The tussle between a gun shop-owning senator and the former president of the National Rifle Association is heating up over a controversial driver license handbook.

And the prospect looks bleaker every day for the vendor who prints the driver license handbook for free in return for the exclusive ability to advertise his “National Safety Commission” driver education courses.

First, Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles chief Julie Jones canceled Ken Underwood’s controversial contract with the state effective at the end of the year.

Then an effort by a seemingly unwitting Sen. Carey Baker that would have given Underwood a leg up on a new contract went nowhere after a senate committee balked at the proposal, saying it appeared to be aimed at rescuing the sole source vendor.

Enter ultra-powerful NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer.

Hammer, who took a personal objection to the bill (SB 2342), finds Underwood’s sexy ads in the manual offensive for teens like her grandson who needed it to study for his driving permit. The feisty grandmother ran into problems trying to download the manual from her computer (she ultimately couldn’t).

Baker pulled the bill from the Governmental Accountability and Oversight Committee yesterday because he didn’t have the votes to pass it although he rewrote the measure to try to appease critics by allowing any driver school to pay to advertise in the manuals.

But Hammer wants to kill the bill “black flag dead” with an up or down vote in the committee.

“To say that that bill as amended is only about saving the state money is like putting a dress on a pig. No matter how pretty the dress, you wouldn’t want anybody to look closely because underneath it’s still an ugly pig,” Hammer said. “That bill is about saving a contract for a specific vendor. Nothing more, nothing less. And the criteria in that bill is designed to be limited to that vendor. To suggest that we need more advertising by letting that vendor sell advertising to whomever he chooses and to give it to non-profit groups is a joke.”

Baker, a gun shop owner unaccustomed to clashing with the powerful former president of the National Rifle Association, said he may give up on the bill this year.

“My goal is in no way to promote one vendor over the other,” Baker, R-Eustis, insisted.

Baker acknowledged that the “issue carries baggage” and that Hammer had a bad experience with the vendor.

He wants to save the state money, he said, but admitted it’s going to be a hard sell.

“It’s dead unless I come up with something the members will vote for. I’m not ramming that through any committee. That committee has spoken loud and clear,” he said.

Tags: Carey Baker, Drivers licenses, Florida Senate, Ken Underwood, Marion Hammer, National Rifle Association, NRA

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 5:42 pm and is filed under State Senate, legislature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.