An anonymous Web site aimed at embarrassing Republican Gov. Charlie Crist’s political rival appears to have backfired after one of Crist’s top political advisers admitted that he helped develop the site.

This latest twist in a suddenly sizzling primary race is at least the second time Rich Heffley, a powerful Republican political operative, has assisted a shadowy political group on behalf of Crist.

“This was me going off half-cocked and I’ll never do it again,” said Heffley, an influential Tallahassee lobbyist who has billed Florida Republicans nearly $6 million for campaign work in the past decade.

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Heffley is no stranger to bare-knuckle Florida politics.

Heffley, who served on the Florida Elections Commission from 1999-2003 after an appointment from then-Gov. Jeb Bush, created a company during Crist’s 2006 gubernatorial primary, Issues Advocacy, that has worked for only one political client in the state: a somewhat secretive campaign committee known as Conservative Values Coalition.

Rest of the story here.

Chiropractor Steven Perman, who lost Democratic state House District 78 primaries to Richard Machek in 2006 and Kevin Rader in 2008, said today he’s running for the seat again in 2010 with Rader leaving to run for state Senate.

He’s the first Democrat to enter the race for the Democrat-leaning district, which is dominated by southwestern Palm Beach County but also includes parts of Martin, St. Lucie and Okeechobee counties.

U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, has set his resignation for Jan. 3 at 11:59 p.m. in a letter this week to Gov. Charlie Crist, who will set a special election to fill the last year of Wexler’s term.

Wexler is leaving in the middle of his seventh term to head the nonprofit Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation.

Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher and Broward County Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes want the special election to fill Wexler’s Palm Beach-Broward seat to be on March 9, which would coincide with municipal election dates in both counties.

No word yet from Crist’s office on the dates for the special primary and general election dates.

Read the text of Wexler’s letter after the jump…..

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A medical examiner found that that the cause of death of 7-year-old Gabriel Myers‘, the Broward County foster child in state custody who hanged himself, was “undetermined” and that he did not commit suicide.

Broward County Deputy Medical Examiner Stephen Cina’s report also said that the child had no history of suicidal thoughts.

That’s contradicted by the Department of Children and Families’ own investigation that found that “he was out of control and destroying school property and stating that he wanted to kill himself” shortly before his death.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon created a workgroup to look into the boy’s death after it was learned that he hanged himself and was on numerous psychotropic drugs that his guardians had not signed off on.

Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon made the apparent suicide of a 7-year-old Broward County boy in foster care one of his top priorities in April.

Sheldon created a working group to get to the bottom of Gabriel Myers’ death and examine why the child was on a psychotropic drug cocktail without the consent of his guardians.

Despite Sheldon’s attention to the boy’s case, his office was unable to get its hands on a copy of the autopsy released to the public by the Broward County Medical Examiner early Thursday afternoon.

About an hour after the autopsy was made public around 11 a.m., Sheldon’s press secretary Joe Follick said he did not have a copy of it. He suggested getting a copy from the medical examiner.

Broward County Medical Examiner Joshua Perper quickly replied to a public records request and e-mailed a copy of the 28-page report.

Hours later, Follick still did not have a copy of it.

“By reviewing the facts of this case carefully, we can work to continue to improve the child welfare system in Florida. While much progress has been made, Gabriel’s death starkly reminds us that when it comes to a child’s life, we cannot relax. Every decision we make profoundly affects the life of that child,” Sheldon said in a press release when the Myers work group was created in April.

Speaking about the economy this afternoon at a Boca Raton fundraiser, Vice President Biden said Florida’s economiy is “still in trouble.”

Florida, Arizona and California, Biden said, “got killed when this bubble burst, and you’re still getting killed.”

But nationally, Biden said the economy was improving, according to a pool report of the fundraiser.

“We’re getting to the end of this toboggan run,” Biden said. “We’re no longer talking about a depression. We’re talking about the shape of a recovery.”

“We inherited a God-awful mess,” he said

Biden spoke for about 30 minutes and then took questions behind closed doors for another half-hour

Among the crowd of about 60 people — who paid between $1,000 and $30,000 to attend — were state Sens. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, and Jeremy Ring, D-Parkland; Fort Lauderdale attorney Mitchell Berger; and Palm Beach County Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel.

The fundraiser, for the Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America, was held at the home of Mark Gilbert.

