Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Attorney General Bill McCollum, likely to face off in the November gubernatorial election, are growing more frustrated with BP’s apparent lackadaisical approach to the impending financial crisis headed toward Florida in the shape of an oil blob.

Sink, a Democrat, sent a letter to the oil giant’s president of American operations Lamar McKay asking him to put her in touch with a BP exec who can make decisions.

McCollum, a Republican, and the attorneys general of the other Gulf states, want President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to create a federal-state work group to coordinate lawsuits coming out of the massive oil spill.

BP has given Florida $25 million to pay for initial clean-up and preparation costs and has pledged more.

“We recognize that BP has stated publicly that it will live up to its obligation to pay all claims arising from this environmental and economic disaster. We hope that BP will. But we would be remiss in our responsibilities if we did not consider the possibility that enforcement or litigation efforts may be required in the future,” McCollum and the AG’s of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi wrote in a letter today.

McCollum and Sink traveled several times to the oil spill command center in Mobile to make sure Florida’s needs are being addressed.

Sink, who said she there’s a communication breakdown among the top brass handling the disaster, is putting BP on the spot. (more…)

The 30-second spot above is from Friends of the Earth, which says it’s airing the ad in Virginia and Florida.

Meanwhile, Gov. Charlie Crist say he’s open to a special session to consider a constitutional amendment to ban drilling off Florida’s coastline. Florida Democrats made a pitch for a special session this morning.

PALM BEACH — Gov. Charlie Crist says he’s open to a proposal by Democrats to convene a special legislative session to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to prohibit drilling off Florida’s coast.

“Obviously, in light of what’s happened recently in the Gulf of Mexico, those kinds of ideas we’re going to have to field,” Crist said before visiting Palm Beach Public Elementary School for an assembly to mark “Teacher Appreciation Week.”

“This much is clear. Let me be very clear about this, as far as oil drilling is concerned: Not now, no way,” Crist said. “Whether it’s in the form of a constitutional amendment or a special session remains to be seen.”

(more…)

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Jon Stewart: “I’m beginning to think ‘the American people’ is a meaningless phrase, cravenly used as a cudgel to project whatever provincial concerns any particular interest group may want to advance, and as such, perhaps should be struck from public utterance, along with such other false monolithic projections as ‘the Founders intended,’ ‘our children deserve,’ and ‘nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee!’”

After losing two lopsided elections in a congressional district that’s 2-to-1 Democrat, Republican Ed Lynch opted not to run again this year — but says 2012 is a possibility.

He outlines a variety of reasons for passing on this year’s race in this letter to supporters.

Lynch, who got 27.2 percent in a 2008 run in congressional District 19 and 35.2 percent in an April 13 special election won by Democrat Ted Deutch, offered this observation about the electorate he failed to woo:

“Unfortunately, the electorate in district 19 is not fair and balanced. In fact a minority percentage of the electorate makes the decisions for the entire district. This district is run by the condo commandos of Century Village, Kings Point, Palm Aire and Wynmoore. These communities are bastions for the Democratic Party in Palm Beach and Broward Counties. Until those voters are truly educated and step out of that vote ‘D’ mentality can true competition be brought to the House Congressional Race.”

UPDATE: We missed one donor. A $2,400 donation from Thomas Petway doesn’t show up in a search of the FEC’s electronic files. But the paper records clearly show his contribution. So of the 20 Republicans who signed the letter, nine donated to Crist and eight still have money in his campaign. The blog has been updated to correct the error.

Twenty Republican fund-raisers signed a letter today calling on newly independent Gov. Charlie Crist to return campaign contributions he received from GOP donors.

“As part of your transition into this new phase of your political career, we respectfully request that you return every penny of donor money from every donor who asks for a refund. For those of us who have donated to your Senate campaign, you can start by refunding in full the contributions we have made,” the letter reads.

But just eight of the 20 have any money sitting in Crist’s campaign coffers, records show.

One of the 20 who signed the letter, Gay Gaines of Palm Beach, hasn’t given to Crist in at least 15 years. She donated $2,400 this year to Crist’s GOP rival, Marco Rubio, whose campaign circulated the letter. .

