A heckler interrupted Rick Scott’s stump speech in Melbourne this morning for the first time since the GOP gubernatorial candidate kicked off a week-long sweep of the state leading up to Tuesday’s election.

Joseph Concannon didn’t have far to go to voice his dissatisfaction with Scott. Concannon works at Buz’s Automotive repair shop next door to That Little Restaurant where Scott’s caravan made a brief stop.

Scott ignored the interruption as he introduced one of his two daughters to a small gathering of supporters.

“Does she know you’re a crook? We do,” Concannon yelled.

Concannon said he was referring to the $1.7 billion fine Columbia/HCA paid to the federal government for Medicare and Medicaid fraud shortly after Scott was forced out as CEO of the hospital chain he founded.

Concannon was on a cell phone talking to his wife, Stephanie Hosala, a member of the local Democratic Executive Committee. He said she didn’t ask him to come to Scott’s event but he went over to voice his opinion when he saw Scott’s bus arrive.

Concannon conferred with his wife when asked who he backs in the U.S. Senate race.

“Charlie Crist,” he answered.

When asked why he wasn’t voting for U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, the Democrat vying with independent Crist for his party’s votes, Concannon repeated the answer his spouse apparently gave him.

“Meek is so far behind he doesn’t have a chance,” the Palm Bay resident said.

Sarah Palin-backed Attorney General candidate Pam Bondi is receiving help from another national Republican in a tight race against Dan Gelber.

Beginning today, Florida voters will receive a recorded message from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, encouraging them to vote for Bondi, a Tampa area prosecutor.

Here’s a transcript of the message:

(more…)

Needed from Ron Klein for Congress on Vimeo.

U.S. Rep Ron Klein, Democrat-District 22, has released the final television ad of his campaign, avoiding attacks on his rival, the GOP’s Allen West, and sticking to his endorsements.

The ad, entitled “Needed,” depicts Klein with seniors, veterans and other constituents and also features endorsements from Florida newspapers, including The Palm Beach Post.

A narrator reads the following text:
“Now more than ever we need responsible leaders. The Palm Beach Post said responsible does not describe Allen West. All major newspapers have endorsed Ron Klein, calling him responsible and responsive, saying he’s continued to show an ability to get key legislation accomplished, including a Medicare fraud bill, protecting consumers from Wall Street predators and bipartisan legislation to improve veterans’ health care benefits. Ron Klein for Congress.” (more…)

A Quinnipiac University poll released this morning showing Democratic candidate Alex Sink pulling ahead in the neck-and-neck race governor’s race for governor didn’t faze her GOP opponent Rick Scott.

At a campaign stop this morning in Vero Beach, Scott dismissed the poll results that showed a flip-flop from just two weeks ago when he was ahead of Sink.

“We’re going to win. We’re doing really well,” Scott told reporters at a rally outside Bono’s restaurant. “If you look at the likely voters and the absentee ballots and early voting, we’re doing really well. We’re doing well. We’re going to win.”

The poll of likely voters was completed on Oct. 24, the day before the final debate that set off a controversy over Sink looking at a text message on a cell phone during a commercial break, breaking the debate rules.

During the debate, Scott chastised Sink for smiling when he challenged her about a $6.75 million fine paid by her former bank for selling investors, many of them seniors, risky investments. Sink and the whistleblower who filed the lawsuit said Sink had nothing to do with the problem although she was head of NationsBank’s Florida operations at the time.

George Kopacz, in the crowd of about 300 supporters at the breakfast rally, said Sink’s demeanor during the debate pushed him to vote for Scott.

“It was the smile. It was dishonesty. She didn’t want to defend herself,” Kopacz, the Vero Beach retiree said.

Kopacz said he is an independent who voted for President Obama in the last election.

“I made a mistake. Like everyone else,” he said.

Scott’s week-long tour takes him to Melbourne, Titusville, Ocala and Gainesville later today. Sink will be in West Palm Beach, Lake Worth and Miami.

The newest Quinnipiac University poll shows a tightening Senate race, with Republican Marco Rubio holding a 42-to-35 percent lead over indie Charlie Crist.

