Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink said she was discouraged after watching the debate Thursday between Republican primary opponents, Bill McCollum and Rick Scott.

“The real losers from last night were the people of Florida, because we didn’t hear anything about what kind of governors these guys would be,” she said.

Asked if she was ready for that kind of fight, Sink said she’d stick to the issues. But she wouldn’t commit to not running negative TV ads.

A recent addition to the campaign crew of GOP governor hopeful Rick Scott may raise some eyebrows among voters.

Ken McKay, the former chief of staff of controversial Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, has popped back up in Florida — as consultant for former healthcare industry exec Scott.

McKay, 43, who ran successful political races in the Northeast before being tapped by Steele in 2009, resigned his DC post four months ago in the RNC shakeup that followed a spending scandal.

McKay was a goner after GOP donors found out the RNC approved the reimbursement of $2,000 worth of food and drinks at a California bondage-sex club during a committee trip.

More from our Page 2 columist Jose Lambiet here.

Ken Feinberg, hired by President Barack Obama and BP to take over the troubled claims process, will return to the Florida Panhandle on Tuesday.

Feinberg will meet with business owners and others in Panama City Beach and Pensacola.

Feinberg’s likely to get an earful from local business owners dismayed to discover this weekend that BP has stopped making payments for lost sales in May because oil had not yet landed on Panhandle beaches.

And he’ll probably hear even more grousing about the delays in payments like the three months it took for one Pensacola Beach business owner to get about half what he estimates he lost in sales during May, June and July.

BP initiated an “Immediate Action Claims Team” over the weekend to expedite payments to businesses.

But adjusters or even operators at the “Immediate Actions Claims Team” hotline were unaware of the program when called earlier this week.

Feinberg was tapped in mid-June to take over the claims process for individuals and businesses and dole out the $20 billion BP will put into an escrow fund for Gulf state claims.

BP has yet to make the first payment into the fund, which it will build up over three-and-a-half years, but Feinberg said he’s confident the money will be there when he takes over sometime later this month.

Feinberg will first make six-month emergency payments to cash-strapped businesses and individuals impacted by the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil rig blast and ensuing massive oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico.

But he’s struggling to establish a protocol – which he’s revised more than nine times so far – to define who should get paid and how much.

BP VP of operations Darryl Willis, in charge of the claims system until Feinberg takes the helm, said his company has received claims from 48 states.

The Panhandle events are open to the public but RSVP’s are required. Those interested in attending can contact the Bay County Chamber of Commerce 850-785-5206 or the Pensacola Bay Chamber of Commerce 850-438-4081 by 4 p.m. Monday to reserve a seat.

Former President Bill Clinton will campaign in Delray Beach for Democratic Senate hopeful Kendrick Meek on Aug. 16, bolstering Meek’s status as the Democratic Party establishment favorite in the Aug. 24 primary against billionaire Palm Beach outsider Jeff Greene.

Meek and Clinton go back to the early 1990s, when Meek was a Florida Highway Patrol trooper assigned to pick up then-Arkansas Gov. Clinton at the airport in Tallahassee while Clinton was running for president. Meek was an early backer of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid. Bill Clinton has already helped Meek with several events in the Senate race.

Clinton and Meek are scheduled to appear together at three South Florida events on Aug. 16. Doors open for the event at the Delray Community Center at 4:30 p.m. that day. The pair will then campaign in Davie and Miami.

On Aug. 18, Meek is scheduled to be “joining” President Obama at an event in Miami. Details of that event remain unclear.

The event is slated for the Delray Community Center at 50 N.W. 1st Avenue in Delray Beach. Doors open at 4:30 p.m.

State Sen. Dan Gelber gets defensive in his first television ad in the race against fellow senator Dave Aronberg in the Democratic attorney general primary.

With absentee voting already underway, Gelber, a Miami Beach lawyer and former federal prosecutor, highlights his years in the courtroom and accuses Aronberg of “political games” and “dishonest attacks” in a series of mailers in which Aronberg accuses Gelber of a potential conflict of interest. Aronberg’s made a big issue out of Gelber’s former law firm going to work for BP to defend the oil giant in any Florida lawsuits.

Ok, so you could argue that the best exchange was the question (Listen here) about who their favorite sports team were (Rick Scott and Bill McCollum both mentioned Marco Rubio, which we’re pretty sure is a squad in the English Premier League…)

But in an otherwise freewheeling, action-packed debate on Thursday, moderator John Wilson gave the two Republican gubernatorial candidates the most room to debate a point over taxes and fees.

The question started out about the barrage of negative ads the two have been unleashing on each other, but quickly devolved into the most heated back-and-forth of the evening.

Listen here

For our recap of hour long debate, click here.

To watch the station’s highlights, continue reading.

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Is billionaire Jeff Greene’s spectacular success investing in credit-default swaps causing concern among Democratic Senate primary voters? After weeks of attacks against rival Kendrick Meek, Greene’s new 60-second TV spot seems a tad defensive, emphasizing Greene’s humble roots, student loans and hard work before he vaulted from multimillionaire to billionaire by figuring out a way to make money when the housing market collapsed.

