UPDATED with quote from Tea Party in Action leader….
Republican governor candidate Rick Scott announced late Wednesday that he’ll be outside the South Florida Water Management District headquarters in West Palm Beach this morning with a group called Tea Party in Action to protest the proposed U.S. Sugar buyout.
That prompted an e-mail blast in the wee hours of this morning from South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson questioning the Tea Party in Action group and Scott’s involvement.
Wilkinson, it should be noted, is personally supporting Bill McCollum in the GOP governor primary, though he says his endorsement has nothing to do with the South Florida Tea Party.
Says Tea Party in Action leader Marianne Moran: “Everett Wilkinson spends a lot of time telling reporters who he says are ‘real’ tea party members as if he’s the sole authority. He spends the rest of his time endorsing career politician Bill McCollum. Tea Party in Action wants to kill this corporate bailout of US Sugar. We welcome Rick Scott and any political candidates willing to join this cause.”
Read Scott’s announcement and Wilkinson’s statement after the jump…..
From Marathon to the Battle of Tours to Gettysburg to the Battle of the Bulge, one often gets a synopsis of military history when Republican congressional hopeful Allen West speaks. Here West, aiming to knock off Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Klein in November, mentions Leonidas “at that gap in Thermopylae” in the 5th century B.C. offering his legendary “come-and-get-them” challenge to the Persians who demanded the Greeks’ weapons.
Leonidas
Later, West also mentions The Palm Beach Post editorial page’s recent endorsement of his unknown rival in the Aug. 24 Republican primary and (around the 6:15 mark) says, “I have every intention of making The Palm Beach Post pay for endorsing David Brady.”
PostOnPolitics, which is not connected to the editorial page or the paper’s endorsement decisions, asked West to elaborate. West, in an e-mail, explained that “…bottom line about PB Post paying for Brady endorsement, we are going to win. The best revenge is always success.”
Here’s the palm card Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Greene is mailing to voters in the Century Village condos.
The card, paid for by Greene’s campaign, implies endorsements for Dave Aronberg, Peter Burkert as well as some candidates in other local races.
But the two state candidates say they were not asked to be on any slate and insist they are not endorsing either Greene or his primary opponent, Kendrick Meek.
Greene’s campaign has not responded to a request for comment
If negative campaigning suppresses turnout at the polls, are any Florida primary voters going to turnout to the polls this year? (Brian Crowley suggested Florida pollsters give voters here a “not interested” option in addition to an “undecided.”)
But one Florida county may have found the solution — give Rick Scott’s “Not Yet Designated” running mate its own bubble to vote for.
Not to worry thought — the picture is from a sample ballot and the county has fixed the error.
A new Rasmussen poll of Florida’s Senate race shows Republican Marco Rubio ahead in a three-way contest if Kendrick Meek wins the Aug. 24 Democratic primary. Rubio gets 38 percent, independent Charlie Crist gets 33 percent and Meek gets 21 percent in the poll.
If Jeff Greene wins the Democratic primary, the poll shows Crist barely edges Rubio by picking up some Democratic support. That scenario shows Crist with a 37-to-36 percent lead over Rubio and Greene at 20 percent.
The poll of 750 likely voters has a 4 percent margin of error.
Either way, the Democrat finishes a distant third in the new poll. Both Crist and Rubio probably enjoyed Tuesday’s Orlando Democratic debate, in which both Meek and Greene highlighted each other’s negatives.
Democratic Attorney General candidate Dan Gelber last month opened his own fundraising group, known as Common Sense, that — like several other statewide candidates — will help him avoid the contribution limits and spending caps of his own campaign.
Gelber’s raised about $45,000 for the group and those contributions are listed on his website, as required by state law.
But official documents filed with the Division of Elections didn’t include the URL of that website until today when supporters of Gelber’s primary opponent, fellow state Sen. Dave Aronberg, called foul.
“That’s an infraction of Florida election law,” said Rep. Joe Abruzzo, D-Wellington. “It’s illegal.”
A spokeswoman for the Division of Elections said there was no penalty for that omission, although someone could file an elections complaint over it. We were also referred to Chapter 7 of the state Campaign Treasurer Handbook. The handbook shows that the document a candidate is required to file when he is associated with a 527 group, a document known as a “statement of solicitation,” must include some basic information. The URL of the website is not part of that basic info, but must be reported to the elections division within five days.
The website must also be updated within five days of any contribution or expenditure.
The first donation reported by the group was on July 26. Network Solutions, a company that tracks domain names, shows the Common Sense website was created on July 28.
Gelber’s campaign manager dismissed the complaint from Abruzzo. “It would be nice if Rep. Abruzzo explained why funds he promised would be spent to help elect Democrats were funneled to a GOP front group,” Christian Ulvert said in an e-mail.
