HOLLYWOOD — Jeff Greene has conceded the Democratic Senate primary to Kendrick Meek, a Greene spokesman said about 9 p.m.

Meek still hasn’t arrived at his victory party at the Westin Diplomat Hotel, but he did send out a victory statement casting his general election rivals — Republican Marco Rubio and Republican-turned-independent Gov. Charlie Crist — as “two lifelong conservative Republicans.”

Expect Rubio to try to define Crist as a Democrat and Meek to try to brand Crist a Republican in the three-way race.

Read Meek’s statement after the jump….

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New Democratic Senate nominee Kendrick Meek isn’t expected to address supporters here until about 9:30 p.m., but he just blasted out this e-mail with “Wow” in the subject fied:

Friend –

Rain kept voter turnout low despite predictions of record-breaking participation, Secretary of State Dawn Roberts said after the polls closed this evening.

Roberts said she’s had no reports of systemic problems with voting equipment, long lines or other complaints that have plagued Florida since the protracted 2000 presidential election.

“It’s been a great day. It’s been a wet day. So a little slow,” Roberts told reporters during a brief press conference after the polls closed at 8 p.m.

A handful of voters in Palm Beach and Broward counties were given “No Party Affiliation” ballots and cast their votes before complaining to elections workers that they were unable to vote in the hotly contested gubernatorial primary between Attorney General Bill McCollum and Rick Scott or the Democratic U.S. Senate primary between U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek and Palm Beach millionaire Jeff Greene.

“That unfortunately happens every primary,” Roberts said. “It’s a training issue…Also, voters need to pay attention.”

She said voters should familiarize their sample ballots before going to their polling place and should alert workers before voting if they think they have the wrong ballot.

Nearly 1 million voters voted early or by absentee ballot, Roberts said.

Elections results are available online and should be finalized in by 11 p.m. or earlier if no problems arise.

With all the logic pointing to a Bill McCollum victory in a low turnout primary, Rick Scott supporters here at the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Marina are enjoying smooth jazz and early results giving Scott a 46-44 lead over McCollum.

Throughout the day, reports said voter turnout across the state was low, partly due to bad weather.

Scott spokeswoman Jen Baker, however, refused to accept that low turnout meant a loss for Scott.

“You hear anecdotal evidence all day long in every election, but we really just won’t know until the polls close,” Baker said earlier in the evening. “It’s a tight race.”

Tight indeed, as a large group of supporters — not connected to Tallahassee or Washington like the crew that came out to McCollum’s suddenly nerve-wracking rally in Altamonte Springs — continue to enjoy the live band and open bar that could become very rowdy in a few hours if Scott pulls off the improbable upset.

Scott supporter Bill Scott (not related), believes the celebrating has just begun.

“It’s not the last day,” Bill Scott said. “It’s the beginning of another few months.”

While supporters prepare a hotel ballroom for Jeff Greene’s campaign party, the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate is monitoring results from his home in Palm Beach, said spokesman Luis Vizcaino.

Vizcaino said Greene is at home with his wife, mother and 10-month-old son, and feels very optimistic despite initial results that show him trailing behind Kendrick Meek in the race.

“He’s received a very positive response. It’s been a tough fight, it’s been a good fight that has been able to shape the debate about the economy,” Vizcaino said.

Greene is expected to join his supporters at the West Palm Beach Marriott tonight, but campaign officials did not say when he would arrive.

In his final interviews before precincts close at 7 p.m. tonight, Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene told voters he was the only “jobs creator” in the race and the only solution for Florida’s economic problems.

“This country is in big trouble, and Florida is in big trouble. I’m not going to be satisfied to see these career politicians run our country,” said Greene at the West Palm Beach Marriott, where his supporters will gather later tonight to watch election results.

Greene said his day started at 6 a.m. with visits to several residential communities, and that he and his wife campaigned in six cities on Monday, including West Palm Beach, Miami and Tampa.

Greene thanked his supporters and volunteers, and said his experience as a businessman would help solve Florida’s housing crisis and reduce unemployment.

“We need some new faces, bold ideas, and I’m going to fight for the people of Florida,” he said. “I’m theonly jobs creator in this race who understands how this economy works.”