Rubio led by 14 in Quinnipiac’s poll two weeks ago. Since then, Democrat Kendrick Meek’s support has cratered at 15 percent, down from 22 percent two weeks ago and suggesting some Meek supporters are moving to former Republican Crist.

The poll — taken Oct. 18-24, or before Monday’s final gubernatorial debate — also shows Democrat Alex Sink leading the governor’s race by a 45-to-41 percent margin over Republican Rick Scott. Scott led 45-44 in Quinnipiac’s Oct. 13 poll.

Quinnipiac surveyed 784 likely voters in a poll that has a 3.5 percent margin of error.

Day three on Rick Scott’s week-long sweep through Florida took the candidate and his entourage to Okeechobee, Lake Placid, Daytona Beach and Lakeland. Scott ended the night with some last-minute check-gathering in Miami before fundraising closes on Friday.

At Scott’s first stop at a pancake breakfast in Okeechobee, a state worker who wouldn’t give her name asked the Republican about his plans to shrink state government.

She’s concerned about who’s going to get downsized – managers or worker bees like herself.

Scott gave her his standard line about running government more like a business, which assured the Okeechobee resident enough to say she was leaning toward voting for him.

“You know you’re getting a crook. He’s not lying about it. He’s admitted it. So you know what you’re getting,” she said, referring to the $1.7 billion in fines Scott’s company Columbia/HCA paid to the federal government shortly after he was forced out as CEO.

Later in the day, Scott visited Lake Placid, the caladium capital of the world.

Scott visited his campaign HQ in Daytona Beach and the Republican headquarters in Lakeland where he was joined by possible 2012 presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota.

As he has throughout the tour so far, Scott urged the party faithful to get themselves and their friends to the polls and vote.

Early voting, which ends this weekend, heightens the significance of the meet-and-greets, campaign advisor Chad Colby said, because voters can cast their ballots immediately after visiting with the candidates.

“It’s what you have to do that last week to really get your message out and really drive people to the polls,” Colby said on a private jet between Lake Placid and Daytona Beach.

Naming his final campaign swing in the U.S. Senate race after a long-gone cut-rate airline, Gov. Charlie Crist will travel the state by bus this weekend on the People’s Express.

The bus tour will begin with pancakes in Panama City and end up near his hometown in St. Pete Beach. In between he will travel from Pensacola to Tallahassee to Jacksonville to Miami to Fort Myers. The independent candidate, who is facing GOP candidate Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek,  plans to end Saturday and begin Sunday in West Palm Beach with a Sunday stop also planned in Riviera Beach. Details of his Saturday and Sunday stops were not available.

A South Florida basketball superstar wrote a fundraising letter for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek today, asking for 37 online donors to contribute whatever they can afford to help the Miami congressman during the last stretch of the campaign.

Miami Heat player Dwyane Wade’s letter appeared on kendrickmeek.com this afternoon.

“Kendrick needs all of us in the game to swish the buzzer beater,” Wade wrote.

Meek continues to trail Republican Marco Rubio and independent Gov. Charlie Crist in the polls.

Here’s what Wade wrote: (more…)

DEERFIELD BEACH— U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, Democrat-District 22, received the endorsement Wednesday of the Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare, an organization that claims 3 million members nationwide and thousands in Florida.
The president of the group, Barbara Kennelly,a former Democratic Congresswoman from Connecticut, delivered the endorsement personally at an assisted living facility in Deerfield Beach, Emeritus at Deer Park.
“Ron Klein understands that we are a wonderfully capitalist country but we need these kinds of programs,” Kennelly said of Social Security and Medicare. “We are endorsing Ron Klein.”
Kennelly said Klein’s opponent, GOP challenger Allen West, has spoken of privatizing Social Security .
“He’s for people 55 and under investing their own money that would normally go into Social Security and that is the beginning of the end for Social Security,” she said.
 West has said that Social Secuirty must first be put on more solid footing, in particular not allowing the government to dip into Social Security to fund other government business.

 “The critical aspect of Social Security is that we must restore it to the independent trust fund account,” West’s campaign website says . “Once the politicians moved it to the general operating account they used it for their pork barrel spending spree.”