Democratic Senate hopeful Jeff Greene’s campaign released new documents today to bolster Greene’s contention that his 2007 visit to Cuba wasn’t an embargo-defying party layover but an unscheduled stop to fix mechanical problems.
The documents — an attorney’s letter, the written recollections of the chief engineer of the 145-foot Summerwind and a repair bill from the Bahamas — probably won’t make the Cuba controversy go away. There’s still the matter of Greene’s conflicting initial accounts of why he visited the communist island.
But the new documents do provide some interesting glimpses into yachting life.
The yacht’s chief engineer, Andy Valero, says in his letter he was vacationing in the Philippines when he was called by Greene “to return to the boat immediately to help with repairs.” He says he flew to Havana, but there were not adequate materials to fix the craft so he made temporary repairs to get the boat to the Bahamas, where Greene incurred $3,126 for repairs and dockage. The biggest item was $1,179.25 for four steel hydraulic lines.
Valero offers what may be an alternative vomit theory, saying there had been rough seas and that when he arrived in Havana, “all the guests were very sick” but “there were no parties on the vessel.”
After agreeing to not air television ads in the Democratic attorney general primary because of its potentially misleading name, a fund-raising committee known as Florida Mainstream Democrats has shifted much of its money to a predominately Republican group, which has paid for a TV spot scheduled to air Wednesday in West Palm Beach.
The ad supports state Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres in his Democratic primary race against fellow Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach.
Aronberg has helped Mainstream raise more than $242,000 in the past eight weeks, according to state election records and the group’s website. On Monday, the group transferred $180,000 to another political committee, known as Voters Response, which will pay for the ad.
Gov. Charlie Crist, running for U.S. Senate with no party affiliation, said today that there’s a chance he would not caucus with either party if he was elected.
In an argument laid out by Roll Call this morning, some say Crist’s power to legislate would be determined largely by which party he chooses to caucus.
The St. Pete Times in June also foreshadowed Crist future by referencing the roller coaster ride of Oregon’s former U.S. Sen. Wayne Morse, an independent who opted to not caucus with either party.
Here’s one way: Give $1.4 million $1.6 million to the committee slamming Rick Scott, Bill McCollum’s Republican gubernatorial rival.
That’s the total so far that Republicans Mike Haridopolos and Dean Cannon, the likely next Senate president and House speaker, have pumped into McCollum’s Florida First Initiative group, which is airing the above TV ad right now. Haridopolos gave the group another $100k on Monday, the same day he and Cannon joined McCollum and former Gov. Jeb Bush on a made-for-TV campaignswing through Miami, Jacksonville and Tampa.
In the good old days before Scott cannon-balled into the deep end of Florida Republican politics, the GOP establishment was successfully mowing down McCollum’s primary challengers. It doesn’t take too much imagination* to think that at that point Haridopolos and Cannon were probably planning to spent their money protecting the GOP majorities in the state House and Senate or maybe even trying pick off a handful of Democratic seats that Republicans need to own veto-proof majorities in both chambers.
Instead, the money is being used to defeat Scott, who is campaigning on all the same issues — reforming Medicaid, cutting taxes, ending teacher tenure, making abortions harder to get — that Cannon and Haridopolos want to pass in the next two years. But instead they’re helping fund a primary fight so nasty that Democrat Alex Sink is virtually tied in the polls with either GOP candidate without having spent a dime on TV and Republican voters are practically begging the campaigns to disarm.
So watch for plenty of second-guessing of the two Orlando area lawmakers if Sink topples the bloodied Republican nominee in November and leaves Haridopolos and Cannon with little more than to recycle the same stinging quotes they used when Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed their bills this year.
Here’s the video Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum is airing as Floridians head to the polls this week in advance of the Aug. 24 primary election.
It’s a honed version of the “Who are you really, Rick Scott?” message McCollum has been honing for the past week on the campaign trail.
Forbes reports today that Democratic Senate hopeful Jeff Greene paid $115,000 in 2007 to settle a libel suit filed in California by an employee of a property management firm that was used by real estate mogul Greene.
The Forbes article says documents from the suit paint an “unflattering” picture of Greene, whose business practices have been criticized by primary rival Kendrick Meek.
There was no comment from Greene’s campaign late this afternoon. The article quotes a Greene attorney saying Greene and the plaintiff have agreed not to comment and the settlement isn’t an admission by Greene of any of the plaintiff’s claims.
Greene and Meek are in a tight Aug. 24 Democratic primary in which the candidates have similar stands on most issues but have attacked each other’s character and background.
Florida Democrats kicked off early voting in Tallahassee with an appeal to working-class Floridians to cast their ballots for the party they say best represents their interests.
