Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. and original Single Bullet Theorist Arlen Specter faces a tough Democratic primary in Pennsylvania next Tuesday.

The above video of a 2004 Republican Specter ad and a 2010 Democratic Specter ad was put together by liberal website Talking Points Memo, but it could have just as easily been prepared by a conservative Specter critic.

Florida voters no doubt will see similar fare from Republicans and Democrats against Gov. Charlie Crist in the months ahead as former Republican Crist pursues his no-party Senate bid against GOP and Dem rivals.

UPDATE: Pinellas County elections officials this afternoon confirmed that Crist has switched his voter registration from Republican to “no party affiliation.”

With Democratic Senate frontrunner Kendrick Meek coming to West Delray on Friday to campaign and solidify support with the party’s base, Palm Beach County Commissioner and alpha-Democrat Burt Aaronson is advising party voters to “keep their powder dry” in the primary.

Delray Beach Democratic operative Andre Fladell, the volleyball-playing chiropractor who’s sort of an unofficial buckle on the Palm Beach County condo belt, goes even further, saying he and some other Dems are willing to talk to Republican-turned-independent Gov. Charlie Crist about supporting his third-party bid for U.S. Senate.

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Gov. Charlie Crist wants BP to give the state nearly $35 million for an ad campaign to lure tourists scared off by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico back to the Sunshine State.

Crist asked BP to fork over $34.75 million – $10 million more than BP pledged to the state to offset initial clean-up and preparation costs – for a “marketing campaign to counter the negative, widespread and false information potential visitors to Florida are receiving about the oil spill’s impact on Florida’s beaches and waters,” the governor’s office said in a press release.

This morning, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service incorrectly reported that tar balls had washed up on the beach in Destin. Not true, local officials said.

As Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink’s campaign staff pointed out, Sink (the Democratic candidate for governor) beat Crist to the punch this weekend by formally asking BP to pay for the ads. Sink also asked Crist earlier this week to get the federal SBA disaster loans to help out small businesses.

It’s been an oily week for the newly-independent governor and U.S. Senate so far, and it’s only Wednesday.

Crist, who is shortly going to officially abandon the Republican party by changing his voter registration, visited the Panhandle this weekend and took a leisurely ride with reporters on a charter fishing boat to spread the word to visitors that Florida’s beaches are beautiful, fish are biting and the water’s clean.

Also today, Crist asked federal officials for an economic injury disaster declaration for the 19 counties abutting the Gulf Coast from the Panhandle south to Sarasota so local businesses can get emergency loans to tide them over until BP fills their damage claims.
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“There are no tar balls here.”

That’s the first thing Okaloosa County director of public safety Dino Villani said this morning when we called after hearing news reports that the gooey blobs had finally made it to Florida’s Panhandle.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service erroneously reported this morning that tar balls had washed up on Destin’s famous powder-white beaches, Villani said, setting off a phone frenzy in his office.

The massive oil spill is still more than 72 hours from Florida, state officials reported this morning, as BP tries to cap the 210,000-gallons gushing from the wrecked Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The absence of tar balls on Panhandle beaches is something everyone from Gov. Charlie Crist down to Destin charter boat fishing captains have been advertising to try to convince tourists to “Come on down” to the Sunshine State, unfold their wallets and and boost the economy as the peak of the Panhandle tourist season kicks off.

Remember when former Gov. Jeb Bush said it was “wrong” for Republicans in the U.S. Senate to make endorsements in Florida’s GOP Senate primary?

Well, Florida Republicans don’t have much of a Republican primary left and Bush apparently no longer thinks primary endorsements are inappropriate. ABC News has a takeout today on Bush’s endorsement of Scott Walker, a Republican running for governor of Wisconsin.

From the story:

Walker is one of five Republicans whom Bush is backing in competitive gubernatorial primaries: the others are former eBay CEO Meg Whitman in California, former state Sen. Bradley Byrne in Alabama, Attorney General Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania and Attorney General Bill McCollum in Florida.

Two Palm Beach County lawmakers hoping to springboard into statewide office are in very different positions, according to a new Mason Dixon poll released this morning.

Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, is up 33 percent to 26 percent over former state Rep. Loranne Ausley, D-Tallahassee, in the likely match up of state chief financial officer candidates.

Technically, Atwater still has a primary opponent in Rep. Pat Patterson of DeLand. But Atwater holds a 30-to-1 fundraising advantage and Patterson has said he will not use Atwater’s support for Senate Bill 6 in the race. Patterson voted against it, but said the education issue wouldn’t be appropriate in a CFO race.

