Ryan Swyers, who lists an Oviedo address and a Tea Party affiliation, has qualified as a candidate for the state House District 91 seat being vacated by term-limited Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale.

An Orlando attorney registered the Tea Party with the Florida Division of Elections last year — a tactic vehemently opposed by many activists in the conservative tea party movement.

Three Republicans and a Democrat have also qualified in District 91 before today’s noon deadline.

Junkies keeping an eye on the Florida Division of Elections online candidate tracking system might have noticed that state Rep. Kevin Rader, D-Delray Beach, hasn’t qualified yet for the District 27 state Senate seat he’s been seeking since last year. The qualifying deadline is noon Friday.

Read about it here.

The problem? When Rader, who serves as his own campaign treasurer, signed a $1,781.82 check to pay his filing fee, he didn’t draw from a Senate campaign account as required by state elections law, but from the “Campaign Account of Kevin Greenstein Rader State Representative District 78.”

Rader signed a correct check today after returning to the U.S. from Israel, consultant Neil Schiller said. Schiller said he did not know whether Rader ended his trip early to sign the new check. The check should be submitted before Friday’s deadline, Schiller said. Rader couldn’t be reached.

Rubio’s campaign says the issue has been resolved since court documents were filed Monday. But a call to the bank’s attorney wasn’t immediately returned.

Rubio spokesman Alex Burgos said the two federal candidates from Miami had not paid their mortgage since January because of a dispute over how payments on their adjustable rate mortgage would be calculated when the interest-only period expired in April.

The two men bought the 1,200 square foot home for $135,000 in 2005 to use while they were in Tallahassee while they were state legislators. Court documents show they now owe about $138,000 on the home, including interest and late charges.

Story here.

Rick Scott, who has spent $15 million in nine weeks to turn himself from a political unknown into the front-runner for the Republican Party gubernatorial nomination, brought his campaign to Tallahassee today, where he filed qualifying papers and addressed the Tallahassee Tiger Bay club.

While at the Secretary of State offices, Scott narrowly missed running into his GOP primary opponent, Attorney General Bill McCollum, who took aim at Scott after filling his own qualifying papers. One weapon McCollum brought with him was former Florida Christian Coalition director Dennis Baxley, who accused Scott, a former health care executive, of profiting from abortions.

“It’s unfortunate that I have a fellow who’s been spending the kind of money that he has been spending, his personal money, and he wants to be governor. I think he’s flawed,” McCollum said. “Rick Scott has had a very suspicious background.”

Watch the video above for Scott’s response and a few snippets from his speech today.

The deadline for state and county candidates to qualify for the 2010 ballot is noon Friday.

So far no one has emerged to challenge school board member Paulette Burdick for the open Palm Beach County Commission seat that Jeff Koons is leaving because of term limits. Burdick’s Democratic primary foe, state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, announced Tuesday she’s withdrawing from the race.

And Democrat Steve Perman is the only candidate to qualify for the open state House District 78 seat that Rep. Kevin Rader is giving up to run for state Senate. Perman lost Democratic primaries for the seat in 2006 and 2008. Republican Alan St. Louis opened a campaign for the heavily Democratic seat last year, but withdrew in May.

It’s not unheard of for an incumbent to get a free pass to reelection, but it’s extremely rare for a candidate to walk into an open seat unopposed. State Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach, won without an opponent in 2008. Longtime observers can’t remember the last time an open county commission seat was won without a challenge.

The Palm Beach Post, in association with WPBT2 of Miami, will host the first debate between Democratic Senate rivals Kendrick Meek and Jeff Greene on Tuesday at 10 a.m.

The 90-minute debate is not open to the public but can be viewed live at PalmBeachPost.com.

Readers are invited to submit questions ahead of time to debate@pbpost.com. Include your name, phone number and the city in which you live to increase chances your question will be chosen.

The candidates will face off at The Palm Beach Post main office in West Palm Beach. Meek, 43, is a four-term member of Congress from Miami. Greene, 55, is a billionaire real estate investor and businessman who lives in Palm Beach.

The Democratic primary is Aug. 24.

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam snagged the National Rifle Association endorsement this morning in the race for Florida Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Putnam, a scion of a powerful Polk County citrus and cattle ranching-family, is running against former Florida Democratic Party chief Scott Maddox.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush has also endorsed endorsed Putnam, a fresh-faced conservative Republican first elected to Congress in 2000 at the age of 26 after serving in the Florida House.

Democrat Alex Sink officially qualified her gubernatorial campaign this morning, promising an aggressive effort to deliver state government’s top job to her party for the first time in 12 years. (Watch it here.)

But Sink’s oath of assertiveness doesn’t extend to Bud Chiles’ independent campaign. Sink would barely acknowledge the late governor’s son who grabbed about 20 percent in a recent poll.

Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson thinks Chiles is a threat to Sink, but Sink lumps Chiles in with the other two dozen or so candidates running for governor.

