Early and absentee ballots from Broward County show Democrat Ted Deutch with 56.2 percent of the vote and Republican Ed Lynch with 40.3 percent in the special congressional election to replace Robert Wexler. No-party candidate Jim McCormick has 3.

Precinct results are not yet in from Broward County, which makes up about 30 percent of congressional District 19.

No results have been posted yet from Palm Beach County.

File this under Educated Guesses, but it increasingly sounds like Gov. Charlie Crist’s decision on the controversial teacher bill could be Thursday in Tallahassee. He has until Friday, but he’s still scheduled to be in Miami that day.

“It’d be Thursday at the earliest,” Crist said tonight.

Crist also said he would probably hold a public event in Tallahassee to announce his decision, whether it’s to sign the bill or veto it. A public veto — if that’s his decision — would be a rare event at the Capitol…

“That may require some change in the schedule to accommodate that,” he said of a possible event. “But there’s nothing more important right now. So whatever else may be in the queue, this is priority one.”

Asked what he’s still weighing, Crist said he was still concerned that special-needs teachers might not be treated fairly under the bill and had constitutional questions about how much the state Department of Education can impose on school districts. On the plus side, he said he still favors merit pay for teachers and likes that the bill increases “accountability.”

“I’m never not thinking about it lately,” he said.

The local chapter of the NAACP is holding a prayer vigil at the governor’s mansion Thursday night to encourage Gov. Charlie Crist to veto a controversial teacher pay bill.

Crist has until midnight Friday to act on the bill, and recently said the tremendous opposition to the measure (SB 6) has made a “fairly significant impression” on him.

State Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, is helping organize the vigil, which is slated to begin at 7 p.m. unless Crist takes action on the measure first.

NAACP Tallahassee chapter president Dale Landry said the bill will force teachers to kick poor-performing students out of their classes because their salaries will be tied to how well the children score on standardized tests.

“You’re talking about a person’s livelihood being tied to children” and factors outside the classroom over which teachers have no control, Landry said.

“To me that’s criminal,” he said.

Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Marco Rubio’s father has been diagnosed with a recurrence of lung cancer, Rubio’s campaign said.

The news led Rubio to cancel much of a Florida bus tour that began today and was to wrap up Friday.

Rubio issued this statement through his campaign:

“Unfortunately, my father Mario Rubio has been diagnosed with a recurrence of lung cancer. This will require me to return to South Florida. We are in the process of rescheduling some of the coming days’ events and look forward to continuing our conversation with voters in these communities in the near future.”

Rubio still plans to attend a rally in The Villages in Central Florida tonight and events early Wednesday in Belleview and St. Augustine.

Supporters of the controversial bill to overhaul how teacher contracts and salaries are negotiated attempted to win back Gov. Charlie Crist’s support with a press conference this morning where they insisted the changes would make Florida a world leader in education.

“The Senate Bill 6 is about rewarding high quality teachers, paying them more, getting better teachers into our low income schools and making sure every single child has a high quality teacher in the classroom,” Foundation for Florida’s Future President Patricia Levesque said. “We’re thankful that Gov. Crist has supported these issues in the past and we’re really looking forward to his support this week.”

Levesque and others dismissed the outcry from the education community, saying teachers have been ginned up by a union campaign of misinformation.

“I’m frankly a little surprised that out of about 144,000 union members that there’s only about 30,000 that are up in arms about this,” Florida Chamber of Commerce President Mark Wilson said. “What’s happening is they’re getting e-mails, they’re getting phone calls, they’re getting rhetoric about what this bill does not do.”

Florida Education Commissioner Eric Smith and state Public Schools Chancellor Frances Haithcock were supposed to join supporters of the bill. But both were last-minute scratches when Crist’s staff asked for meeting to go over the bill again. With Crist seemingly leaning toward a veto, the timing of the meeting was interesting.

The separation of church and state has been in Florida’s constitution for more than a century.

But that might this fall under a proposal approved by a Senate committee this morning that could go before voters on the November ballot.

The “Religious Freedom” amendment would delete the 125-year-old provision in the constitution prohibiting state money from being spent directly or indirectly to aid any church, sect or religious denomination. And it would open the door to former Gov. Jeb Bush’s school voucher program allowing public school students to use state money to pay for religious school tuition that the Florida Supreme Court struck down.

Also known as the “Blaine Amendment,” the separation of church and state restriction was an anti-Catholic, anti-immigration measure aimed at keeping Catholics from obtaining government funding for their schools.