Meanwhile, the poll shows state Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres locked in a dogfight with fellow Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach in the Democratic primary for attorney general . The poll, which has a 4 percent margin of error showed Gelber with 15 percent, Aronberg with 12 percent and undecided with 73 percent.

Other results from the poll:

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Some believe the state should only spend upwards of $40,000 per day in a special session addressing a constitutional amendment if Florida has a constitutional crisis.

Gov. Charlie Crist says lawmakers should put an amendment on the November ballot in the wake of an environmental crisis.

The proposal from House and Senate Democrats would ban future drilling within 10 miles of Florida’s coast. But it would not address the oil flooding the Gulf of Mexico and threatening Florida beaches.

More from Crist this morning:

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“This is less about protecting the coast than protecting his own political future,” former Florida Republican Party director David Johnson said Tuesday. “This is designed to prey on the fears of the people living along the coast.”

More here.

From POLITICO this morning:

The Republican National Committee’s site-selection committee is expected to name Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday as site of the party’s 2012 convention, top Republicans tell POLITICO. The site-selection committee is scheduled announce a choice among three finalists: Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Tampa.

“It comes down to Florida being a key targeted state in the past several elections, and it’ll continue to be in future elections,” a top GOP operative said. The convention will be held in late August. Democrats have a confidential site-selection process and don’t plan to announce their pick for months.

Attorney General Bill McCollum, the leading Republican candidate for governor, urged the state to hire George Rekers to defend a ban on gay men and women adopting children. News of McCollum’s letters to the Florida Department of Children and Families was first reported by Tallahassee reporter Gary Fineout.

Rekers reportedly just got back from a European trip in which he brought a gay escort hired from Rentboy.com. That story was first reported by the Miami New Times.

Meanwhile, McCollum says he wouldn’t hire Rekers again. “It’s nice to quarterback in 40-40 hindsight, but we didn’t know his background that we know today,” McCollum said. “And nobody else did.”

Florida no longer has a statute of limitations on sex crimes committed on victims between the ages of 12 and 16.

Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law HB 525, ending the three-year statute of limitations that Palm Beach County lawyer Michael Dolce – raped repeatedly by his Maryland neighbor when he was seven years old – has spent six years trying to undo. Studies show that it is often 15 years before victims go public with their accusations.

Powerful Miami lobbyist Ron Book and his daughter Lauren Book-Lim joined Dolce’s crusade this year, taking on the Catholic Church that effectively quashed the effort in the past. Book-Lim was sexually abused and molested by the Book’s nanny over a period of years.

The House and Senate unanimously approved the measure before sending it to Crist, who signed it into law today without comment along with nearly three dozen other bills. The law, which goes into effect immediately, will apply only to new cases.

Greenacres Democrat Dave Aronberg sponsored the bill in the Senate.

Rick Scott, the Republican flooding TV airwaves in Florida, said today that he would oppose a constitutional ban on offshore drilling that Gov. Charlie Crist wants lawmakers to put on the November ballot.

“We need to protect our beaches, break our dependency on foreign oil and hold oil companies accountable when there are problems,” Scott said. “As governor, I’ll look to strike a balance between responsible exploration that takes every precaution and is far enough from our shores while holding oil companies accountable for their mistakes.”

Attorney General Bill McCollum, the front-runner in the GOP primary, say he opposes offshore drilling but wants a loophole in the constitutional amendment to allow for safe drilling in the future.

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Gov. Charlie Crist and state CFO Alex Sink as support a constitutional ban. Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson is against it.

Attorney General Bill McCollum is somewhere in the middle. He says he would “never” support offshore drilling, but in the same sentence says he wants a caveat in an amendment to allow for “new developments in science.”

Democratic Broward County Property Appraiser Lori Parrish, who has held a variety of elected offices since 1984, doesn’t rule out supporting Gov. Charlie Crist’s independent U.S. Senate campaign.

“If he vetoes that stupid abortion bill, you bet I might,” Parrish said, referring to the bill before Crist that would require women to view ultrasounds before they could get abortions.

Asked about presumptive Democratic Senate nominee Kendrick Meek, Parrish said, “Honestly, I’m not sure I want to waste my vote….I think he’s a nice guy….I haven’t seen him around that much. I’ve heard positive things about him.”

Since lifelong Republican Crist abandoned his failing GOP primary campaign and filed as a no-party candidate, early polls show him leading Republican Marco Rubio with Democrat Meek in third place drawing less than 20 percent.

Gov. Charlie Crist said lawmakers will be back in Tallahassee and he hopes it will happen by the end of the month.

“I’d like to do it in a couple weeks,” he said. “The people are concerned about it now. I sense it.”