  But the  Klein campaign has also produced various quotes from the campaign trail where West called for eventually allowing private accounts.    
 “People are out there talking about the idea of personal accounts privatizing Social Security and putting the money in Wall Street accounts,” Klein told a group of about a dozen elderly residents Wednesday. “That’s like taking Social Security and blowing it up, destroying it. I am totally, completely and adamantly against that.”
Klein said many people who had investments in the stock market had lost as much as 50 percent of their money in recent years and they could not count of those investments to meet their needs as they aged.
Klein said for about one third of people receiving Social Security it is their only means of support.
“I’m going to fight and do what I can to see that Social Security stays in place, as is,” he said.
Klein also spoke out against Medicare vouchers, that he said would give recipients a faxed amount that they could spend in any one year.
“The people who want to create vouchers are doing this on behalf of insurance companies,” he said.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink made two stops in St. Lucie County this afternoon. She spoke to about 60 supporters on Avenue D in Fort Pierce and to about 100 people at Tradition Town Hall in Port St. Lucie.

Among the Sink supporters in Port St. Lucie was Okeechobee County Sheriff Paul May, a Republican. Sink said May was “very brave” to buck his party and support her.

Sink’s stump speech included a description of her proposed tax breaks for small businesses. She also underscored her support for public schools and took swipes at Rick Scott’s business record.

Dan Gelber’s campaign continues to denounce mailers being sent out to the South Florida Jewish community, saying that Gelber is “toxic to Jewish education.”

Gelber’s campaign director, Christian Ulvert, called the attacks from the Committee for Florida’s Education, Inc. “disgusting.” Gelber, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, is a Jewish state senator from Miami Beach.

“There is no doubt in anybody’s minds these are mailers closely aligned with Pam Bondi and her campaign,” Ulvert said.

A spokeswoman for Bondi, the Tampa-area Republican prosecutor running against Gelber for attorney general, said her campaign had nothing to do with the mailers.

(more…)

In an example of the “heartfelt change of views” Charlie Crist described in Tuesday night’s Senate debate, the Republican-turned-independent governor who once promoted Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy is up with a new ad saying he’s the only Senate candidate who can prevent Florida from “extremism….the road Sarah Palin, the tea party and Marco Rubio want to take us down.”

The ad illustrates another big change for Crist. Once the slam-dunk Republican favorite for the Senate seat, the no-party Crist is now compelled to close his ad by reminding voters: “Don’t forget to find me on line 9 on your ballot,” where he’s listed between Rick Tyler and Lewis Jerome Armstrong.

(more…)

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek will be out and about this Halloween, campaigning for 24 hours straight just a couple days before Election Day.

His camp will kick-off the tour at 9 p.m. Sunday with college Democrats at the University of South Florida Marshall Student Center in Tampa, followed by a visit to Mema’s Alaskan Tacos in Tampa.

Meek will then head east to Orlando, and then visit Jacksonville and Gainesville. The tour will also stop in Volusia, St. Johns, Lake, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, according to a campaign press release.

The Miami congressman is also scheduled to attend several Get Out the Vote rallies on Monday, including an event at the West Palm Beach Library on Clematis Street.

Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), Rep. Mack Bernard (D-West Palm Beach) and Rep. Mark Pafford (D-West Palm Beach) are expected to attend.

Meek will also visit rallies in Pompano Beach and Miami.

If lines get much long at early voting locations, Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher said today she will post wait times on her web site.

The lines have been lengthening since early voting began Oct. 18. On Tuesday, people waited more than an hour to vote at Delray Beach City Hall, she said. Lines were also lengthy at the two busiest locations — county libraries on Hagen Ranch Road west of Boynton Beach and the one west of Boca Raton.

“It means people are engaging,” she said of the growing numbers who are turning out to vote.

(more…)

District 22 GOP Congressional candidate Allen West continued his last minute television blitz against incumbent Democrat Ron Klein leading up to Tuesday’s balloting, debuting yet another ad Wednesday entitled “All of This.”
“Our government’s debt limit is nearly $14 Trillion,” says West. “The $787 Billion stimulus failed to produce jobs. The government takeover of healthcare is doomed to fail.”
The ad proceeds as images appear of newspaper headlines about job losses. Additional images of viles of prescription drugs also appear. Then a photo of Klein appears with the words “massive government spending” beneath him.