“I’ve never thought he was very dependable,” Gaines said of Crist. “I guess my instincts were right.”

Former U.S. Ambassador Al Hoffman helped write the letter, but he asked for — and received — his cash back in February, just weeks after Hoffman helped push former state GOP chairman Jim Greer out the door.

“When I discovered, in my view, that Charlie was complicit in the Jim Greer debacle, I couldn’t swallow it,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman said he believes Crist was aware that Greer and Delmar Johnson, then the party’s executive director, were diverting 10 percent of all party donations their LLC known as Victory Strategies.

“How could he not have been aware of that?,” Hoffman said. “If he wasn’t aware of it it means he was totally incompetent. If he was aware of it, he was complicit. Either way it’s pretty damning.”

Here’s our story of the day’s events in the U.S. Senate race.

And keep reading for the text of the letter along with the list of which signatories actually gave to Crist’s Senate campaign.

(more…)

HOLLYWOOD — Gov. Charlie Crist appears likely to veto a bill requiring women to see ultrasounds before they can get abortions, state Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, said today.

Sobel said she had a brief conversation with Crist as he visited the Seminole reservation for a ceremonial signing of a $1 billion gaming compact.

“I think it looks positive for a veto, but it’s not over ’til he vetoes it,” Sobel said. “I actually went up and whispered in his ear….It means a lot to the women in this state.”

The ultrasound bill didn’t come up when Crist spoke briefly with reporters before leaving the event.

Attorney General Bill McCollum and the attorneys general of the four other Gulf Coast states potentially affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil blast asked the three corporations associated with the massive oil leak to put their financial commitment to the clean-up in writing.

McCollum and the AG’s of Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana sent letters to BP, Transocean Ltd., and Halliburton, asking them to “memorialize their commitment to fund the protection and clean-up of our coastline and provide compensation for any economic losses suffered on an individual, corporate, and governmental level,” McCollum said in a press release.

The attorneys general also want the companies to set up a contact person and to keep all “documents, data and tangible objects” related to the disaster intact until further notice.

Read the letters here:

Attorneys general letter to Halliburton.
Attorneys general letter to BP.
Attorneys general letter to Transocean.

HOLLYWOOD — Gov. Charlie Crist is here at the Seminole Tribe of Florida reservation for a ceremony celebrating the signing of a $1 billion gaming compact with the tribe.

Amid the testimonials to the compact and the money it will bring the state’s coffers, Seminole Tribal Council Member Max Osceola just offered this comment to the crowd of about 750:

“Gov. Crist, in the constitution it doesn’t say ‘We the party,’ it says ‘We the people.’ “

Crist last week abandoned his failing Republican Senate candidacy for a no-party bid.

UPDATE: Not exactly sure what’s happening over the Florida Republican Party. But the auction was re-started almost four hours ago, minus some of the biting rhetoric that accompanied the party’s initial eBay post.

The Florida Republican Party said today that eBay has removed its auction of a painting of Gov. Charlie Crist purchased before Crist left the party.

Party spokeswoman Katie Betta says, “We were notified by eBay today regarding some concerns they had with our original posting which were easily addressed and the posting was quickly re-listed. The Party could have easily made these changes had we been notified in advance of EBay publishing our original listing of the painting, or at any time over the course of the last two days. Instead, the auction was abruptly ended in what is clearly a political move.”

We’re awaiting a response from eBay.

The painting had received more than 100 bids and was selling for more than $6,000 before the item was yanked.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will travel to the Gulf Coast on Thursday to monitor the massive oil spill, the White House announced today. She’ll be joined by Commerce Department Secretary Gary Locke, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco and EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe.

The group will travel to Biloxi, Miss., to inspect response operations, meet with state, local and private sector leaders, and view firsthand staging areas to protect vital shoreline from the oil spill. Napolitano and Locke will then visit similar operations in Pensacola. Lubchenco and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley will then visit Pascagoula, Miss., to visit NOAA’s seafood inspection lab.

The White House today also published a lengthy timeline of their response to the spill. The Obama Adminstration has been criticized by some for waiting too long to react to the disaster.