Holly Benson, the former head of the Florida Business & Professional Regulation Department, announced her bid this afternoon for state attorney general. The announcement means she’ll have a Republican primary with Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp.

Democrats also have a primary in the race for this office: state Sens. Dave Aronberg and Dan Gelber are both candidates.

Benson, a former state House lawmaker from Pensacola, resigned from her state agency gig earlier this month after telling Gov. Charlie Crist about her plans to run. Crist said he asked Benson to quite, noting that he was similarly asked to resign as state education commissioner after telling then-Gov. Jeb Bush about his plans to seek another elected office.

Read Benson’s press release here. Meanwhile, Florida Democrats manage to take shots at both Benson and Kottkamp in this release.

It’s been a pretty bizarre week so far in the Republican race for U.S. Senate.

First Gov. Charlie Crist says he doesn’t know about President Obama’s visit to the state, but seems informed about an anonymous web site attacking his primary opponent, Marco Rubio; A Web video, again anonymous, casts Crist in the role of Hitler and Rubio’s campaign wonders if Crist’s own allies might be behind it; and now this:

The latest Tweet from Rubio is him LOL-ing about an “amazing” new all-natural colon cleanser. One new media guru attributes the bizarre post to a phishing scam that hit Twitter on Wednesday.

Rubio’s follow up Tweet: Could be worse. I got hacked selling something? They could have written Go Noles or Go Jets as if it was coming from me!

Greg Langowski, director of the Palm Beach County GOP executive committee, was named chairman of Attorney General Bill McCollum’s Palm Beach County team today.

Other members from Palm Beach County after the jump. And to see the statewide team, click here.

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Vice President Joe Biden will make a lunchtime money stop in Palm Beach County today, attending a fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee at the Boca Raton home of Democratic moneyman Mark Gilbert.

Tickets start at $1,000.

Gilbert was campaign finance chairman for Ron Klein in 2006 when the Democratic challenger raised more than $4.1 million and ousted incumbent Republican Rep. Clay Shaw to represent a Palm Beach-Broward congressional seat. Gilbert also raised money for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“It’s important for Palm Beach County to have people with a national voice and a national reach that allows our view to be put forth,” said county Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel, who’s going to the lunch.

After the Boca stop, Biden heads to Miami for another fund-raiser. President Obama was in Miami Beach to raise money for Democratic House and Senate candidates on Monday night.

Vice President Joe Biden will travel Thursday afternoon to Palm Beach County for a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Boca Raton, the White House announced tonight.

Biden will also visit collect cash in Miami Beach for the DNC before returning to Washington in the evening.

State Attorney Michael McAuliffe and Palm Beach County commissioners today urged the school board and local governments to put themselves under the scrutiny of a proposed corruption-fighting inspector general.

School board Chairman Bill Graham said the school board is “conceptually on board” but wants to examine details.

The discussion came as county commissioners, school board members, state lawmakers and municipal officials held a joint meeting.

With five elected officials jailed on federal charges since 2006, County Commissioner Burt Aaronson said local politicians will feel the wrath of voters if they don’t approve reforms.

“If anybody says ‘No, we don’t want to do it,’ your constituents are going to tell you you’d better do it because there’s another election coming up. And anybody that doesn’t want to join in possibly won’t be an elected official the next time around.”

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The Florida Supreme Court has issued a stay in next week’s execution of convicted cop-killer Paul Beasley Johnson.

Johnson, whom Gov. Charlie Crist scheduled to be put to death on Thursday, went on a killing spree 28 years ago after a drug binge.

The Court issued the indefinite stay because of “significant issues raised” in Johnson’s appeal regarding prosecutorial misconduct, the order reads.

Johnson’s lawyers argued in his appeal that his conviction is tainted because a jailhouse witness who testified against him was working secretly for prosecutors, who later denied their connection to the inmate.

The inmate later recanted his testimony and said he was instructed by prosecutors to take notes about what Johnson said, which he did.

Prosecutors later denied that, but Johnson’s lawyers found written notes that showed they were in contact with the inmate and had told him to “keep his ears open and take notes.”

Johnson, 60, was found guilty of the 1981 murders of a cab driver, a good Samaritan who gave Johnson a ride and a deputy in Lakeland.

