sunshinestatenews.com or at (954) 235-9116.