“Save-the-date” notices for the event list Obama and Democratic governor candidate Alex Sink as “special guests” but don’t mention Meek.
“Congressman Meek will be joining the President at the August event,” a White House spokeswoman told The Palm Beach Post late today. There was no immediate word on what the “joining” will entail, but details of presidential visits are usually kept under wraps until the last minute.
Obama has endorsed Meek, but U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings and other Meek backers have been pressing the president to publicly show support for Meek, the party establishment favorite who’s in danger of losing the Aug. 24 Dem primary to late-arriving, big-spending Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene.
Presidential appearances on behalf of a candidate in a contested primary are rare but not unprecedented. Obama appeared with Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter in May before the Keystone State’s Democratic primary, but it was no magic bullet for the party-switching incumbent. Specter lost to Joe Sestak.
Indie Gov. Charlie Crist’s Monday Senate campaign stop to Democrat-heavy Century Village of Pembroke Pines has been called off so he can attend the funeral of LeRoy Collins Jr. Crist will reschedule the event, consultant Eric Johnson said.
A federal appeals court in Atlanta has reversed a lower court ruling that upheld the state’s public campaign financing system. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of candidate Rick Scott, who had challenged the constitutionality of the matching money system in Florida.
The ruling means publicly financed candidates will still get a dollar-for-dollar match up to $250 from the state for every donation they receive from a Floridian. Candidates will not be able to get money if a non-participating candidate breaks the cap.
Essentially, that means GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott can continue to spend his personal fortune without triggering a windfall of cash for Republican Bill McCollum and possibly Democrat Alex Sink.
Rep. Rader argues that the free market will resolve the state’s insurance crisis. That solution is likely to cost Floridians more and help Rep. Rader’s finances. He has raised $225,000, with about a fourth of the $42,000 he raised in the last quarter coming from the insurance industry. Mr. Burkert, who has raised $151,000, would have opposed the State Farm Bill and more sharply regulated “pups,” Florida-only subsidiaries that use state losses to justify rate hikes solely for Florida ratepayers.
Like most Republican candidates, Ms. Merchant says her opposition to the federal health care law is to keep Washington from encroaching on personal freedoms. But unlike most Republican legislators, she sees the hypocrisy if the state forced unnecessary ultrasounds on women seeking abortions. Ms. Benacquisto supports the ultrasound requirement, which Gov. Crist vetoed.
Democrats have been getting notices asking them to save Aug. 18 for a Miami reception featuring President Obama and governor candidate Alex Sink as “special guests.”
Yet to be revealed: time, specific location and what role, if any, there will be for Obama-endorsed but down-in-the-polls Senate candidate Kendrick Meek. U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, and others have been pressing Obama to visibly help Meek before his Aug. 24 primary against billionaire Jeff Greene.
Rick Scott’s Republican gubernatorial campaign has another $3 million from his wife, Anne. The couple have now put at least $33.9 million of their own money into the primary race against Attorney General Bill McCollum, shattering all kinds of money records in the state.
Scott’s political advocacy group, Let’s Get to Work, which he is a 527 group he’s using to avoid triggering a flood of taxpayer matching dollars for McCollum, also picked up a few big contributors in the past week: Robert L. James, Fort Lauderdale, $25,000; Jack Anderson, Vero Beach, $25,000; and the co-founder of Columbia Hospital Corp., Richard Rainwater, Fort Worth, $100,000.
Two of Gov. Charlie Crist’s deputy chiefs of staff, David Foy and Kathy Mears (who also worked as legisaltive affairs director) are stepping down.
Crist’s office announced budget director Jerry McDaniel will work in a dual role as deputy chief of staff. Crist also appointed Ken Granger, his policy director, to serve in an expanded role as a deputy chief of staff.
Mears said she had no immediate plans, but preferred to continue working in the public sector. Foy is heading to Reed Elsevier in Austin, Texas to work as the company’s central region director of state government affairs.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott, who in June demanded four debates with primary rival Bill McCollum, missed a 5:30 p.m. deadline on Thursday to accept the terms of what would be the rivals’ only meeting to be televised statewide.
“You might conclude as I have that Scott chose not to participate,” Florida Press Association CEO Dean Ridings said. “I’m not sure what the hangup was. The campaign would not officially discuss it.”
Scott and McCollum are scheduled for two debates: one on Monday at the Univision studio in Miami and the other Thursday at WTVT in Tampa. The Univision debate will air at 11 p.m. on the network’s stations in Miami, Orlando and Tampa. It was unclear if the WTVT debate would air anywhere outside of Tampa.