(more…)

Not much new this morning from Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who met with reporters before the twice-a-month Cabinet meeting. But with all the interest in the issue, you can watch the entire six-minute press conference above.

During the briefing, Crist said he did not promise Sen. John Thrasher, the Republican Party chairman sponsoring the bill, that he’d sign the controversial teacher legislation. Crist said that yesterday, as we reported here and here.

Crist said he still hasn’t made his decision yet on whether to sign or veto the bill — he has until Friday — and implied that he favors accountability more than eliminating teacher tenure.

He also said that former Gov. Jeb Bush left him a voicemail asking him to sign the bill.

“Shocking,” Crist laughed.

No, it wasn’t a robo-call. But Bush’s education group is also airing an ad asking people to call Crist and urge him to sign the bill.

Top Florida House Republicans Dean Cannon of Winter Park and Will Weatherford of Wesley Chapel say they’re still supporting Gov. Charlie Crist in his U.S. Senate campaign against former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Crist is trailing Rubio be a 2-to-1 margin in a poll released Monday and the two House GOP lawmakers have not been particularly vocal about their candidate.

Voters in congressional District 19 today will choose a replacement for U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, the Democrat who stepped down in January to head a Middle East think tank.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The district has more than twice as many Democrats as Republicans and voted 65 percent for Barack Obama in 2008. That makes Ted Deutch, a state Senator from Boca Raton, the heavy favorite. But Republican Ed Lynch hopes to ride voter dislike for the new Democratic health care law to an upset victory. And independent candidate Jim McCormick hopes enough voters are fed up with two-party politics to propel him into office.

The winner serves the last 8-1/2 months of Wexler’s term and will be up for reelection to a full two-year term in the fall.

For a recent summary of where the candidates stand on key issues, click here.

Looks like the Foundation for Florida’s Future — former Gov. Jeb Bushs education group — has modified their original television ad to include fellow Republican Gov. Charlie Crist’s phone number and e-mail. Bush and his group are big supporters‘ of the bill that Crist might veto this week.

Republican Gov. Charlie Crist is hearing from opponents of the proposal to end teacher tenure everywhere he goes. Even tonight at a children’s advocacy dinner, a Miami high school senior ran up to Crist.

“I know I want to be a chemical engineer because of my chemistry teacher,” said Michelle Ruiz, who is heading to Carnegie Melon next year. “He’s so passionate about what he teaches and it’s because he loves it. And it’s because he’s not stressed out about all these different situations.”

The conversation was about 10 minutes long. That’s about 10 minutes longer than Republican legislative leaders have spent with Crist since the controversial bill passed Friday morning.

“The more you hear, the more of an impression it makes,” Crist said after talking with Ruiz. “I’m a human being. It continues to make a fairly significant impression.

“If I hadn’t waited and had a predisposition before today, I wouldn’t have heard from her. And if I had gone the other way, shame on me. Let all the jury speak. Let all the voices be heard.”

Here’s a new story about Crist’s dilemma. And keep reading for more from Crist

(more…)

Republican Ed Lynch aired an ad ripping Obamacare over the final weekend before Tuesday’s special congressional election to replace Robert Wexler. Democrat Ted Deutch did his best impression of legendary Chess session man Lafayette Leake as he joined the band Riptide at Delray Affair on Saturday night and supplied keyboard accompaniment to a cover of Bo Diddley’s Before You Accuse Me.

The aggressive new ad comes after news this morning that Gov. Charlie Crist is trailing former House Speaker Marco Rubio, 57-28, according to a Rassmussen poll.

Rubio’s spokesman Alex Burgos responds to the ad:

(more…)

At the weekend’s Southern Republican Leadership Convention in New Orleans, Sarah Palin appears to be a big fan of Marco Rubio’s GOP Senate bid in this video posted on the pro-Rubio Shark Tank blog.

A week really is a lifetime in Florida politics right now.

But as of this moment, tentative plans are for Gov. Charlie Crist to be in Miami on Friday when the clock runs out on his deliberations over the controversial teacher merit pay bill that lawmakers delivered to him Friday.

Crist is certainly capable of announcing his decision at any point before then, but how memorable would it be if he waited to veto the bill until he arrived in the hometown of Jeb Bush (and Marco Rubio, for that matter), who has been pushing for the legislation and against Crist’s Senate campaign for some time?

Then again, maybe Bush and Rubio would attend the bill signing if Crist goes that route…

In the meantime, the issue is getting Crist some serious face time on Central Florida TV. Maybe all of these TV crews show up anyway for the groundbreaking ceremony in Tampa on Friday or to The Villages on Saturday for his U.S. Senate campaign rally. But maybe not.