Although a July poll had Greene leading the race against rival Kendrick Meek, more recent polls give Meek a 28 percent edge over Greene.

UPDATE: Hackers didn’t limit their targets to candidates last night. Online thugs also penetrated the conservative Florida Family Policy Council website’s firewall, according to director John Stemberger. Hackers got into the organization’s page where voter guides were located and replaced the council’s donor banners with “bizarre images,” Stemberger said.

GOP attorney general hopeful Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp’s campaign website was attacked by hackers who got into the candidate’s calendar and e-mail, his campaign spokesman David Bishop said.

Online culprits also attacked Holly Benson’s website yesterday but were unable to breach the site‘s security, her web master said.

“We had suspicious behavior with our online calendar and email. Appointments would be canceled. Someone even called to send regrets for an event we accepted earlier in the day,” Bishop said.

The two are in a race too close to call against opponent Pam Bondi, whose website apparently remains unscathed.

It’s been a tough few months for Florida Republicans.

In the GOP gubernatorial primary, Rick Scott turned the scandals of his own party into a campaign issue. Bill McCollum won’t say if he’d support Scott as the party’s nominee.

So it shouldn’t be too surprising that the state party has abandoned plans for a unity event they were attempting to hold tomorrow in Tampa.

“We tossed around the idea for a couple unity events tomorrow, but it never came to fruition,” state party spokeswoman Katie Betta said. “It was too difficult to pull together not knowing what was going to happen tonight and where the candidates were going to be tomorrow.”

Betta stressed that it was a logistical issue and had nothing to do the potential of the bevy of state party leaders having to eat crow if their candidate, McCollum, loses to Scott tonight.

“Our responsibility is to elect Republican candidates,” Betta said. “We’ve opened our Victory offices and have the resources in place to help all of our candidates after the primary. At this point, Scott has chosen to not participate in that.

“But we hope to have a working relationship with whoever the nominee is,” she said.

Instead of a unity event tomorrow, the party will present its slate of statewide candidates at its fund-raising dinner in Sept. 10 in Orlando, where Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour will be the keynote speaker

UPDATE: More of the same ballot mix-ups are being reported in Palm Beach County and in Broward County, according to the state Division of Elections. There have been fewer than 10 instances reported in each county.

Oops. After the millions of dollars spent by GOP gubernatorial opponents Rick Scott and Attorney General Bill McCollum, at least two votes that could have gone their way won’t.

Two Palm Beach County Republican voters received “No Party Affiliation” ballots but reported the mix-up only after they had cast their votes, meaning they did not vote in the heated GOP primary.

The poll workers who handed out the wrong ballots were re-assigned, elections supervisor Susan Bucher said.

“I don’t know how this could happen,” she said.

Turn-out throughout the state appears to be light despite predictions of record-breaking voter participation.

Democratic pollster Tom Jensen expects a Kendrick Meek win over Jeff Greene in today’s Democratic Senate primary. If so, Jensen says, “the biggest winner coming out of the primary may be Marco Rubio.”

The latest poll by Jensen’s Public Policy Polling says likely Republican Senate nominee Rubio (assuming he beats William Escoffery III and William Billy Kogut in today’s GOP primary) gets 40 percent of the general election vote, with independent Gov. Charlie Crist at 32 percent and Meek at 17 percent. If Palm Beach billionaire Greene wins the primary, Rubio holds only a 1-point lead over Crist, with Greene at 13 percent.

Crist has led some earlier polls, but PPP finds that if Meek is the nominee, many Democratic voters who might vote for Crist will instead come home to their party.

The general election poll sampled 567 likely voters over the weekend and has a 4.1 percent margin of error.

PPP on Monday released polls showing Meek leading Greene by 24 points and, in the GOP governor’s primary, Rick Scott topping Bill McCollum by 7 points.

Apologies to Sean Doughtie, Holly Benson’s web master, who corrected our use of the term “hacked” to describe an attack on the attorney general candidate’s website.

The site was not hacked, which means the culprits did not gain access to the server, Doughtie, owner of Taproot Creative, clarified.