A week after a Quinnipiac University poll showed outsiders Rick Scott and Jeff Greene with double-digit leads in their respective primaries for governor and U.S. Senate, a Mason-Dixon poll today suggests both races are tighter.

The poll, commissioned by Leadership Florida and the Florida Press Association, shows Naples businessman Scott with a 37-to-31 percent lead over Attorney General Bill McCollum in the Republican primary for governor.

In the Democratic Senate primary, the Mason-Dixon poll shows U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek ahead of Palm Beach billionaire Greene by a 33-to-29 percent margin.

Meek’s campaign, meanwhile, says it’s latest internal gives Meek a 1-point lead over Greene.

The Mason-Dixon poll was conducted Monday through Wednesday and has a 4 percent margin for error.

Florida will not appeal a federal court decision that removed spending restraints from Republican Rick Scott’s already record-breaking gubernatorial campaign, a Florida Secretary of State spokeswoman said Wednesday, leaving further appeals to Scott’s political rivals.

But some experts said the state’s decision to acknowledge problems with its taxpayer-funded campaign finance program could also expose Florida’s $500 contribution limit — already the lowest in the country — to a similar challenge.

“I’m surprised there hasn’t been a challenge already,” said University of Florida political science professor Clifford A. Jones, a campaign finance law expert.

Story here.

The most widely reported exchange from the first debate Monday between Republican gubernatorial candidates Rick Scott and Bill McCollum was about $1.7 billion in fines Scott’s hospital chain paid after a Medicare fraud investigation. From our recap of the debate:

Scott said that while he took responsibility for Columbia/HCA’s actions, politicians typically don’t take responsibility for failures in government.

“Rick, let’s get serious,” McCollum shot back. “You say you took responsibility, but the only thing you took was $300 million. Your company stole that money from the senior citizens of this country.”

As McCollum and Scott prepare for what appears to be their final debate tonight, the video above uses footage from the campaign trail to explore how Scott handles Medicare fraud questions and exactly what he takes responsibility for.

A McLaughlin & Associates poll sponsored by the Associated Industries of Florida:

A telephone survey of likely general election voters only slightly favors independent U.S. Senate candidate Gov. Crist over Republican candidate Rubio by 2 percentage points (38 percent versus 36 percent) when U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek is the Democratic challenger (16 percent of respondents indicated they would vote for Meek). If Jeff Greene was the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, those numbers shift slightly with Gov. Crist and Rubio both earning 37 percent of the vote, and Greene earning 16 percent. In both scenarios, 10 percent of voters were undecided.

The poll was conducted between July 31 and August 1, 2010, the poll surveyed by telephone 600 randomly-selected, likely general election voters throughout Florida. It has a margin of error of +/- 4 percent and a 95 percent confidence interval. The live telephone interviews were conducted by professional interviewers.

ORLANDO — U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek told union supporters he’s underdog stone-slinger David facing a wealthy Goliath in his Democratic Senate primary campaign against Jeff Greene.

With firebrand Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson and about 150 supporters on hand at a union hall, Meek kicked off a 10-day bus tour that he says will emphasize his grass-roots support against Greene, the Palm Beach billionaire who has used a costly TV ad campaign to surge ahead of Meek in the polls.

“We’re going to be the David in this race, David vs. Goliath,” Meek said. “It’s not about running television commercials, it’s about getting out and touching Floridians and understanding their needs. I look forward to continuing to engage everyday people.”

Meek has stops in Sanford, Daytona Beach and Jacksonville later today.

Florida will not appeal a federal court ruling that put a temporary hold on a program that offers taxpayer assistance to statewide candidates competing against wealthy, self-funded competitors.

“In analyzing our options and with the desire to have some finality on the issue, we felt it was the best choice not to take any further steps,” Secretary of State spokeswoman Jennifer Krell Davis told The Palm Beach Post.

It sounds like the state sees little chance to win a rehearing from the same judges in the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s other option would be to appeal to a Supreme Court that last year dismantled much of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws.

A couple interesting offshoots:

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ORLANDO — Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, the party establishment favorite who finds himself trailing billionaire Palm Beach outsider Jeff Greene’s TV-fueled campaign in primary polls, begins a 10-day bus tour this morning that will take him to Jacksonville, Pensacola, Miami and multiple points in between.

His bus is called “The Real Dem Express” — its name meant to be a rolling criticism of Greene, who ran for Congress in California in 1982 and, after years of being registered with no party, didn’t register as a Democrat until he moved to Florida in 2008.

The tour begins at a union hall shortly before noon, then is scheduled to stop in Sanford, Daytona Beach and Jacksonville later today.

ORLANDO — Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene told reporters today that his 2007 stop in Cuba was an unplanned one brought on my mechanical problems on his 145-foot yacht. The hydraulic troubles, he said, gave him the opportunity to go on an impromptu fact-finding mission about conditions in the Jewish community under the Castro regime.

