Two of Gov. Charlie Crist’s deputy chiefs of staff, David Foy and Kathy Mears (who also worked as legisaltive affairs director) are stepping down.

Crist’s office announced budget director Jerry McDaniel will work in a dual role as deputy chief of staff. Crist also appointed Ken Granger, his policy director, to serve in an expanded role as a deputy chief of staff.

Mears said she had no immediate plans, but preferred to continue working in the public sector. Foy could not be immediately reached for comment.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott, who in June demanded four debates with primary rival Bill McCollum, missed a 5:30 p.m. deadline on Thursday to accept the terms of what would be the rivals’ only meeting to be televised statewide.

“You might conclude as I have that Scott chose not to participate,” Florida Press Association CEO Dean Ridings said. “I’m not sure what the hangup was. The campaign would not officially discuss it.”

Scott and McCollum are scheduled for two debates: one on Monday at the Univision studio in Miami and the other Thursday at WTVT in Tampa. The Univision debate will air at 11 p.m. on the network’s stations in Miami, Orlando and Tampa. It was unclear if the WTVT debate would air anywhere outside of Tampa.

A third debate, hosted by the Florida Press Association and Leadership Florida, was scheduled for Aug. 11 in Orlando, but was moved to Jacksonville at the request of the Scott campaign. Scott’s camp then asked for the debate to be moved out of a TV studio and into a setting that would accommodate a large audience. The two host groups said they did not have the time or resources to grant that wish.

Ridings confirmed the groups were discussing another option, but would not announce anything until at least Monday.

But The Post has learned there are discussions to return the event to Orlando as scheduled. If Scott does not attend, McCollum would still field questions. One option being considered is for the panelists to use information from Scott’s previous interviews with newspaper and TV reporters to portray his position on issues. That raises the question, however, is McCollum would have to debate his own previous statements to the media.

Republican-turned-independent Gov. Charlie Crist, the onetime “consistent conservative” GOP candidate who’s now drawing strong Democratic support in his bid for U.S. Senate, plans a campaign stop Monday morning at Democrat-heavy Century Village of Pembroke Pines in Broward County.

With Democratic Senate rivals Jeff Greene and Kendrick Meek duking it out in an Aug. 24 primary, a new poll shows Crist leading the three-way general election race for Senate and neither Dem topping 17 percent.

Word of Crist’s foray into Broward County’s Democratic heartland comes from consultant Eric Johnson, the Democratic operative and former Robert Wexler chief of staff who was hired by Crist to help make inroads with South Florida Dems.

In case anyone doubted that Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene is driving the discussion in the Democratic Senate primary with his saturation TV campaign and blizzard of mailings, check out rival Kendrick Meek’s latest ad.

As with Meek’s debut ad Monday, the customary feel-good phase in which a candidate introduces himself to voters has been reduced to three seconds consisting of a nice shot of Meek and his family walking in sunlight. The rest of the ad responds to Greene attacks and throws a few counter-punches.

“All of these news organizations reported Kendrick Meek is not part of a fraud case. And to say he’s against children’s health care is ridiculous,” a narrator says before swinging into an attack on Greene for making a fortune by betting on massive subprime mortgage defaults.

Crist

If U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek is the Democratic nominee, he gets only 13 percent of the vote, with Crist at 39 percent and Rubio at 33 percent, the poll says. Crist was also the leader in an early-June Quinnipiac poll.

Quinnipiac finds a tight November governor’s race. In a poll that has a 3.2 percent margin of error, GOP frontrunner Rick Scott would get 29 percent to Democrat Alex Sink’s 27 percent, with independent Bud Chiles pulling 14 percent.

If Attorney General Bill McCollum is the Republican nominee, he tops Sink by a 27-to-26 percent margin, with Chiles at 14 percent.

Quinnipiac released polls Thursday showing wealthy self-financed outsiders Greene and Scott holding double-digit leads in their respective primaries.

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Stubbly Rader

The photo of Rader (above right) makes the state House member look like he went a week or so without a shave and borrowed Michael Corleone’s Nevada mobster suit from The Godfather II.

Rader, unaltered

At left is what appears to be the original Rader photo (with a reversed negative) from a different Burkert mailer.

Burkert today said he wasn’t aware of any attempt by his campaign to alter Rader’s image.

“It depends on what you emphasize,” Republican U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio said in an interview this afternoon.

Rubio, who does not support an Arizona-type law for Florida, said the Republican Party should be the party of “pro-legal immigration.”

“We don’t need 49 other states to pass that law,” Rubio said. “What we need is for the federal government to do its job. That ruling is a reminder of why we’re even here to begin with. The federal government has refused to enforce our existing immigration laws. There’s no one out there more pro-legal immigration law than I am, but America cannot be the only country in the world that does not enforce its immigration laws.”