State Sen. Dave Aronberg is demanding that BP and two other corporations involved in the April 22 oil rig blast threatening the Gulf Coast shoreline set up a $1 billion escrow account for the state’s recovery costs.

Aronberg, a Greenacres Democrat who is running for attorney general, is chairman of the Senate Military Affairs and Domestic Security Committee that deals with emergency preparedness.

He said the state’s focus on BP for recovery costs needs to be expanded to include Deepwater Horizon rig owner and operator Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton.

The $25 million BP gave Florida to cover immediate clean-up costs “is by no means sufficient,” Aronberg wrote in a letter to Crist asking for the escrow account.

“We are looking at financial consequences of devastating proportions, to say nothing of the potential costs to our wildlife and environmental damages.
While we ready our shoreline as best we can, I urge you to call upon each of these companies to take greater financial responsibility and commit more dollars than the initial pledge by BP,” Aronberg wrote.

Halliburton was performing cement work on the well less than a day before the blast.

“This is especially alarming since Halliburton was also the cementer on the well that suffered a huge blowout last August off the coast of Australia. Tens of thousands of barrels of oil leaked from that well over 10 weeks before it was finally capped. Although the investigation continues, the suspicion is that either the cementing process or the cement itself may have been at fault,” Aronberg wrote.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink wants Gov. Charlie Crist to include an update on the massive oil spill looming off Florida’s Panhandle at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting.

Sink, the presumptive Democratic candidate for governor, asked Crist to have Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole, the state’s lead official handling the April 22 leak, to answer a host of questions.

“The purpose of this informational item is to provide the Governor and Cabinet a status report on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform disaster. Several of us have visited the site and received individual briefings on this national disaster. However, I think it is vital for the Trustees to have an opportunity at a public meeting to receive a more comprehensive report from key stakeholders and to discuss Florida’s options for responding to the oil spill,” Sink wrote Crist today.

The CFO also launched a hotline for businesses impacted by the April 22 BP rig blast still spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil each day into the Gulf of Mexico.
(more…)

An association of the state’s pain clinics vowed to sue over the “pill mill” legislation not yet sent to Gov. Charlie Crist.

Lawmakers passed the measure to rein in the pain clinics proliferating throughout South Florida and spreading across the state.

The new legislation requires FBI background screenings for pain clinic owners and bans felons and doctors not in good standing from ownership. The Palm Beach Post reported that some clinic owners are felons convicted of drug smuggling and other drug-related crimes.

The measure discriminates against the pain clinics by barring patients without health insurance from purchasing their pain peds from the clinics, the Florida Society of Pain Management Providers said in a press release. The bill (SB 2272) requires that patients without insurance have their prescriptions filled at pharmacies where they could pay with cash, credit card or check. The bill prohibits pain clinics from accepting those types of payment.

The association supports the portion of the bill requiring that the clinics be registered and licensed.

But the insurance-only provision would adversely affect the state’s poorest patients because the drugs typically cost more at pharmacies, clinic owner Paul Sloan, head of the association, said in a press release.

The measure contradicts Florida’s Patient Bill of Rights law which directs providers to treat patients without regard to the form of payment, Sloan said.

The insurance-only requirement for pain management clinics “has no rational basis” and the association will immediately sue if the bill becomes law, the release said.

After several months of hinting, it’s official. Former Gov. Jeb Bush is endorsing Republican Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate bid.

Bush’s presentation to Rubio of a samurai-type sword when Rubio was sworn in as House speaker in 2006 was seen as a handing over of conservative leadership in the state. Sons Jeb Jr. and George P. Bush have already come out for Rubio. And the former governor called Gov. Charlie Crist’s support for the $787 billion Democratic stimulus plan “unforgivable.”

Crist, of course, has forsaken the GOP label to pursue an independent bid for Senate, so the Bush endorsement isn’t the Republican primary bombshell it would have been a few months ago.

Bush and Rubio are slated to appear together Friday at Pasco County’s annual GOP dinner.

Read the Rubio campaign’s press release after the jump….

(more…)

The law firm for Democrat Scott Maddox, the party’s leading contender for the state agriculture commissioner nomination, is one of two firms representing Panhandle fishermen and seafood restaurants in a lawsuit filed today in U.S. District Court in Pensacola against BP et al.

