State Sen. and potential attorney general candidate Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, said he fears that too many Democrats running for the state’s top legal post will create a “brutal, competitive primary” that helps the GOP win.

Aronberg says he’s ready to submit paperwork to launch a 2010 attorney general campaign if incumbent Bill McCollum fulfills expectations and announces he’s running for governor.

Aronberg’s friend and fellow Democrat Rod Smith, the former state Senator and unsuccessful 2006 governor candidate from central Florida, is also eyeing the race. And there’s widespread speculation among Dems that state Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, will drop his U.S. Senate bid to enter the AG contest.

“Obviously I’m interested in attorney general,” Aronberg told a union retiree group here.

“But there’s other Democrats who are talking about running for it. It’s amazing that we could have a situation where three or four Democrats run for attorney general and not one Democrat runs for CFO or Ag commissioner,” Aronberg said.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat, launched a campaign for governor this week after Gov. Charlie Crist announced he is running for U.S. Senate. Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson, a Republican, faces term limits and is considering a run for governor.

“It’s about time the Democratic Party got together and in one way — in one way — became more like the Republican party, where we don’t have these brutal, competitive primaries where we all destroy each other only for us to become easy pickings for Republicans in November.”

Aronberg was speaking to about 80 people at a Florida Alliance of Retired Americans gathering. The labor-backed group originally invited Aronberg in hopes of increasing his exposure in congressional District 16, where Democrats have been looking for a candidate to challenge freshman U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta.

While Aronberg hasn’t shown much interest in challenging Rooney, potential congressional candidate Chris Craft, a Democratic St. Lucie County commissioner, attended the event.

Tags: Dan Gelber, Dave Aronberg, Rod Smith

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under 2010 campaigns, Bill McCollum, Democrats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.