One of Rubio’s opponents, independent Gov. Charlie Crist, said he had “no reaction” to the judge’s ruling on Wednesday to temporarily suspend the most severe parts of the law.

“I’m a guy who believes in respecting the courts and I respect the decision of the judge,” Crist said.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce has endorsed Pam Bondi, a Tampa lawyer and frequent FoxNews contributor on legal issues, for attorney general.

It’s the first time the business group has backed an attorney general candidate, according to a press release issued by the Chamber, which represents 139,000 businesses throughout the state.

The endorsement should come as no surprise for one of the political neophyte’s opponents in the GOP primary. Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, is a trial lawyer, whose association has engaged in a Hatfield-McCoy’s battle with the Chamber for years.

But the powerful business group’s backing may have caught the third GOP candidate in the primary off guard. Holly Benson, who served as secretary of both the Department of Business and Professional Regulation and the Agency for Health Care Administration, is a pro-business, anti-tort reform conservative who regularly got high ratings from business groups during her tenure in the Florida House of Representatives.

Meanwhile, former Republican Party of Florida chairmen Tom Slade and Carole Jean Jordan endorsed Benson yesterday in the three-way GOP primary.

That gives Benson a 2-to-1 former-RPOF-party-boss-endorsement lead over Bondi, who’s backed by former chairman Al Cardenas, a Jeb Bush ally. So far, none have come out in support for Kottkamp.

Breaking news from the News Service of Florida:

A Leon County circuit judge has removed Amendment 9 from the November ballot, saying the measure designed to keep the federal health care overhaul from taking effect in Florida is misleading.

Background here on the amendment written in the spring by Republican state lawmakers.

The Freedom First Committee, the political advocacy group run by Merritt Island Republican Mike Haridopolos, collected $100,000 from Progress Energy on Wednesday. Hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones gave another $100,000. In recent weeks, Haridopolos has also taken $50,000 checks from FPL, the Florida Association of Realtors and the Florida Medical Association.

Haridopolos has been sending the money to other so-called 527 groups. Since the beginning of the month, he’s given $190,000 to the Florida First Initiative, a group run by GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum. Haridopolos has also given $50,000 each to Floridians for Conservative Values, a stealthy political attack group that operates out of a West Palm Beach, and Truth Matters, Inc.

Truth Matters appears to be operated by Richard S. Cole of Miami. In June, the group took $73,000 from a state Senate leadership committee known as Alliance for a Strong Economy (it’s managed by Palm Beach Gardens council candidate Howard Rosenkranz) and sent nearly all of it — $69,800 — to Citizens Speaking Out Committee, another group run by Alachua County Republican Chairman Stafford Jones that is aiding McCollum.

Haridopolos’s House counterpart, Dean Cannon, withdrew $70,000 from the Florida Republican Party on Monday and tucked it into his Florida Liberty Fund. The same day, Cannon used the fund to send $65,000 to Florida Citizens for Change, a 527 run by Harold Wise of Miami.

Rubio started his underdog campaign on a shoe-string budget, joking at the time that his only campaign aides were “Mr. Garmin and Mr. SunPass.”

But as he’s risen from long-shot to front-runner, so have his expenses.

In the second quarter he spent $402,000 on seven political consultants, two finance consultants, one legal consultant, a compliance consultant and creative consultant for his direct-mail, a Palm Beach Post analysis of Rubio’s expenditures found.

“I thought he was just going from pine tree stump to pine tree stump generating an upwelling to sweep him into the Capital, said Republican operative Mac Stipanovich, who is supporting Crist in the race. “That kind of money for consultants isn’t really consistent with his image.”

Story here.

After spending millions of dollars of their own money on TV ads and mailers over the last three months, wealthy outsiders Jeff Greene and Rick Scott lead their respective primaries for the Democratic Senate nomination and Republican gubernatorial nomination, a new Quinnipiac University poll of Florida voters says.

In the Democratic Senate race, Palm Beach billionaire Greene has surged ahead of of U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek and holds a 33-to-23 percent lead, the poll says. The race was a virtual tie in June, with Meek up by a 29-to-27 percent margin.

Former health care executive Scott leads Attorney General Bill McCollum by a 43-to-32 percent margin in the GOP governor’s primary. Scott had a 44-to-31 percent edge in Quinnipiac’s June poll.

The primaries are Aug. 24, with early voting beginning Aug. 9.

Scott’s lead appears more solid than Greene’s, other numbers in the poll suggest.

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Sink

With polls showing the Arizona law is popular among Florida voters, Sink’s pronouncements on the issue tend to be carefully worded statements that minimize explicit criticism of Arizona while emphasizing her displeasure with Washington.

Sink’s reaction to today’s temporary injunction blocking enforcement of key portions of the Arizona law is no exception.

Read more after the jump….

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Republican governor hopeful Rick Scott, whose pledge to bring an Arizona-style crackdown on immigration to Florida is a key component of his campaign, criticized a federal judge’s granting of a preliminary injunction today to block the implementation of key parts of the law until a federal lawsuit is resolved.

