Univision will host the first debate with Florida’s top three U.S. Senate candidates on Friday, Sept. 17.
The debate with Republican Marco Rubio, Democrat Kendrick Meek and independent Charlie Crist will be taped at 1 p.m. and the hour-long meeting will air at 11 p.m. on the station’s Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Fort Myers/Naples affiliates.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will get a late fundraising burst for his independent Senate bid from Penthouse CEO Marc Bell, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO.
The evening event will be held at Bell’s Boca Raton home on Oct. 7, less than a month before Crist faces Republican Marco Rubio and Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.
One tidbit to ad: Crist’s 2006 primary opponent, Tom Gallagher, was Bell’s candidate of choice. Crist’s campaign was critical of $3,000 Gallagher received from Bell and his other companies and Gallagher eventually returned the money. (Crist that year returned $1,000 he got from the owner of Peek-A-Boo, a Bradenton strip club.)
Bell told The Palm Beach Post at the time that the returned contributions were “disappointing, but understandable.”
The St. Pete Times and News Service of Florida are reporting that Bud Chiles is dropping his independent bid for governor.
Polls show that Chiles, the son of Lawton “Bud” Chiles — the last Democrat elected governor, was pulling votes almost equally from the two main party nominees, Democrat Alex Sink and Republican Rick Scott.
But many strategists predicted Chiles would be the most trouble for Sink. Chiles hinted last week that he would end his campaign if he was not a “viable” candidate. A Rasmussen poll last week showed Chiles with 4 percent of the vote.
The Florida Supreme Court today threw out three proposed constitutional amendments placed on the November ballot by lawmakers.
The court tossed an amendment that would have watered down two other amendments put on the ballot by citizens’ petition dealing with redistricting, another designed to give tax breaks to first-time home-buyers and a third passed by lawmakers opposed to federal health care reforms.
The Supreme Court found that all three legislative proposals were misleading and struck them from the ballot.
The court also today refused to remove two proposed amendments put on the ballot by citizens’ initiative that would revamp the way congressional and legislative districts are drawn.
All constitutional amendments require 60 percent approval by voters to pass.
With Rick Scott in the midst of his Republican unity tour, West Palm Beach City Commissioner Kimberly Mitchell, Fort Pierce Mayor Bob Benton and Okeechobee Sheriff Paul May were among 10 GOP local officials pledging their allegiance to Democrat Alex Sink’s gubernatorial campaign.
“Alex Sink has the experience and problem-solving approach that we need in our next Governor,” Mitchell said in a statement. “Sink understands the needs of Florida’s business owners and will make sure the Florida’s small businesses have the right support to thrive and grow.”
Democratic operative Steve Schale predicts that independent Gov. Charlie Crist will not win the three-way race for U.S. Senate against Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek. From his blog:
In this political environment, absent some significant and unfortunate event that would thrust [Crist] back into the spotlight, the odds of him finding 15-20 points of political approval in the next nine weeks are slim, at best.
Therefore, for Crist, who after 20 years of being a GOP insider, his only path to victory is to find a way to be Democratic enough to win enough Democrats, Republican enough to win enough Republicans, and to do that in a way where he doesn’t anger Independents. Not exactly the easiest thing to do, when Democrats now have a plausible alternative in Meek and Republicans in Rubio. If Greene had won, it might be a different story.
Democrats who support Crist keep saying to me, “well, we just need Dems to vote for Crist,” but that just isn’t going to happen in the margins he needs to win.
Today, Rubio has the clearest path to victory, but once Democrats figure out that Meek is their only option, his path will get much more clear as well.
Gallup finds the GOP taking an “unprecedented” 10-point advantage over Democrats in the generic congressional ballot question — 51 percent to 41 percent.
And the latest monthly Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds support for the new health care law — the signature accomplishment of the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress — dropping seven points in August to 43 percent approval, with 45 percent disapproving. Among independent voters, Kaiser finds the health care law is viewed favorably by 41 percent, unfavorably by 48 percent.
Generic ballots and national surveys are one thing, but congressional races are of course decided by voters in 435 separate districts.