A third debate, hosted by the Florida Press Association and Leadership Florida, was scheduled for Aug. 11 in Orlando, but was moved to Jacksonville at the request of the Scott campaign. Scott’s camp then asked for the debate to be moved out of a TV studio and into a setting that would accommodate a large audience. The two host groups said they did not have the time or resources to grant that wish.
Ridings confirmed the groups were discussing another option, but would not announce anything until at least Monday.
But The Post has learned there are discussions to return the event to Orlando as scheduled. If Scott does not attend, McCollum would still field questions. One option being considered is for the panelists to use information from Scott’s previous interviews with newspaper and TV reporters to portray his position on issues. That raises the question, however, is McCollum would have to debate his own previous statements to the media.
UPDATE: The event has been canceled so Crist can attend the funeral of LeRoy Collins Jr. on Monday. Republican-turned-independent Gov. Charlie Crist, the onetime “consistent conservative” GOP candidate who’s now drawing strong Democratic support in his bid for U.S. Senate, plans a campaign stop Monday morning at Democrat-heavy Century Village of Pembroke Pines in Broward County.
Word of Crist’s foray into Broward County’s Democratic heartland comes from consultant Eric Johnson, the Democratic operative and former Robert Wexler chief of staff who was hired by Crist to help make inroads with South Florida Dems.
In case anyone doubted that Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene is driving the discussion in the Democratic Senate primary with his saturation TV campaign and blizzard of mailings, check out rival Kendrick Meek’s latest ad.
As with Meek’s debut ad Monday, the customary feel-good phase in which a candidate introduces himself to voters has been reduced to three seconds consisting of a nice shot of Meek and his family walking in sunlight. The rest of the ad responds to Greene attacks and throws a few counter-punches.
“All of these news organizations reported Kendrick Meek is not part of a fraud case. And to say he’s against children’s health care is ridiculous,” a narrator says before swinging into an attack on Greene for making a fortune by betting on massive subprime mortgage defaults.
Republican-turned-independent Gov. Charlie Crist leads the general election race for U.S. Senate with 37 percent to 32 percent for Republican Marco Rubio and 17 percent for leading Democrat Jeff Greene, a new Quinnipiac University poll finds.
If U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek is the Democratic nominee, he gets only 13 percent of the vote, with Crist at 39 percent and Rubio at 33 percent, the poll says. Crist was also the leader in an early-June Quinnipiac poll.
Quinnipiac finds a tight November governor’s race. In a poll that has a 3.2 percent margin of error, GOP frontrunner Rick Scott would get 29 percent to Democrat Alex Sink’s 27 percent, with independent Bud Chiles pulling 14 percent.
If Attorney General Bill McCollum is the Republican nominee, he tops Sink by a 27-to-26 percent margin, with Chiles at 14 percent.
Quinnipiac released polls Thursday showing wealthy self-financed outsiders Greene and Scott holding double-digit leads in their respective primaries.
There’s nothing unusual about a candidate putting an unflattering picture of his rival in a negative mailer. But a recent piece from Democratic state Senate hopeful Pete Burkert slamming primary rival Kevin Rader on insurance issues deserves special note.
The photo of Rader (above right) makes the state House member look like he went a week or so without a shave and borrowed Michael Corleone’s Nevada mobster suit from The Godfather II.
Rader, unaltered
It’s as if someone enhanced Rader’s stubble, added some ear hair and sprinkled in some black forehead dots that look like failed hair plugs.
At left is what appears to be the original Rader photo (with a reversed negative) from a different Burkert mailer.
Burkert today said he wasn’t aware of any attempt by his campaign to alter Rader’s image.
“It depends on what you emphasize,” Republican U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio said in an interview this afternoon.
Rubio, who does not support an Arizona-type law for Florida, said the Republican Party should be the party of “pro-legal immigration.”
“We don’t need 49 other states to pass that law,” Rubio said. “What we need is for the federal government to do its job. That ruling is a reminder of why we’re even here to begin with. The federal government has refused to enforce our existing immigration laws. There’s no one out there more pro-legal immigration law than I am, but America cannot be the only country in the world that does not enforce its immigration laws.”
One of Rubio’s opponents, independent Gov. Charlie Crist, said he had “no reaction” to the judge’s ruling on Wednesday to temporarily suspend the most severe parts of the law.
“I’m a guy who believes in respecting the courts and I respect the decision of the judge,” Crist said.
The Florida Chamber of Commerce has endorsed Pam Bondi, a Tampa lawyer and frequent FoxNews contributor on legal issues, for attorney general.
It’s the first time the business group has backed an attorney general candidate, according to a press release issued by the Chamber, which represents 139,000 businesses throughout the state.