Scott’s GOP primary rival, Attorney General Bill McCollum, who filed an amicus brief supporting the Arizona law, also slammed the ruling.

Read the Republican reactions after the jump…..

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UPDATED with reaction from Greene’s campaign.

Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene said at this month’s Florida Democratic Party dinner that he’d support U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek in the general election if Meek wins the Aug. 24 Senate primary.

On a conference call today, Meek was asked if there is “any way” he could support Greene if Greene wins the primary.

Read Meek’s answer, and the Greene campaign’s response, after the jump…..

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Democratic U.S. Rep. and Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, on a conference call with reporters, said he missed Tuesday’s vote on financing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because it was originally scheduled for later in the week and moved up at the last minute.

Meek was campaigning in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach early Tuesday and didn’t get to Washington until it was too late, a spokesman said earlier today.

With Democrats increasingly divided on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, Meek said he would have joined the majority in the 308-114 House vote for more money for military operations.

“My record stands clear, that I’ve supported the men and women in uniform,” Meek said on the conference call. He noted the large margin by which the bill passed and added that “there was not a threat that the funding was not going to be approved.”

Don’t look now, but Attorney General Bill McCollum is doing a decent job collecting money for his Republican gubernatorial race.

Nearly all of the money-related headlines have gone to Naples businessman Rick Scott, who, along with his wife, have poured at least $31 million of their personal fortune into the Republican gubernatorial primary.

But by spending his own money, Scott has given McCollum the entire field of the traditional Republican donors, who helped Charlie Crist and Tom Gallagher raise nearly $30 million in 2006.

McCollum and his allies have spent nearly $14 million so far, about $1 million more than Crist spent in the 2006 primary.

On the collection side, McCollum has received $1.3 million from Florida taxpayers as part of the state’s public campaign financing program, which Scott is trying to get a court to dismantle.

And we reported Tuesday that McCollum’s political advocacy group, a 527 known as Florida First Initiative, brought in $500,000 from the U.S. Chamber (the Florida Chamber endorsed him today). McCollum has helped his 527 collect $1.5 million since July 8. Broken down that’s an average donation of $45,000. Or about $77,000 per day.

Meanwhile, McCollum’s campaign has made another big TV purchase, peppering $1 million across the state for the next month. The buy is mostly — if not all — on Fox News and focuses on Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville TV markets.

Scott, however, continues outspend McCollum about 3-to-1 on TV. A report from ad buyers show’s Scott’s 527 group, Let’s Get to Work, will spend another $1.8 million in the next week. Most of that money is spent in Tampa, Orlando and Miami markets.

Hastings

Palm Beach County’s other House members — Democrats Ted Deutch and Ron Klein and Republican Tom Rooney — supported the bill.

Hastings Chief of Staff Lale Mamaux on Hastings’ vote:

Congressman Hastings joined a majority of his colleagues from the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in voting against the supplemental appropriations bill. The Senate version of the bill that the House passed was stripped of critical domestic and CBC priorities (i.e. funding for teachers, police, and fire fighters, Pell Grants, youth summer jobs, TANF Emergency Contingency Fund, and settlement funds for the decades-old discrimination Pigford and Cobell lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Ag).

Furthermore, as it pertains to Afghanistan the Congressman believes that it is past time that we re-examine our strategy in Afghanistan. He is a co-sponsor of H.R. 5015, to require a plan for the safe, orderly, and expeditious redeployment of US Forces from Afghanistan. The legislation was introduced by Congressman Jim McGovern on April 14, 2010.

With Democrats increasingly divided on the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 308-to-114 late today for a supplemental spending bill that includes $37 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

President Obama’s request got more support from Republicans (160 votes) than Democrats (148 votes). Local U.S. Reps. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, and Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, voted yes. U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, joined 101 other Dems and 12 Republicans in voting no.

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, did not vote. Meek, who’s running for U.S. Senate, was campaigning in South Florida earlier in the day.

Click here to see the complete roll call.

UPDATE: Here’s the official memo on the poll.

Those will be the official numbers released in the coming days from a poll commissioned by the Florida Medical Association, Bill McCollum supporter Mac Stipanovich tells us.

The poll of 600 likely Republican voters was taken July 25-26 by McLaughlin & Associates and has a 4 point margin of error. The pollsters are also working for McCollum and the numbers are almost identical to this survey for the campaign that Politico reported on today.

Most voters have a negative opinions of Scott and McCollum, but the poll will show McCollum has a better chance to win the 30 percent still undecided.

“The story here is not that McCollum isn’t winning. It’s that Scott has not got the separation he was hoping for after outspending McCollum four-to-one,” Stipanovich said. “When you live on momentum and expectations, you have to keep them going. When you disappoint, you deflate quickly sometimes.”