What happened was in the geek world called a “brute force attack,” Doughtie explained, designed to either shut the website down or hack into it. Neither happened, Doughtie said.

“They basically just jammed up the server so the server slowed down a crawl,” he said.

The attack came from Tallahassee, a source close to Benson’s campaign said, and Doughtie’s busy trying to identify who was behind the dirty deed.

GOP attorney general candidate Holly Benson’s website crashed last night after being hacked, her campaign said.

The attack on the eve before today’s primary election did not result in any security breach, according to her website consultant.

“Yesterday, Hollybenson.com was the victim of a brute force attack where one or more individuals attempted to overload the server with the purpose of taking it offline. We quickly identified the issue, narrowed the source of the attack, and were able to restore access with little downtime. At no time was the security of the website breached, and no information was compromised. We are conducting an ongoing investigation with regard to the source and the intent of the attack on the website,” Sean Doughtie, Benson’s new media campaign consultant, said.

Looks like rain today across Florida as primary candidates make their last push before polls close today at 7 p.m. Here’s the forecasts for around the state today, courtesy of The Weather Channel:

West Palm Beach: Scattered thunderstorms, high of 91°.
Bagdad: Mostly sunny, 95°.
Jacksonville: Isolated thunderstorms, 94°.
Miami: Isolated thunderstorms, 91°.
Okahumpka: Scattered thunderstorms, 88°.
Orlando: Scattered thunderstorms, 90°.
Pensacola: Mostly sunny, 95°.
Sun City: Scattered thunderstorms, 88°.
Tampa: Scattered thunderstorms, 88°.
Vernon: Mostly sunny, 95°.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink wants oil disaster claims czar Ken Feinberg to revamp his process for paying individuals and business owners who say BP’s massive oil disaster caused them to lose revenues or suffer other damages.

Sink, who traveled frequently to the Panhandle to meet with Feinberg and business owners who’s claims languished in BP’s hands, and fellow Cabinet member Attorney General Bill McCollum both accuse Feinberg of creating a process that’s less friendly to oil spill victims than federal law.

Feinberg has “taken an extremely restrictive view as to who is eligible for recovery,” Sink, a Democrat who is the presumptive nominee for governor, wrote to Feinberg today, the kick-off of his Gulf Coast Claims Facility that will handle the claims.

“In my opinion, the GCCF rules must be rewritten in favor of those who were harmed by this catastrophe, as opposed to those who caused it,” Sink wrote.

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Supporters of Democratic Senate rivals Jeff Greene and Kendrick Meek wave signs outside the West Palm Beach library

WEST PALM BEACH — While supporters of Democratic Senate establishment favorite Kendrick Meek sat in air-conditioned comfort inside the city library late this afternoon waiting for their candidate, outsider Jeff Greene’s campaign seized the initiative.

About 10 Greene backers had the sidewalk in front of the library to themselves to wave signs and hand out literature before a Meek event.

Their advantage soon evaporated, however. The Meek folks got wind of the insurrection and descended to the sidewalk, where they quickly outnumbered and outshouted the Greene contingent.

Will the Democratic Senate primary play out the same way?

Four-term U.S. Rep. Meek’s frontrunning campaign was knocked on its heels by Palm Beach billionaire Greene’s outside-the-Beltway candidacy. Greene surged to a 10-point lead in one late July poll, but subsequent polls suggest Meek is back on top heading into Tuesday’s primary.

Read about it here.

UPDATE: McCollum canceled his WPB event because of weather and headed to Orlando. But he flew into a different hangar than Scott. In the meantime, Herald reporter Marc Caputo put together the video above for what marks the first Post-Herald-Times video project…

“Oh Jesus,” Ingrid McCollum laughed when she saw her husband’s primary rival, Rick Scott, pull up to Tampa International Jet Center moments ago.

Scott is headed to Orlando – the McCollums’ hometown – while Bill McCollum was headed to West Palm Beach.

Scott blew by McCollum in the airport while McCollum joked that he would attempt to delay his rival from making his next stop.

Holly Benson’s tapped conservative icon Newt Gingrich for a robo-call last-ditch pitch before Tuesday’s primary election.