“There will be many candidates in the campaign, many candidates names on the ballots in November,” she said today when asked if she agreed with Aaronson’s letter.

Sink said she recently talked with Chiles, but neither she nor her campaign urged him to fold his campaign. “No, no,” she said. “Not at all. Anybody can run for governor.” (We’re awaiting Chiles’ characterization of that conversation…)

Meanwhile, if Sink’s response to Chiles sounds somewhat familiar, consider Gov. Charlie Crist’s initial reaction to Marco Rubio’s underdog U.S. Senate campaign: “Everybody has the right to run.” That was a little more than 12 months before Rubio forced him out of the GOP primary.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, who’s going to qualify for the governor’s race today, said she was “pretty encouraged” by President Barack Obama’s visit to the Panhandle after meeting with him in Pensacola yesterday.

Sink has been out front demanding that the federal government take over the BP claims process, a tangled web that is taking some business owners weeks to navigate with little success. Obama promised yesterday that a third party would manage an “evergreen account” set up by BP to handle claims.

Sink, a former banker, yesterday asked Obama to set up a large claims office for claims greater than $25,000 in Florida. Those claims now have to go through Louisiana, creating even more hassle for hoteliers, restaurant owners, charter boat captains and marina owners, some of whose losses have already piled up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars range.

Claims in Florida are going to be larger because of the nature of the losses here, Sink said she told Obama, and small business owners shouldn’t “have to deal with all this bureaucracy.”

“They’ve got to have a physical presence here. No more dialing the 1-800 number over in Louisiana. That’s ridiculous,” Sink said.

Democratic Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson wants Bud Chiles to drop his no-party bid for governor, telling the son of the late Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles in a letter that his candidacy could hurt Democrat Alex Sink and help elect Republican Bill McCollum or Rick Scott.

“Our job is to have a Democratic governor,” Aaronson said of the letter to Chiles that he co-signed with county Democratic Party Treasurer Bob Diffenderfer. “We love him (Bud Chiles) and his father was great, but this is not helping the Democrats elect a governor.”

Aaronson’s concern about a no-party candidate taking votes from a Democrat in a statewide race doesn’t necessarily extend to the U.S. Senate contest, where independent Gov. Charlie Crist so far is drawing considerable Democratic support at the expense of Dem Kendrick Meek or Jeff Greene.

“I look at that race slightly differently,” Aaronson said Tuesday. “I look at that race to make sure we don’t have (Republican Senate candidate) Marco Rubio.”

Aaronson said he won’t know the best way to block Rubio until after the Aug. 24 Democratic primary.

“We have three people in the primary (Meek, Greene and former Miami Mayor and health care “capitation” advocate Maurice Ferre). So I want to see what happens in the primary before we do anything.”

Term-limited state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach, just announced she’s abandoning her run for a Palm Beach County commission seat — leaving school board member and fellow Democrat Paulette Burdick as the only active candidate in the District 2 race.

UPDATE: Despite recent chatter, West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel says she’s not hopping into the county commission race. “Being a county commissioner would be a really great challenge but I made a commitment to do this job as mayor and I want to see it through,” said Frankel, whose term expires in March.

The deadline for candidates to qualify for the 2010 ballot is Friday at noon.

Brandenburg said she’s going to focus on her husband Pete’s campaign for her District 89 state House seat.

“Pete and I have always campaigned together and we’re finding that it is difficult to have two campaigns going on simultaneously. So we figured we’d do a good job with one campaign,” Mary Brandenburg said this afternoon.

Brandenburg’s name was floated by the Police Benevolent Association last month in a poll of potential 2011 candidates for mayor of West Palm Beach. She said she’s not interested in that race.

“I hate to say ‘never,’ but if I was going to say ‘never’ I would be tempted to say it now,” she said of the mayor’s race.

Palm Beach billionaire and Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene has launched another TV ad, this one touting his plan for creating jobs. The plan: investment in “clean energy,” tax breaks for small businesses and an end to tax breaks for “companies shipping jobs overseas.” Note the regular-guy clip of Greene in an untucked shirt and blue jeans on a construction site.

Gov. Charlie Crist and President Obama just arrived at Pensacola Beach this morning after sharing a ride in a motorcade from the Crowne Plaza hotel.

According to a pool report filed by The Miami Herald, the motorcade passed a person holding a sign that said “Kick Tony’s Ass For Us” — a reference to BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward and to President Obama’s decision last week to talk tough in response to critics who say he’s been too aloof in responding to the Deepwater Horizon spill.

“I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar,” Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer. “We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers so I know whose ass to kick.”

John Carroll, the Republican who got 36 percent in 2006 against Democrat Jess Santamaria, says he’ll run again this year for the western District 6 seat on the Palm Beach County commission. Carroll recently retired as a captain in the Palm Beach County sheriff’s office.