“We look out for everybody. Not just the people with big yachts. Not just the people with big bank accounts,” Scott Maddox, former head of the Florida Democratic Party who is now running for agriculture commissioner, told a crowd of about 30 supporters at a press conference this morning. “We look out for folks that do their laundry with quarters. That wait at the bus stop to get to work. We look out for state employees. We look out for environmentalists. We look out for the working men and women of labor. We look out for everybody.”
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, a Democrat running for governor who has a relatively unknown opponent in the primary, gave a pep talk to a few dozen supporters before the crew made the mostly uphill hike in the muggy 90-degree heat to the Leon County Courthouse to vote in the primary.
Sink, who made her entree into politics four years ago, said that as the state’s chief financial officer and a member of the Florida Cabinet she’s had a chance to “look under the hood” of the state.
“That engine needs more than just a slight tune-up. It needs a major overhaul,” Sink, who said she will vote in her hometown of Thonotosassa, said.
Just moments after former Gov. Jeb Bush said Florida needs a governor who won’t vacillate on important issues, Bill McCollum, Bush’s choice for the office, highlighted the nuance in his support for an Arizona-style immigration law in the state.
“We won’t bring exactly Arizona’s law to Florida,” Republican Bill McCollum said. “We’re two different states.”
About 11 percent of the state’s 4 million Republican voters are Hispanic and many pollsters and operatives are watching to see how the immigration issue will sit with them this year. A Wall Street Journal/NBC national poll in May showed 70 percent of Hispanics opposed Arizona’s law.
Plus, find out which current candidate used to date Jeff Koons and which local elected official has been mentioned as a potential lieutenant governor candidate.
Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene today challenged his Senate primary rival, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, to join him in calling for the resignation of U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat who faces 13 House ethics charges.
“He’s protecting the culture of corruption and bribery in Washington. I think he needs to stand up to Rangel and ask for him to resign as other members of Congress have done,” Greene said in an interview.
Meek, asked last week if Rangel should resign, told reporters he favors letting the House Ethics Committee process play out.
“I think that the whole ethics legislation that we passed in Congress is working. It’s working because there is a process in Congress to police members when there is a misstep,” Meek said Wednesday on his campaign bus. “And he’s going through that process just like anyone else would go through that process and that’s up to Mr. Rangel on what he does, and up to the people in his district.”
Senate President-to-be Mike Haridopolos wrapped up a three-day tour of Florida highlighting one of his priorities when he takes over the chamber in November: a total overhaul of the state Medicaid system, which he calls broken.
Haridopolos toured cities from Miami to Tallahassee by bus, flanked by GOP Senate leaders Don Gaetz of Niceville and Joe Negron of Stuart, as well as Haridopolos’ wife Stephanie, a family practice doctor in their Melbourne hometown.
It’s not unusual for new chamber leaders to travel around the state to pump themselves up before taking the helm.
Former Senate President Ken Pruitt made a sweep of Florida in a little yellow school bus championing the Bright Futures scholarship for two years before taking over the chamber in 2006.
Haridopolos wants the federal government to approve a Medicaid waiver for Florida that would allow the state to place all of the state’s 2.7 million Medicaid recipients into managed care. It’s unlikely that Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration would approve such a maneuver, especially given Haridopolos’ and crew’s repeated bashing of federal health care reforms and their support for Attorney General Bill McCollum’s lawsuit against the White House regarding the new health care law.
Expect a major component of Haridopolos’ Medicaid revamp to include tort reform.
He told reporters today that a major problem for Medicaid providers such as hospitals is the high cost of medical malpractice insurance.
“What we’ve consistently heard during these round table discussions is that doctors who have protections against malpractice lawsuits have the ability to deliver a higher quality of care to their patients,” Haridopolos said.
WEST PALM BEACH — Chances that term-limited Mayor Lois Frankel can run for a third term in 2011 took a hit today.
City Commissioners Jeri Muoio and Kimberly Mitchell now say they oppose putting a question on the November ballot asking voters if they want to extend the mayoral limits from two terms to three. Muoio and Mitchell had been sympathetic to putting the question before voters on the general election ballot.
With Commissioner Molly Douglas also opposed, that means at least three of five commissioners are against setting a referendum on extending term limits for the mayor. If voters don’t approve a change to the city charter, Frankel can’t seek a third term in March.
Both Douglas and Muoio have opened campaigns for mayor, but there was speculation Muoio would step aside if Frankel were a candidate. Mitchell is also the subject of frequent mayoral speculation.
If commissioners don’t put a question on the ballot, supporters can force a referendum by collecting about 5,800 signatures. But a petition drive launched last month appears to be short of the goal, and county Elections Supervisor Susan Bucher has said she needs to have signatures verified and language approved by Aug. 20.
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