In Florida, the national trends put a greater spotlight on four Democratic U.S. House incumbents who face stiff Republican challenges — U.S. Reps. Ron Klein of Boca Raton, Alan Grayson of Orlando, Suzanne Kosmas of New Smyrna Beach and Allen Boyd of Monticello.
Bill McCollum appears no closer to uniting behind Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott than he was last week.
Some have compared it to the 2004 Republican U.S. Senate primary, when Bill McCollum waited two weeks to endorse fellow Republican Mel Martinez. Back then, McCollum was upset about Martinez’s decision to run an ad calling McCollum “the new darling of the extreme homosexuals.”
But apparently dropping outlandish campaign ads (the attack related to McCollum’s support of a hate crimes bill) is not a reflection of character or integrity.
Here’s what McCollum told WESH in Orlando over the weekend:
“I never had any questions raised either before or after the election about Mel’s integrity or honesty or character, and I’ve had those questions raised about Rick Scott and they were raised very seriously. And it’s not something that would just idle in the campaign.
“There are still questions that are out there, I think unanswered questions that trouble me a great deal from his past, particularly at Columbia/HCA.”
There’s a word Republicans are no longer using when they talk about gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott: fraud.
Many in the Republican establishment backed Attorney General Bill McCollum in the primary as McCollum repeatedly pointed out Scott was CEO of Columbia/HCA when it settled criminal Medicare fraud charges by paying $1.7 billion.
But on Monday, the Republican establishment stood with Scott and touted him as a business leader that would create jobs.
Scott was with state lawmakers and party leaders at a unity rally in front of less than 100 people.
Asked about the whether he’ll be able to shake the fraud argument in the general election, Scott said, “It didn’t work for Bill McCollum.”
The abstract “constitutional principles” and “core values” of Republican congressional challenger Allen West’s first ad have given way to an economic message in his second spot, released today.
Many Republicans believe continued economic anxieties and the absence of a promised “recovery summer” will be the key to GOP hopes of picking up congressional seats in 2010 from incumbents who have backed the Democratic economic plan like U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton. While West has been using his blog to rip Klein, the incumbent isn’t mentioned in this ad.
Scott said he switched soda brands to save his company $23 million in food service costs.
His employees were not happy with the self-made multi-millionaire’s decision, he said. Scott said he received a stack of complaints more than three feet high from disgruntled workers who preferred Coke over Pepsi.
Republican gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott had two debates with primary opponent Bill McCollum, which was at least as many joint appearances that his campaign canceled.
Democrat Alex Sink seems eager to find out if that will change during the general election.
She asked for five debates in a letter to Scott today.
Scott was noncommittal when we asked him about debates this weekend.
Meek said Sachs, a Delray Beach lawyer, signed an endorsement pledge for him in December and called the switcheroo “strange” especially because Palm Beach County Democrats virtually anointed her to fill U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch’s seat when he left the state senate to go to Washington.
“She spoke very passionately two weeks ago of her support of my candidacy, felt that I should be the next U.S. Senator of Florida,” Meek said at a roundtable with reporters this morning.
“Message to all liberals, name calling and petulant simpleton gimmicks dare not distract me from my mission; destroying the liberal progressive socialist machine and its legislative agenda……Klein is just a stepping stone to that end,” West writes.
West refers to Klein as “inept” and “little Lord Ron” and “this cretin” and “the pathetic liberal Congressman against whom I run.” He also calls Klein “little Ronnie” and a “Mama’s boy” for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
AP photo of crowd for Saturday's Restoring Honor rally in Washington.
Palm Beach County activist and charter school founder Joseph Bernadel says Glenn Beck had the right to hold Saturday’s massive Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial. He just objects to the “political theater” of holding it on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech at the same spot.
In that respect, Bernadel sounds a little like critics of the proposed Ground Zero mosque in New York. Foes of the project generally say they don’t question Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s right to build an Islamic center on private property, but they question the sensitivity of putting it near the site where Islamists killed 2,700 people at the World Trade Center.