After getting high on crystal meth and running out of drugs, Johnson robbed and killed cab driver William Evans in Polk County. He then approached Amy Reid and Darrell Beasley in the parking lot of a restaurant and asked them for a ride to a friend’s house. Johnson asked the pair to pull over in a wooded area so that he could go to the bathroom and then shot and killed Beasley. Reid escaped and called the Polk County Sheriff’s office.

Johnson then started a shoot-out with two deputies who responded to Reid’s call. They later found the body of a third deputy, Theron Burnham, in a drainage ditch. Burnham had been shot three times.

The conservative blog RedState.com is reporting that Republican strategist Rich Heffley, a lobbyist and longtime advisor to Gov. Charlie Crist, may have ties to a web site created Tuesday to embarrass Crist’s U.S. Senate GOP opponent, former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

The blog notes that one of its readers found source code in the site that showed an image came from computer files of “rheffley.”

Heffley has not returned a phone call. The day-old web site has since been taken down. UPDATE: The TruthAboutRubio site is back up and cleaned of any mention of “rheffley.”

Chances are he or she is at the Clayton Hutcheson Agricultural Center outside West Palm Beach, where about 40 elected officials from Palm Beach County — county commissioners, school board members, state legislators and municipal officials — are engaged in a joint meeting that just got underway.

Among the topics the group will discuss: a countywide ethics watchdog. County commissioners are considering a package of ethics reforms for county government. The school board and city governments could also come under the proposed inspector general’s scrutiny if elected officials agree. No binding votes are expected today.

UPDATE: School board Chairman Bill Graham just reminded everyone that the 0.5 percent county sales tax to pay for school construction is set to expire at the end of 2010. The tax, originally approved in a 2004 referendum, can only be extended if voters approve in another referendum

“We’d like to have a discussion with everybody here about what we might do in the future,” Graham said.

The group put off discussion of the matter until the next multi-board meeting in January.

Former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio released this Web video today as part of his U.S. Senate Republican primary campaign against Gov. Charlie Crist. It’s largely a series of clips showing Crist’s support for President Obama and the stimulus package.

But the video claims Crist is “suddenly attacking Marco Rubio because he’s desperate to cover up his own record.” This doesn’t appear to be true.

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Politico highlighted it as their photo of the day on Tuesday, and we’ve got a sneaking suspicion that it will show up again on literature from Kendrick Meek’s U.S. Senate campaign.

It’s not quite the big embrace that’s gotten Republican Gov. Charlie Crist in so much hot water, but as one insider joked, maybe that’s what these two were laughing about.

Palm Beach Kennel Club President Pat Rooney Jr., the brother of Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney of Tequesta, announced today he’s running for the northern Palm Beach County state House seat of term-limited Rep. Carl Domino, R-Jupiter.

Rooney, who had been mulling such a candidacy for months, enters a GOP field that already includes Nancy Cardone and Francisco Rodriguez. Three Democrats are also running.

Former Palm Beach Gardens Councilman Hal Valeche is also considering getting into the GOP race for Domino’s seat.

In addition to being top official at the dog track, Rooney runs two restaurants and is a South Florida Water Management District board member.

“Now is the time for bold ideas, common sense decisions and responsible leadership that put people first and energize Florida again,” said Rooney in a press release. “I know how to create jobs, I know how to keep jobs here, I will lead the way on tax relief and spending reform and I will not allow the business of the people to get bogged down by politics.”

A race-baiting mailer backed by the state’s trial lawyers has resulted in a shake-up at the top of the group’s political organization.

Scott Carruthers, executive director of the Florida Justice Association, quit today after more than two decades years at the organization.

FJA political director Albert Balido and Deputy Executive Director Paul Jess have both been demoted.

Balido will continue on FJA as a lobbyist and Jess will keep his role as general counsel, according to FJA spokeswoman Jacqui Sisto.

“After 22 years of service to the FJA, Scott has decided to leave the organization and pursue other opportunities,” Sisto wrote in an e-mail.

Carruthers resigned after several heavy-weight lawyers dropped their Florida Justice Association membership in protest over the trial lawyers group’s failure to fire anyone in response to a race-baiting campaign mailer.

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Responding to news Monday that Democrats are considering a health care package that would let states opt out of the so-called public option, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist said he’d prefer a bill with no mention at all of a public option.

“The public option, I think, may be sort of a Trojan horse to a government take over of health care,” Crist said.

What would a “government take over of health care” look like?

“I don’t think it would look very pretty,” he said.

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