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The Politics column caught up with Bush and Rubio Friday in Pasco County to get their reactions.
Read about it in this week’s Politics column.
Gov. Charlie Crist listening to charter fishing boat operators in Destin
Crist toured the Panhandle and Big Bend this weekend, in part to promote the state’s pristine beaches and fine fishing and also to hear concerns of business owners, including fishermen, about the massive oil spill’s negative impact on their income.
The $25 million BP has pledged to the state to defray local governments’ expenses to prepare for the oil spill’s eventual landfall isn’t enough to cover a dramatic drop in revenue for charter fishing boat operators, hoteliers and restaurant owners, a group of worried businessmen and women told Crist in Destin on Mother’s Day.
And BP’s $75 million cap on economic damages, set by federal law, is a “drop in the bucket,” charter boat captain George Eller told Crist at the waterfront Lucky Snapper restaurant.
“Be reassured,” Crist said. “This week you’ll see some action move forward as it relates to that cap, as it relates to appropriate compensation. In fact I’m confident of it.”
“He won’t hold them. He is a Republican,” says Meek media consultant Steve Murphy. Other political pros agree Democrats are likely to gravitate to Meek as the race progresses and he becomes better known.
For now, though, Meek isn’t well-known among Democrats, creating an opening for Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene and making Meek backers like Allen Robbins worried.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush returned to the Republican dinner circuit Friday night, keynoting a Pasco County GOP dinner and making his first joint campaign appearance with Senate hopeful Marco Rubio.
Bush clearly had star power among the 600 or more partisans who attended. One audience member drew applause when he shouted that Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, should make his own run for the White House.
“Elvis was in the house tonight, wasn’t he?” Republican Party of Florida Chairman John Thrasher said afterward.
Here’s a story about the event.
And some expanded Bush excerpts are after the jump….
Is Republican Rick Scott a force to be reckoned with in Florida’s gubernatorial race? From the Crowley Political Report:
One GOP strategist told CPR tonight that the McCollum folks must be “filling their pants” over this Mason Dixon poll.
Attorney General Bill McCollum 38, formally unknown Naples businessman Rick Scott, 24. State Sen. Paula Dockery is at 7 and undecided is 31.
The St. Petersburg Times dove into the Scott phenomenon in this story today.
Tar balls could be washing up on Florida’s beaches for years, Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole told reporters on a conference call today.
But that’s not so bad, Sole said, because the gooey blobs are easier to clean up than the viscous crude oil now pumping out of the Deepwater Horizon rig off Louisiana’s coastline.
The oil sheen is about 60 miles South of the state’s now-pristine Panhandle beaches and is not expected to reach Florida’s coast until Tuesday, Sole said.
What kind of damage the state will suffer depends on how quickly BP officials cap the oil spewing into the Gulf, now at about 5,000 gallons per day.
Over time, waves and the content of the ocean will shrink the oil slick by up to 60 percent and harden it into tar balls, Sole, a biologist, said.
“That’s a good thing,” he said.
Florida might escape significant impacts of the spill but because of the voluminous amount of oil flowing out of the leak – more than 200,000 gallons per day since the April 20 blast – “we may see tar balls over months and years to come,” Sole said.
“But a lot of that depends on how effective they are at capping the discharge.”
BP is erecting a concrete box around the leak and is battling the slick with fire, dispersants and skimmers.
“However, at 5,000 barrels a day, unless they eliminate that, my fear is we will see greater impact than just tar balls,” Sole said.
Gov. Charlie Crist sounds close to calling reluctant Republicans back to Tallahassee for a special session on oil drilling. He also could include renewable energy and public corruption issues in the call.
“I would lean toward doing so at this point, rather than not,” Crist said in an interview with The Palm Beach Post this morning.
The Florida Republican Party is releasing its controversial credit card statements to media outlets in exchange for a copying fee of $292.24 and a condition that the bills not be duplicated or published. The media is allowed to report details of the statements.