Maddox, like others, has turned the oil spill in a political issue. Maddox hopes to embarrass his probable Republican opponent, Adam Putnam, for supporting off-shore drilling. “He maintains his hubris even in the face of new proof that even rigs that are hundreds of miles away can threaten Florida’s beaches,” Maddox said.

Putnam’s campaign manager, Trey McCarley, used the lawsuit to shoot back today:

“When in doubt, sue. As a result of his multiple losing campaigns for 3 of Florida’s 4 available cabinet positions, Scott Maddox has confused job descriptions for the one he’s running for this time. While oil continues to pour out of the earth at a rate of 210,000 gallons per day, Scott Maddox runs to the courthouse to sue someone, anyone, in a desperate attempt to make money from misery.

The job of the Commissioner of Agriculture is to solve problems, to reduce our dependency on countries who hate us with homegrown crops that fuel our cars and power our homes and businesses. Once again Scott proves he’s a lobbyist bottom feeder running for a job he knows little about and cares for even less.”

UPDATE: Crist will attend the event, according to his schedule for tomorrow.

Gov. Charlie Crist is scheduled to attend a “Celebration of the Seminole Compact” under the Council Oak Tree in Hollywood on Wednesday, but he said the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is demanding his attention.

“I had to cancel some events in Tampa today,” Crist said. “Things are fluid.”

Here’s the press release from the Tribe:

(more…)

Gov. Charlie Crist and Florida’s elected CFO Alex Sink spent the day in the Florida Panhandle helping coordinate what they said has been a clumsy response from BP and government officials.

Crist said he spoke with officials at the Mobile Unified Command about implementing a plan from Escambia County that county officials believe will help protect coastal estuaries, fisheries and bays. “That was helpful,” Crist said.

“We just want to stay on top of it and remain vigilant and coordinate as best as we possibly can,” Crist said.

Crist said he was pleased with the progress today.

“They are coordinating well to be as prepared as possible when this does come ashore,” he said.

Sink said she was urging residents and businesses to keep meticulous notes about lost income from the disaster. Sink said careful records were needed “so we don’t get any b.s. on the back-end when we file these claims.”

“If a restaurateur over the course of the next couple of weeks is seeing business business decline and they have to lay off people – those people should be compensated,” Sink said.

“They shouldn’t have to go home and worry about where their mortgage payment is coming from because of something that wasn’t our fault. BP needs to account for and compensate us for that.”

Other notes from the interviews this afternoon:

(more…)

The Florida Democratic Party is blasting Republican congressional challenger Allen West for his past support of offshore drilling and his heretofore limited response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

West is challenging U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, in a race that has gained national attention as West’s fund-raising has dwarfed the incumbent’s for the last two quarters.

Klein has opposed expanding offshore drilling while West has favored it. After the Deepwater Horizon explosion, West wrote on his campaign website Sunday that the gulf spill is “very worrisome” and that America needs to enhance its energy independence.

Says Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff: “West’s only response to the crisis has been a two word mention on his campaign blog. Rather than hiding behind his computer screen, maybe Allen West could demonstrate a little courage and publicly declare his continued support for drilling off Florida’s beaches. This just goes to show how breathtakingly out-of-touch he is with the residents of the 22nd District.”

After the Democratic blast, West offered a lengthier response today voicing concern and calling for safeguards while adding “Any person permanently taking oil exploration off the table is closing the door for an energy independent United States, thus further enabling our enemies to hold us hostage and fund terrorists that continue to plot attacks against us.”

Read West’s statement after the jump….

(more…)

From Rasmussen Reports:

The Florida Senate race appears to be a whole new ballgame with Republican Governor Charlie Crist’s decision to run as an independent.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Florida Voters finds Crist earning 38% support to Republican Marco Rubio’s 34% and Democrat Kendrick Meek’s 17%. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.

Two weeks ago, before Crist announced his decision to run as an independent candidate, Rubio held a seven point advantage in the race.

Since then, Crist has gained eight (8) percentage points in the poll while Rubio and Meek have each dropped three (3) points. It remains to be seen if this is a temporary bounce or a lasting change in the race.