The endorsement should come as no surprise for one of the political neophyte’s opponents in the GOP primary. Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, is a trial lawyer, whose association has engaged in a Hatfield-McCoy’s battle with the Chamber for years.
But the powerful business group’s backing may have caught the third GOP candidate in the primary off guard. Holly Benson, who served as secretary of both the Department of Business and Professional Regulation and the Agency for Health Care Administration, is a pro-business, anti-tort reform conservative who regularly got high ratings from business groups during her tenure in the Florida House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, former Republican Party of Florida chairmen Tom Slade and Carole Jean Jordan endorsed Benson yesterday in the three-way GOP primary.
That gives Benson a 2-to-1 former-RPOF-party-boss-endorsement lead over Bondi, who’s backed by former chairman Al Cardenas, a Jeb Bush ally. So far, none have come out in support for Kottkamp.
A Leon County circuit judge has removed Amendment 9 from the November ballot, saying the measure designed to keep the federal health care overhaul from taking effect in Florida is misleading.
Background here on the amendment written in the spring by Republican state lawmakers.
The Freedom First Committee, the political advocacy group run by Merritt Island Republican Mike Haridopolos, collected $100,000 from Progress Energy on Wednesday. Hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones gave another $100,000. In recent weeks, Haridopolos has also taken $50,000 checks from FPL, the Florida Association of Realtors and the Florida Medical Association.
Haridopolos has been sending the money to other so-called 527 groups. Since the beginning of the month, he’s given $190,000 to the Florida First Initiative, a group run by GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum. Haridopolos has also given $50,000 each to Floridians for Conservative Values, a stealthy political attack group that operates out of a West Palm Beach, and Truth Matters, Inc.
Truth Matters appears to be operated by Richard S. Cole of Miami. In June, the group took $73,000 from a state Senate leadership committee known as Alliance for a Strong Economy (it’s managed by Palm Beach Gardens council candidate Howard Rosenkranz) and sent nearly all of it — $69,800 — to Citizens Speaking Out Committee, another group run by Alachua County Republican Chairman Stafford Jones that is aiding McCollum.
Haridopolos’s House counterpart, Dean Cannon, withdrew $70,000 from the Florida Republican Party on Monday and tucked it into his Florida Liberty Fund. The same day, Cannon used the fund to send $65,000 to Florida Citizens for Change, a 527 run by Harold Wise of Miami.
Rubio started his underdog campaign on a shoe-string budget, joking at the time that his only campaign aides were “Mr. Garmin and Mr. SunPass.”
But as he’s risen from long-shot to front-runner, so have his expenses.
In the second quarter he spent $402,000 on seven political consultants, two finance consultants, one legal consultant, a compliance consultant and creative consultant for his direct-mail, a Palm Beach Post analysis of Rubio’s expenditures found.
“I thought he was just going from pine tree stump to pine tree stump generating an upwelling to sweep him into the Capital, said Republican operative Mac Stipanovich, who is supporting Crist in the race. “That kind of money for consultants isn’t really consistent with his image.”
After spending millions of dollars of their own money on TV ads and mailers over the last three months, wealthy outsiders Jeff Greene and Rick Scott lead their respective primaries for the Democratic Senate nomination and Republican gubernatorial nomination, a new Quinnipiac University poll of Florida voters says.
In the Democratic Senate race, Palm Beach billionaire Greene has surged ahead of of U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek and holds a 33-to-23 percent lead, the poll says. The race was a virtual tie in June, with Meek up by a 29-to-27 percent margin.
Former health care executive Scott leads Attorney General Bill McCollum by a 43-to-32 percent margin in the GOP governor’s primary. Scott had a 44-to-31 percent edge in Quinnipiac’s June poll.
The primaries are Aug. 24, with early voting beginning Aug. 9.
Scott’s lead appears more solid than Greene’s, other numbers in the poll suggest.
Democratic governor candidate and Florida CFO Alex Sink opposes bringing an Arizona-style crackdown on illegal immigration to Florida. But she also faults the federal government for failing to enforce immigration laws or enact immigration reform.
With polls showing the Arizona law is popular among Florida voters, Sink’s pronouncements on the issue tend to be carefully worded statements that minimize explicit criticism of Arizona while emphasizing her displeasure with Washington.
Sink’s reaction to today’s temporary injunction blocking enforcement of key portions of the Arizona law is no exception.
Republican governor hopeful Rick Scott, whose pledge to bring an Arizona-style crackdown on immigration to Florida is a key component of his campaign, criticized a federal judge’s granting of a preliminary injunction today to block the implementation of key parts of the law until a federal lawsuit is resolved.
Scott’s GOP primary rival, Attorney General Bill McCollum, who filed an amicus brief supporting the Arizona law, also slammed the ruling.
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