If you watch any of the videos after the jump, check out the last one. It has some pretty striking footage of Panhandle teachers giving the business to Rep. Dave Murzin, R-Pensacola, for supporting the bill. This might be evidence that Rep. Joe Gibbons, D-Hallandale Beach, wasn’t kidding around when he said at 1:16 a.m. on Friday that the bill would spark the “TEA-chers Party.”

(more…)

The Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, which advocates for gay rights and against discrimination based on “gender identity and gender expression,” told thousands of its members today that Tuesday’s special congressional election is for Democrats only.

The group sent out a blast e-mail endorsing Democrat Ted Deutch. The e-mail says “only registered Democrats may participate” in the special congressional election to replace Robert Wexler.

“That was a typo. We’re going to correct that,” said the group’s president, Rand Hoch.

Hoch said the Democrats-only language was left over from an endorsement e-mail the group sent out before the special Feb. 2 Democratic primary. Hoch said a corrected version of the e-mail will go out Monday and Tuesday.

The e-mail says it was paid for and approved by Deutch’s campaign. Hoch said after Deutch won the endorsement, his campaign paid the cost — which Hoch estimated at less than $100 — to send the mass e-mail.

Gov. Charlie Crist said he’s being leaned on more heavily about the sweeping teacher pay reforms now on his desk or veto than on any other issue since he took office three years ago.

But caught in the hallway on his way out of the Capitol this afternoon, House Speaker Larry Cretul didn’t have much to say about the measure (SB 6).

When asked what he would tell the governor to try to convince him to sign it into law, Cretul said simply: “It’s a good bill.”

That’s it?

“Yes it is. Sixty-six people thought it was a good bill,” Cretul said.

Oops. Democratic members nearby corrected the leader. The final vote was 64-55.

“Well, I’m working it,” Cretul said.

Maybe the Ocala Republican was more tired than taciturn.

Cretul was at the podium through much of the eight-hour debate on the measure that dragged on until just before 2:30 a.m. this morning.

Republican congressional hopeful Ed Lynch is facing a foreclosure lawsuit but says he’s attempting to work out a loan modification to stay in his house.

Lynch, who’s running in Tuesday’s special election to replace Robert Wexler, has missed mortgage payments since last June and owes $647,974 in principal, interest and other advances, according to a suit filed March 30.

“We’re just like anyone else. We’re not on a pedestal. We’re not holier-than-thou. We’re not different from anybody else except that we trusted the federal government,” said Lynch, who says his contracting business is owed at least $2.8 million for work on a veterans hospital in Miami.

“Money gets tight when our biggest customer doesn’t pay us,” Lynch said.

(more…)

Gov. Charlie Crist has a week to decide if the controversial teacher merit pay bill is a “sucker-punch to the gut of the teaching profession” or a visionary reform now that SB 6 has reached his desk.

The “teacher tenure” bill poses a conundrum for the U.S. Senate candidate framed in the old Pete Seeger union song, Which Side Are You On?

The self-described “People’s Governor” is facing mounting pressure from fellow Republicans to sign SB 6 into law and from Democrats demanding that he kill the bill.

Crist originally said he thought the merit-pay proposal was a good idea. But after tens of thousands of teachers, parents and students inundated lawmakers’ offices and his own with phone calls and e-mails blasting the plan, his enthusiasm may be waning.

“The more you listen, the more you learn,” Crist told reporters Thursday morning. “There are things I like and things that give me some concern,” in the bill. “I’m listening to the people of Florida — my boss.”

After the House passed the bill at 2:30 this morning, Speaker Larry Cretul urged the governor to keep his word.

“I believe we have passed legislation this morning that is important,” Cretul, R-Ocala, said. “It is legislation I believe the governor should want to sign. I take him at his word that he will.”

But even before the measure reached Crist’s desk shortly after noon today, Democrats ramped up demands that Crist to put his red pen to use.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat running to replace Crist, called on the governor to “stand with the people of Florida against this attempt by Tallahassee politicians to take control away from our local schools.”

Her campaign this morning launched an online petition for Floridians to sign to request the veto.

Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson said in a statement “our governor needs to stand his ground” and veto the bill Lawson called a “sucker-punch to the gut of the teaching profession.”

Read the full story here.

Gov. Charlie Crist’s office received the controversial bill at 12:19 p.m. today.

That means he has until close of business on Friday, April 15 to either veto the bill, sign it into law or let it become law without his signature.