Haitian trip, rescue video boost Meek's profile

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, whose Miami district includes the nation's largest Haitian community, left on a sudden and dramatic trip to Haiti Sunday to participate in aid efforts and gather information.

Accompanying Miami aid workers in Port-au-Prince, Meek ended up capturing the rescue of a 2-year-old girl from the rubble of her home on cell phone video. The video has had broad airplay on national news shows.

The trip, Meek's staff said, was a purely humanitarian effort, motivated by fact-finding and hundreds of contacts to Meek's office from Haitian-American constituents wanting to get information or to send aid to their families.

"The fact that he's been to Haiti 15 times since he was elected, that he has such a large Haitian constituency, that gives him a level of expertise that other policy makers don't have," said Meek spokesman Adam Sharon.

"If this were his first foray to Haiti, there's no way he would even have made it to Port-au-Prince."

But it could have a beneficial political effect for Meek, who's the leading Democratic contender for the U.S. Senate.

Previously, Meek has had trouble catching attention in a race dominated by the battle between Gov. Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio for the Republican nomination. For the first time, he's getting the kind of national attention they've been getting.

Meek and his video have been on at least half a dozen national news shows since Sunday night, Sharon said, including CNN and Fox News on Monday.

Meek's Miami-based congressional district includes Little Haiti, home of thousands of Haitian immigrants. The 2000 U.S. Census showed about 96,000 Haitians in Miami-Dade County, the most in any U.S. county.

Sharon said the congressman has been consumed by the crisis since the earthquake struck the nation Tuesday, and the campaign has been effectively shut down.

Among cancelled events was Meek's participation in Martin Luther King Day festivities in St. Petersburg and Tampa today.

Initially, Sharon said, Meek lobbied the administration along with other South Florida congress members to grant temporary protected status to Haitian immigrants. On Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, announced a halt to deportations of Haitians.

Back in Miami late in the week, Meek worked to expedite relief efforts, including meeting with government and military officials and assembling community meetings.

Meanwhile, Meek and his staff dealt with scores of requests for aid, including helping an Orlando church arrange a military helicopter rescue of a group of young people stranded on a hillside during a church mission to Haiti.

Saturday evening, Sharon said, Meek made a last-minute decision to go to Haiti that night.

He bought a one-way ticket to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, arranging for a local driver to meet him and go to Port-au-Prince, where they arrived about 6 a.m. Sunday.

Meek met with members of the 82nd Airborne at the airport, then took an aerial tour of Port-au-Prince with the U.S. ambassador. He then accompanied a team of Miami-Dade and French rescue workers as they responded to reports of possible survivors under the rubble of the little girl's home.

Meek, a former Florida High Patrol trooper, "is a trained first responder," Sharon said.

The child's mother died in the home, but Meek's video shows the rescuers bringing the little girl out and treating her, to the delight of her father.

Sharon said Meek is attempting to avoid doing anything that would add to the burden faced by rescue and aid workers, including sleeping at the U.S. embassy and looking either for a non-passenger flight home or a return the way he came.