Here are some details flowing out so far:
• Senate President Jeff Atwater of North Palm Beach charged $44,929 during 2007 and 2008, mostly on rental cars, airfare and meals in Tallahassee and South Florida. (Orlando Sentinel)
• Former Senate President Ken Pruitt of Port St. Lucie charged $21,000. (Orlando Sentinel)
• All told, the roughly three years of statements include $7.3 million in charges on 31 credit cards. (Herald/Times)
It might be a little early to suggest Republican Marco Rubio or Democrat Kendrick Meek have a problem with older voters (you know, the type who turn out on Election Day…), but a friend of the blog points out this cross tab in the Mason-Dixon poll released Thursday:
Billionaire Senate candidate Jeff Greene speaks at a meeting of the Palm Beach County Democratic Executive Committee Thursday night at Temple Emeth in Delray Beach.
Jeff Greene made hundreds of millions of dollars betting the real estate bubble would burst and investing in sophisticated credit default swaps.
But in his first public appearance as a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate tonight, the Palm Beach billionaire emphasized the money he made decades ago shoveling snow, mowing lawns, teaching Hebrew school, checking IDs at a college gym and busing tables at The Breakers.
Greene, who entered the race last week, spoke for about 7 minutes tonight and received polite applause from the crowd of about 150 at a Palm Beach County Democratic Party meeting west of Delray Beach. He cast himself as an outsider running against “career politicians” in Florida’s U.S. Senate race.
Attorney General Bill McCollum said that British Petroleum executives promised to pay claims within two days and agreed to put in writing their commitment to pay all costs associated with the massive oil spill circulating in the Gulf of Mexico.
McCollum and the attorneys general of Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama yesterday pressed the oil giant to put on paper its pledge to fund damages for the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil blast still spewing hundreds of thousands of oil daily into the Gulf.
“BP has assured us it will do whatever it takes to make our states and their citizens whole, and I encourage them to continue working diligently to make the claims process expedient and efficient so our citizens and businesses can see immediate relief,” McCollum, running in a GOP primary for governor, said in a statement.
Federal law requires that business owners and others impacted by the oil spill file claims with the “responsible party” before pursuing other litigation.
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate, is also demanding that BP do a better job handling claims and communicating with coastal businesses.
BP promised McCollum and the other attorneys general it would put in writing their commitment to cover all costs of the incident – which they are bound to do under federal law – “without regard to any potentially applicable
statutory caps on recoveries,” McCollum said in a statement.
BP gave the states $25 million each to help defray the costs of preparing for the spill and set up a toll-free number for claims, 800-440-0858.
McCollum and his colleagues also asked for the same commitment in writing from Halliburton and Transocean, the other companies involved in the drilling operation off the coast of Louisiana.
After spending another full day in the Panhandle meeting with President Barack Obama administration officials, BP executives and local business owners, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink got some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that BP claims adjusters on the ground in Pensacola have the authority to approve up to $5,000 for business owners like charter fishing boat captains who’ve lost money because of the oil spill slowly making its way through the Gulf of Mexico.
And Mobile Unified Command leaders cut some of the red tape that’s stymied local governments’ ability to prepare for the disaster. The Unified Command gave Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole the ability to by-pass the command center and give the direct OK for distribution of the $25 million block grant BP awarded the state earlier this week.
But Sink, the likely Democratic candidate for governor, remains distressed by unanswered questions regarding the claims process and BP’s apparent inability to clear up the lines of communication between the oil giant and those seeking redress.
“Without a doubt my greatest concern is the fact that many businesses and particularly the charter fishing industry who I heard from today…have already been fairly severely impacted by the spill in terms of lost business income,” Sink said.
(more…)
Republican state Rep. Seth McKeel doesn’t want anyone trying to score political points off the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and for good reason. Florida Democrats point out McKeel remaked in July about how odd it was that the state didn’t allow for the “safe” drilling.
