Florida Democratic Party Chair Manny Diaz said Wednesday that the party’s health care insurance policy that had been cancelled more than two months ago under the previous party leadership has been reinstated. He said any employee insurance claims made over the past two months will now be covered.

“All of the current and former employees that were under the policy are covered, and whatever claims they had will be covered.” Diaz told Spectrum News.“

His statement came after POLITICO Florida and Florida Politics reported on Monday that state party staffers had been without health care coverage since the beginning of December.

The news angered some state Democratic lawmakers, who are still reeling following a desultory 2020 election cycle. Donald Trump won the state by a bigger margin than in 2016. The party also lost two congressional seats and six seats in the Florida Legislature (five in the House and one in the Senate).

“I’m furious,” Miami-Dade County Democratic state Senator Annette Taddeo said on Tuesday. ”I’m livid, and the main reason is because here we are: we’re Democrats, we’re here in Tallahassee, fighting for worker’s rights, fighting for health insurance for everyone. And we stopped paying the health insurance of our own employees?”

Sen. Annette Taddeo, D-Miami (Steve Cannon/AP)

“It’s shameful,” added Orlando Democratic state Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani, also speaking before Diaz announced that he had resolved the issue. “So many of these staffers did not even know they had lost their health insurance until it was posted on Twitter. And so you had folks that were going to the doctor, seeking access to their medication at the pharmacy, thinking that everything was fine – not realizing that their employer, the Democratic Party of Florida, was not paying their health care coverage.”

Former Party Chair Terrie Rizzo and former executive director Juan Penalosa have both pushed back on the published reports, saying in statements that they had not cancelled FDP employee health insurance under their watch.

The FDP’s prior leadership was also criticized inside its own ranks last summer, after it was reported that party leaders requested and received federal money from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) authorized by Congress to help small businesses keep employees on their payroll as the coronavirus pandemic shut down substantial parts of the economy.

“Leadership matters. Candidates matter,” says Taddeo. ”We cannot with a straight face just look the other way just because it’s our own party. It’s not okay.”

Rizzo resigned as party chair in December, and Penalosa stepped down as executive director in January. 

Now that the health care issue has been resolved, Diaz has the formidable challenge of contending with what he was hired to do: find a way to resuscitate a state party that consistently falls short despite the state’s reputation as being a “purple” state.

The former mayor of Miami cites his experiences in running and turning around large organizations as to why he’s confident he can revive the party. But he admits that he’s still trying to understand how Floridians can support what he calls “Democratic issues” like raising the minimum wage to $15, allowing for the restoration of voting rights, and voting for medical marijuana and yet back Republicans at the top of the ticket.

“Maybe it’s our fault, and we should take some of the blame for that because we seem to not be making it clear to people that these are the kinds of issues that we fight for on an everyday basis,” he says. “So from a messaging perspective and from an ideals and principles and what we fight for perspective, I think we win that battle. Now we just need to have the organization that can deliver a win and we will build that organization out.”