Benson, a former state representative from Pensacola who’s served as secretary of both the Department of Business and Professional Regulation and the Agency for Health Care Administration under Gov. Charlie Crist, is in a tight three-way GOP primary for attorney general against Pam Bondi and Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp.

Gingrich hails Benson as “a proven conservative you can trust,” a swipe at Bondi, who’s never run for office before and released robo-calls from Sarah “Mama Grizzly” Palin today.

Gingrich says Benson is the best candidate to fight President Barack Obama’s health care plan.

The calls started yesterday and will continue today.

The day before Tuesday’s primary election, political newcomer Pam Bondi brought out the big guns: a robo-call recorded by conservative darling Sarah Palin.

The “Mama Grizzly” calls Bondi “a real prosecutor and a true conservative” who is “sharp, selfless and ready to stand for you” in the call released today.

Bondi was a Democrat for 16 years before switching to the GOP a decade ago.

Listen to Palin tout “my friend Pam Bondi.”

Maybe Bondi, who’s in a race too close to call against Holly Benson and Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, can help Palin as well.

Palin’s endorsees, mainly tea party favorites or political outsider’s like Bondi, have not fared well in primaries throughout the country thus far.

Florida Realtors will divvy up $16 million to cover lost sales in the aftermath of the April 20th Deepwater Horizon rig blast and ensuing massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Florida’s sharing in about $60 million claims czar Ken Feinberg set aside for real estate agents and brokers although they would not be eligible for claims under state or federal law.

He’s already given property owners the bad news that they’ll likely get nada from the $20 billion fund set up by BP to cover losses caused by the spill.

Each of the Gulf Coast states’ real estate associations will dole out the funds to realtors.

Florida Realtors, the state association representing realtors, hired Indiana-based claims adjustment firm NCA to handle the claims and administer the funds, according to press release issued by the association.

Feinberg, who took over BP’s botched claims system at 12:01 a.m this morning, has said that realtors were the loudest group making a pitch for how the oil disaster made an already sluggish real estate market even worse.

Feinberg’s in charge of administering the $20 billion fund BP set up to pay for losses and injuries caused by the disaster. BP will put the money into the Gulf Coast Claims Facility account over four years.

Feinberg said the first checks to individuals filing claims will go out by Wednesday and within a week for businesses.

Rick Scott’s campaign is crying foul over our story this morning that reported his primary rival, Bill McCollum, opposes abortions even in cases of rape and incest. Scott does not.

We got that detail from a controversial voters guide prepared by a triumvirate of Christian groups. Presumably, McCollum’s campaign filled out their own questionnaire. We’ll update this blog when we get their response.

Meanwhile, Scott’s campaign is calling it a “last-minute flip-flop” comparing it to McCollum’s reversal on embryonic stem cell research, which he no longer supports. (Here’s our opus on that and other life issues in this race.)

Scott’s staff has sent out quotes from the Orlando Sentinel political blog this summer in which McCollum said he does not support taxpayer funding of abortions except “in circumstances where the mother’s life or health is at risk or in cases of rape or incest.”

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Public Policy Polling and Quinnipiac University both surveyed Florida Republican voters over the weekend on the Bill McCollum-Rick Scott gubernatorial bloodbath. They came up with vastly different results.

As noted earlier this morning, Democratic-oriented PPP found Scott with a 47-to-40 percent lead over McCollum in the Republican primary. Quinnipiac’s poll shows McCollum with a 39-to-35 percent lead over Scott.

One huge difference: PPP found Republican voters have an overall positive view of Scott, with 46 percent expressing a favorable view and 33 percent unfavorable. Quinnipiac found GOP voters with an overall negative view of Scott — 31 percent favorable and 40 percent favorable.

McCollum’s favorability ratings are underwater in the PPP poll — 38 percent positive and 45 percent negative. In the Quinnipiac poll, McCollum’s favorable/unfavorable score is 39/37.

PPP’s Republican sample was 304 likely voters and has a 5.6 percent margin of error. Quinnipiac surveyed 771 likely GOP voters and has a 3.5 percent margin of error.

Both polling firms find Kendrick Meek with a double-digit lead over Jeff Greene in the Democratic Senate primary.