“What we don’t allow for is the part that we know is safe,” McKeel says in the video above. “The production side of it. The extraction of the oil and natural gas.”
Democrats want Crist to call a special session to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would ban near-shore drilling.
Here is McKeel’s response, which drew the rebuke from Dems:
Deutch
Gov. Charlie Crist asked President Barack Obama for a $50 million emergency grant to offset costs related to the oil spill threatening Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Crist asked the president to essentially put his money where his mouth is and keep true to his promise to go all-out to help the Gulf states with the disaster.
“Encouraged by your pledge to ‘spare no effort to respond to this crisis for as long as it continues…And we will spare no resource to clean up whatever damage is caused,‘ we ask that you seek ways to help bring about an application of disaster provisions of the Stafford Act that would permit disaster National Emergency Grants and the payment of Disaster Unemployment Assistance,” Crist wrote in a letter to Obama today.
Crist’s request is the latest in a string of high-ranking officials’ efforts to ensure the state’s emergency needs are met despite an initial $25 million block grant from BP to cover rapidly mounting costs to prepare for the anticipated impact of the massive oil spill. No word yet if the newly-independent U.S. Senate candidate Crist will hug Obama if the president gives the green light for the dough.
Here’s a timeline of events today (so far) in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary:
11:58 a.m.: Kendrick Meek campaign blasts billionaire Jeff Greene for cashing on on the mortgage meltdown, or as Team Meek refers to it: “betting against the middle class.” From the memo:
Jeff Greene pioneered trading uncovered credit default swaps and started an arms race between big banks that ultimately led to a collapse that has been catastrophic for this country.
12:00 p.m.: Maurice Ferre’s campaign issued a statement questioning whether Greene was “fit for office.”
“It’s appalling enough that Jeff Greene made his money off of the misfortune of hard-working Floridians,” said Ferre. “It’s even more insulting that he thinks he can use his loot to buy their votes.”
2:29 p.m. Greene’s campaign responds, calling Meek a career politician who “lined his campaign pockets with special interest money while our economy plummeted.”
Not a single Florida homeowner has lost a penny because of Jeff’s investments. But in the years that Kendrick Meek has been in office almost 700,000 more Floridians have lost their jobs. And while Floridians were facing foreclosure because of bad loans, Kendrick Meek and his buddies were taking campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and failing to regulate them to protect homeowners
Officials late last night gave Florida the authority to place boom without getting approval from the Mobile Unified Command center in charge of the oil spill disaster.
That will cut out at least some of the bureaucratic tangles slowing down the response to local governments’ requests for permission to set up the plastic barriers to protect fragile coastal eco-systems.
Unified Command gave the OK because Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole set up a state boom review team to speed up authorization to set boom around estuaries, marshes and other sensitive coastal areas, according to an e-mail sent by Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Dave Halstead.
Sole and Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink were frustrated about the lag in approving Escambia County officials’ request to place a V-shaped funnel in Pensacola Pass to protect the inlet. After days of pressure from Florida officials, including Gov. Charlie Crist, Unified Command finally gave the green light for the barrier late Tuesday night.
Approximately 144,700 feet of boom have already been placed in the Pensacola area and an additional 14,700 feet is expected to be placed today.
In Pensacola, 20,000 feet of boom is ready to go and another 60,000 is on order. And in Panama City, 45,000 feet are staged and an additional 53,000 feet of boom is expected.
But Sole, a biologist, has warned that the boom should not be placed too soon because tides, wind and waves will displace the protective barricade before the oil from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig blast arrives.
The plastic barriers will do nothing to protect beaches because waves will slosh over the boom surface and drive the oil onshore, Sole also cautioned.
Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Dave Halstead said in an e-mail they got the thumbs up to handle boom decisions on their own as
Crist marks Teacher Appreciation Week in Palm Beach
But the new Mason-Dixon poll concludes Gov. Charlie Crist’s lead in the U.S. Senate race may be short lived. Pollsters believe hefty support Crist is getting from Democrats won’t hold up.
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