Crist said he had a “wonderful” and “productive” talk Monday with Senate President Jeff Atwater about a potential special session to put on the November ballot a constitutional amendment that would ban offshore drilling.

Atwater told us last week that he’d be open to a special session, saying it was “an interesting twist” after Crist lobbied him in 2009 to support a House bill that would have allowed oil and gas drilling within 10 miles of state beaches.

“The governor is now suggesting that he wants a constitutional amendment to protect us from his own ideas,” said Atwater, a candidate for state chief financial officer who stopped the bill in the Senate. “It is quite interesting.”

Crist reiterated that he’d like the special session to include renewable energy issues that don’t drive up costs for consumers.

“You look at things that wouldn’t drive up rates – tax cuts, incentives, things like that for the utilities to do more solar, wind,” Crist said.

Is Charlie Crist a Harry Reid Democrat? A Ronald Reagan Republican? Depends on who’s labeling him.

Republican Senate hopeful Marco Rubio’s campaign is making much of this Wall Street Journal report that Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid phoned Republican-turned-indie Gov. Charlie Crist last week in a possible “sign of cooperation” between Crist and Dems.

Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek’s campaign, meanwhile, pointed to this three-month old NewsMax.com article in which Crist, then competing for the GOP primary nomination, called himself “anti-tax, pro-life, pro-gun Republican” and invoked Ronald Reagan a couple times.

Expect a lot more of this in the months to come. Rubio’s camp wants Crist to divide the Democratic vote. Meek’s team wants Crist to split Republicans.

PORT ST. LUCIE — The two Democrats hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, called for “fair trade” rather than “free trade” in remarks to about 70 United Auto Workers retirees.

Read about it here.

Former Florida Attorneys General Jim Smith and Bob Butterworth were appointed today to a “special legal advisory team” that will prepare the state for a potential lawsuit against BP over the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We would hope at the end of the day that there would be no litigation, that everything will be able to be worked out,” Butterworth said. “But obviously we have to be prepared if there is to be litigation.”

Gov. Charlie Crist has signed an agreement for BP to provide an immediate $25 million in economic aid to the state. But Crist said he told company officials today that the state will need more.

“We all continue to hope and pray that this doesn’t impact our state in a negative way, although probably already has been some economic impact,” Crist said.

Click here for continuing coverage of the oil spill.

The massive oil leak and continuing outpouring of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is a siege, not a marathon, Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole told lawmakers on a conference call this afternoon.

“A lot of times in the emergency management realm we say this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” Sole, the state’s lead official in charge of the Deepwater Horizon disaster response, said. “Well, sadly this is not a marathon because I don’t know how far we’re going to run. This is a siege.”

Sole said the state will “continue to throw everything we have at it until it’s solved whether that’s solved in two days because they suddenly get the blow-out prevention device to work or whether they need to keep trying everything and the only solution, the only thing that works is the relief well.”

BP’s attempt to funnel the 210,000 gallons a day spewing out of the wrecked rig 5,000 feet below the ocean’s surface failed this weekend. The oil giant is building a relief well to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. But that project will take two to three months to complete, Sole said.

And BP is considering other experimental options to try to reduce the amount of oil coursing into the Gulf.

Rep. Greg Evers, R-Baker, asked Sole if he could ballpark the chances of success for capping the leak before the relief well is complete.

“That’s an excellent question. The answer is no I don’t,” Sole said, followed by a lengthy silence.

“Whether or not they try other options …whether they’re well-formulated and good ideas that they want to pursue, that’s what they’re looking at,” said Sole, a biologist. “I don’t want to say they’re doing to do x. I know they’re looking at those options but they haven’t made a decision yet on what would be the right thing to do.”

President Obama today nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court (story here).

For whatever it’s worth, the former Harvard Law School dean split Florida’s Senate delegation in March 2009 when she was confirmed solicitor general, a post that involves representing the U.S. before Supreme Court.

In that 61-31 vote, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., supported Kagan while then-U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez voted ‘no.’ Martinez has since resigned and been replaced by Gov. Charlie Crist’s appointee, George LeMieux.

Here’s the statement from LeMieux this morning:

“I look forward to meeting with the President’s nominee, engaging in a thorough evaluation of Solicitor General Kagan’s record as an academic and lawyer for the government, and examining her responses before the Judiciary Committee.

“In making my decision whether to support confirming this nominee to a lifetime position on the United States Supreme Court, I will look for a demonstrated commitment to the unbiased application of the law and an unwavering fidelity to the Constitution.”

Other reactions from Florida:

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