The Cuba visit first became a topic of discussion when a Sunday St. Petersburg Times profile of Greene included a quote from a former deckhand who said: “Mr. Greene’s yacht is known to be a party yacht. When it went to Cuba, everybody talked about the vomit caked all over the sides from all the partying going on.”

Many readers undoubtedly focused on the alleged vomit-caked debauchery. Others, including Greene’s Democratic primary rival Kendrick Meek, raised eyebrows because most visits to Cuba are illegal under the U.S. embargo against the communist nation.

When Meek pressed Greene on the Cuba visit during a debate taped Sunday, Greene said he had gone “years ago on a Jewish mission to Cuba.” A Greene spokesman today said Greene “misspoke” in describing the trip as a planned mission.

Greene discussed the matter with reporters during a late-afternoon campaign stop. Read the transcript after the jump….

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Before he’s officially taken over as Senate President, Sen. Mike Haridopolos gave the axe to several top-ranking senate staffers this week, according to Senate sources.

The list includes staff directors Bob McKee of the Finance and Tax committee, Ray Wilson of Governmental Oversight and Accountability; General counsel Jay Vail; chief information officer and director of information technology Curt Unruh; and Joe McVaney, deputy staff director with the budget committee.

“The Florida Senate appreciates all of its dedicated employees, but it is the incoming Senate President’s prerogative to make personnel changes, with a new administration. My goal is to have an efficient, well-organized Senate staff, and this is just the first step in doing so,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said in a statement.

The housecleaning takes place after Haridopolos hired Steve MacNamara, former chief of staff for former House Speaker John Thrasher, now a state senator and head of the Republican Party of Florida.

More heads are expected to roll before the November elections. Those leaving will be able to run out their annual leave and comp time, according to a source close to Senate President Jeff Atwater’s office. (more…)

Check out this picture of the Palm Beach County commission from 2003. Three commissioners (Tony Masilotti, front right; Warren Newell, front left; Mary McCarty, back left) have gone to federal prison on corruption charges.

A fourth, Jeff Koons (back row, second from left) was booked into the Palm Beach County jail early this morning and is expected to appear before a judge today on charges of extortion, perjury and violating Florida’s open-meetings law.

Click here to see the sheriff’s booking information on Koons, who checked into the Gun Club Road jail at 3:41 a.m.

Tourists who book three nights or more in a Walton County beach hotel between now and Sept. 30 will get a $250 voucher for Southwest Airlines or $250 gift card for the Silver Sands outlet mall in Sandestin, all on BP’s dime.

The promotion will be paid out of the $7 million BP gave Panhandle tourism boards to help lure visitors back to the region where tourism has taken a nosedive in the aftermath of the massive Deepwater Horizon oil leak.

Tar blotches and oil stains impacted all but 1.5 miles of the 26-mile stretch of sugar white beaches in Walton Count and resulted in a 7 percent drop in bed tax collections in June and a 3 percent reduction in May, according to Dawn Moliterno, head of the region’s tourism development council, Beaches of South Walton.

The $7 million will be divided between the seven Florida tourism councils most directly impacted by the oil spill. Escambia and Santa Rosa counties will receive $700,000; the seven councils will split 14 percent of the $7 million and the rest will be distributed based on the amount of bed tax each of the councils collects. The tourism officials have to spend the money by Sept. 30, when all promotional programs must end, Moliterno said.

Moliterno’s council paid the most of the bunch last year – nearly $1.7 million and so will get a bigger slice of the BP marketing money.

The TDCs are excited about the new fund because they have control over how the money will be spent, unlike the $25 million for marketing BP gave the state earlier in the summer.

Moliterno thinks the vouchers will be great for the local economy because visitors will spread the cash around to businesses other than hotels.

“We know if we can get people here we know we can get them to support the community,” Moliterno said.

She gave BP credit for “putting the money into motion.”

Gov. Charlie Crist’s office will announce today that Florida Environmental Protection Department Secretary Mike Sole will step down in early September.

Sole has no job lined up.

UPDATED with reaction from Klein’s campaign at end…

Saying he expects U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, to try to “distort and falsify my service in Iraq,” Republican challenger Allen West this morning released a video giving his side of the 2003 incident that led him to leave the U.S. Army.

As a battalion commander, Lt. Col. West supervised the interrogation of an Iraqi police officer suspected of having information about an assassination plot against West. West fired a pistol near the man’s head to get him to talk. After a military hearing, he was fined $5,000 and allowed to retire with a full pension.

Here’s one news account of the incident from 2003.

In the video, West says his actions were intended to protect the troops under his command.

“If it’s about the safety and the lives of my men…I would go through hell with a gasoline can,” West says in the video, essentially repeating what he said at his 2003 hearing.

Klein spokeswoman Sarah Rothschild offered this response: “Congressman Klein’s campaign has never made Allen West’s service or record an issue in this campaign. It is Allen West, who apparently is raising the circumstances regarding his retirement from the military, as an issue. Congressman Klein plans on campaigning on his record of fighting for South Florida and we would assume that Allen West will run on his record.”