Not everyone sees the parallel. Rev. Al Sharpton has defended the mosque, but protested Beck’s rally Saturday.
To read about some local reactions to the Beck event, click here.
Democrats have a registration advantage of more than 612,000 in Florida. But Republican turnout was nearly 1.3 million for Tuesday’s governor’s primary and less than 920,000 for the Democratic Senate primary even though both were high-profile statewide races.
Republicans say the turnout disparity is the latest evidence of an “enthusiasm gap” that will boost the GOP in November. Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff says that’s “ridiculous.”
One nugget: Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Greene lost his precinct 2-to-1 to Kendrick Meek in the Democratic Senate primary. That’s not a ratio of 2-to-1. It was literally 2 votes for Meek and one for Greene, presumably his own. Greene’s wife isn’t registered in Palm Beach County.
Only 26 Democrats are registered in Greene’s precinct, compared to 84 Republicans. Marco Rubio carried the precinct 26-0 in the GOP Senate primary.
Another tidbit: Greene’s mother’s Century Village precinct was more competitive. Meek won it 115 votes to 107.
Meek carried Palm Beach County with 64.4 percent. He got 57.6 percent statewide.
Dave Aronberg said he was proud today to endorse his Democratic primary opponent, Dan Gelber, in the attorney general race against Republican Pam Bondi. “Dan will bring needed reform to this office and restore its original mission of protecting Floridians,” Aronberg said in a statement.
Gelber said in a statement that he was “proud to have the support of my friend.”
In an e-mail addressed to friends Thursday night, Aronberg said he “will be taking a break from elected office…but this is not farewell. I will be back at the right time and the right opportunity to make a real difference on issues of public safety and consumer protection.”
UPDATE:Scott’s campaign sent out details for three “unity events” on Monday, but didn’t include details about who would be there. There is a “meeting with statesmen” in Tampa. Could those be some of the “Tallahassee insider” who were “crying in their cocktails” on Tuesday?
Here’s the schedule: 9:30 a.m., meeting with statesmen, University Club of Tampa; 2 p.m., Tampa unity event, Tampa Jet Center (tentative); 6 p.m., Orlando unity event, Marks Street Senior Center.
Sounds like the details are still being hammered out, but watch for Republican gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott to announce a multi-day tour of the state early next week with the incoming GOP Senate and House bosses, Mike Haridopolos and Dean Cannon.
(You might remember Cannon and Haridopolos from this statewide fly-around a couple weeks ago. At this point, the tour will be missing Bill McCollum, sort of an important component for the whole unity thing…)
Scott initiated a conference call with the two former McCollum men on Thursday after he had a sit-down with Republican Party of Florida Chairman John Thrasher and a phone conversation with Republican Governor’s Association Chairman Haley Barbour, who diverted his Mississippi-to-Orlando flight on Tuesday after results showed Scott pulling off the upset.
We also hear a number of lobbyists and other high-ranking Republicans showed up at Scott’s Fort Lauderdale headquarters on Wednesday and Thursday hoping to play the broker in Scott’s group-hug with the GOP establishment.
Scott didn’t go for it, instead relying on his background as a mergers-and-acquisitions attorney and venture capitalist to negotiate his own path through the next two months.
Republican-turned-independent Senate candidate Charlie Crist is coming to Palm Beach County’s Democratic heartland to campaign on Sunday. Crist is scheduled to appear at the South County Civic Center west of Delray Beach at 9:30 a.m.
Consultant Eric Johnson, a Democratic operative hired by Crist to help woo South Florida Dems, said Crist will be introduced by a “high-profile” Democrat, but wouldn’t name names. It won’t be Broward County Democratic state Sen. Jeremy Ring, a Johnson client who attended a Crist event in Coconut Creek this month but today announced he’s endorsing Democrat Kendrick Meek in the Senate race.
Crist faces Meek and Republican Marco Rubio in the Nov. 2 general election. Since bolting the GOP in April, Crist has aggressively courted Democratic voters in South Florida. Both Meek and Rubio have attempted to lump Crist with the opposing party in the three-way race.
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