The qualifying period for state and county candidates began at noon Monday and ends at noon Friday. To see who has made it onto the 2010 ballot so far, click here.

Santamaria already faces a Democratic primary challenge from Michael E. Jackson.

Mitt Romney will headline a Coral Gables fund-raiser for Attorney General and Republican governor candidate Bill McCollum tonight. McCollum, state chairman for Romney rival Rudy Giuliani during the 2008 presidential race, finds himself trailing his GOP primary race against millionaire Rick Scott.

Romney’s also endorsing 13 other Republican candidates around the state and his Free and Strong America PAC is contributing $5,000 to the Republican Party of Florida.

U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, and Senate President and Chief Financial Officer candidate Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, are among the candidates getting Romney endorsements.

Romney will also be in Jacksonville Tuesday to raise money for state Sen. and state GOP Chairman John Thrasher.

Romney says he’ll decide after the 2010 elections whether he’s running for president in 2012. If he makes a White House bid, he’ll want to have Republican friends in Florida.

U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, said President Obama faces a “perception problem” with Jewish voters because of his approach to Israel. Klein, whose Palm Beach-Broward congressional district includes a significant number of Jewish voters, made the comment during a meeting with The Palm Beach Post editorial board this morning.

Klein said the Obama administration is taking a correct approach against Iran, which Klein said poses the greatest threat to Israel. But Klein faulted the administration for its harsh criticism of Israel’s plans to build housing in East Jerusalem. And he said Obama needs to better explain his strategy of trying to “engage” Arab countries in seeking Middle East peace.

Klein and other Jewish members of Congress met with Obama and top aides at the White House last month to discuss U.S.-Israel relations. The group suggested, among other things, that Obama visit Israel.

(more…)

The deadline for candidates to qualify for the 2010 ballot in state and local races — from the governorship to the Jupiter Inlet Commission board — is Friday at noon.

Democrats don’t have a candidate in Palm Beach County Commission District 4 to challenge Republican Steven Abrams, despite a slight Democratic registration edge in the district and county Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel’s declaration last year that “we believe it’s our seat.”

Siegel now says Abrams is a pretty decent guy for a Republican.

Read about it in this week’s Politics column.

Gov. Charlie Crist has vetoed a controversial health care bill backed by powerful GOP legislators that would have required women seeking abortions to have ultrasounds and listen to detailed explanations of the fetus.

Crist, who abandoned his long ties with the Republican Party and is running as an independent for U.S. Senate, said in his veto message the bill places an “inappropriate burden” on women seeking abortions and violates the right to privacy.

“Individuals hold strong personal views on the issue of life, as I do,” Crist wrote in the message. “However, personal views should not result in laws that unwisely expand the role of government and coerce people to obtain medical tests or procedures that are not medically necessary. In this case, such action would violate a woman’s right to privacy.”

Conservatives and anti-abortion groups stepped up pressure on Crist to sign the measure (HB 1143) into law, and House Republican leaders waited until this week to send him the bill.

The veto will likely garner support from some Democrats and pro-choice Republican women, two voting blocs Crist is wooing to shore up his independent candidacy.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, who despite being the pick of his party’s establishment for U.S. Senate finds himself in a virtual tie with out-of-nowhere Democratic primary rival Jeff Greene, blasted the Palm Beach billionaire’s scant voting history today.

In an interview on on the ABC/Washington Post program The Fix, Meek called Greene “the billionaire that only showed up in Florida in 2008 and only voted four times in his life.”

Greene spokesman Paul Blank called Meek’s attack “a clear sign of desperation” because of Greene’s surge in Democratic polls.

Actually, it appears Greene has voted five times in the last 18 years. Los Angeles County, Calif., did not have records before 1992. Their records show Greene voted in the 1992 general election, the 2000 primary and general elections and the 2004 general election. He also voted in the 2008 general election in Florida.

That means, as a Californian who was registered with the GOP and with no party affiliation, Greene skipped the 1996 presidential election and lots of nonpresidential contests, including the 2003 recall election of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and the subsequent special election that installed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor.

“Jeff’s an outsider,” Blank said of Greene’s voting record. “He was focused on building a successful business and creating jobs and he got results. Now that he has an 8-month old child, he’s focused on taking his job creator skills and making sure his son and every Florida child and grandchild has the same opportunity to live the American dream he has lived. That’s why he decided to run for office.”

State Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, picked up the endorsement of the 36,000-member Florida Police Benevolent Association for his Democratic primary against state Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach.

Aronberg also snagged the Dem primary endorsement of the state Fraternal Order of Police last fall.

The PBA also endorsed Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp in the Republican primary for attorney general.

In addition to its attorney general primary endorsements, the PBA issued three endorsements for the general election: Democrats Alex Sink for governor and Loranne Ausley for chief financial officer and Republican Adam Putnam for commissioner of agriculture.