Feb. 8--S omething like this could have kept our Kenny out of jail.

Maybe if Jim Waldman had dubbed his proposed legislation the Sheriff Ken Jenne Prison Preemption Act, his fellow Democrats might not have stomped the idea as if it were an autographed photo of Rush Limbaugh.

Rep. Waldman, registered as a Democrat despite his descent into heresy, riled up party hacks with the notion of designating the Broward County sheriff a nonpartisan office. The nerve of the guy! They quickly beat him into submission and he dropped the idea of introducing his bill in the upcoming session of the Legislature.

"What I was proposing was not to make the office nonpartisan," Waldman told me Friday. "My bill would give voters the option in a referendum [in 2010]. Let the people decide."

Of course, party leaders knew well what would happen if they let the damn people decide. In 2002, the Palm Beach County Commission allowed the unwashed masses to decide and voters promptly removed party ownership from the offices of sheriff, property appraiser and supervisor of elections.

Waldman's bill was less ambitious. But law enforcement would seem like a particularly nonpartisan pursuit, even in South Florida. State Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Parkland, backed Waldman, but most of the party leadership was aghast.

"The argument I ran into was primarily a patronage issue," said Waldman, the former mayor of Coconut Creek. The party, he said, covets those 6,700 BSO jobs.

I was shocked, shocked to learn that an important stand by the local party leadership was not based on political principles or party philosophy. It was like discovering that there was gambling in Coconut Creek (home to a Seminole casino).

Al Lamberti was a nominal Republican and a longtime cop whom Gov. Charlie Crist appointed to the office after the very Democratic Sheriff Ken Jenne was indicted in 2007 (and later carted off to federal prison). The affable Lamberti, an essentially apolitical presence as the county's top cop, could have switched party affiliation and avoided a nasty tussle in last year's election. Lamberti faced a 2-to-1 Democrat-to-Republican party registration in Broward. And Lamberti was up against a tidal wave of support for Barack Obama at the top of the ticket.

He was also up against Scott Israel, the former North Bay Village chief of police and an erstwhile Republican himself. Israel had been a registered Republican for more than 30 years before his rather convenient epiphany just in time for the 2008 Democratic primary.

Lamberti, however popular and scandal free, barely won in the November election.

"It shouldn't have been close at all," Waldman insisted.