“And Incumbent Ron Klein voted for all of this,” West continues.”If you want more of the same, you can vote for Ron Klein. Or you can join our cause to unleash the power and spirit of the American people, restoring honor, integrity and character to Congress.”
It was the second time in two days West introduced a new ad. The Klein/West race is believed to be the most heavily financed Congressional race in the nation.

Folks throughout the small towns GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott is visiting on a week-long sweep of the state before election day are lining up to have their picture taken with the celebrity.

Not Scott. His mother, Esther, who’s visage has become familiar to Floridians on a television ad in which she assures voters that her son is a good boy.

Scott’s usual introduction of his mother runs along the lines of what he told a crowd at a pancake breakfast at his first stop this morning in Okeechobee.

“On those commercials she seems really nice,” Scott said. “She wasn’t. There was a reason I joined the military so young.”

“I’m just really glad my mom didn’t get on the ballot. I don’t think I’d win. I think she’d win,” Scott joked with the crowd at his next stop in Lake Placid.

Esther Scott is greeted wherever she goes, including at a pit stop on the turnpike where travelers posed for pictures with the 82-year-old great-grandmother.

Scott’s schedule today includes visits to Lakeland and Daytona Beach, where he’ll be joined by U.S. Sen. John Thune, the Republican who defeated former Sen. Tom Daschle and who’s rumored to be a possible presidential candidate in 2012. Scott will also be fundraising in Miami this evening.

Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Alex Sink will attend early vote rallies in Ft. Myers, Ft. Pierce, Port St. Lucie and Orlando.

Former Miami Mayor Joe Carollo says he’s backing Alex Sink for governor and will campaign for her in the race’s final days. Carollo, a Republican known as “Crazy Joe,” says Sink is the first Democrat he has supported.

“I have been a registered Republican since I was 21 years old and have never crossed party lines to endorse a Democrat, but this election isn’t  about a party or partisanship,” Carollo writes in a letter supporting Sink. “It is about who has the integrity and  real leadership to get our Florida economy back on track and restore  Floridians’ faith in government.”

It didn’t take long for Republican Rick Scott’s campaign to make political hay out of Democrat Alex Sink’s “Debate-gate” gaffe at Monday night’s debate.

His campaign released a new radio ad poking fun at Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, for breaking the rules by taking a message from campaign aide Brian May, an insurance industry lobbyist who left his business to work for Sink.

Listen to Scott’s “She Cheated” ad.

Here’s part of the transcript:

“Did you see Alex Sink get caught cheating?”

“You mean when CNN caught her breaking the debate rules and getting a note from her coach?”

“Cheating. Hilarious.”

“Here’s what’s not funny. Alex Sink’s debate coach…is a lobbyist.”

“The same guy who gave her the note in the debate?”

“Yep. He’s a lobbyist for the insurance industry that Sink is supposed to be regulating.”

Alex Sink appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball today to defend herself about breaking the rules during last night’s CNN debate by reading a cell phone message during a break.

But Sink’s explanation conflicts with an audio analysis of what transpired between the Democratic candidate for governor and the makeup artist who handed her a cell phone with a text message. Sink read the message, violating the debate rules she and opponent Rick Scott agreed to barring any contact with staff during the hour-long debate.

“Well, what happened was, Chris, last night that the makeup artist held up her phone and said I just got this message, I don’t know who it’s from. I looked at it because, you know, I’m a mom. My instinct is my daughter’s in Europe. I don’t know who this mefor governor’s message is from. I glanced at it. I didn’t understand even what it was, and I just ignored it,” Sink told the news show host Chris Matthews.

But CNN’s John King, who moderated Monday’s debate in Tampa, gave a different account of what happened.

On CNN on Tuesday, King said that the network analyzed the video of what Scott’s camp is calling “iCheat.”
“We listened to the audio very carefully and the makeup artist when she approached Alex Sink said she had a message from the staff, and it was two sentences and advice saying that if that question comes up, say this, and be more aggressive when Rick Scott questions you and it is clear she looked down to read it and candidate Scott called her out, and it is clear that she cheated in the final exam,” King said.

Yet another conservative media outlet is reporting that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek could be pondering an early exit from the race against no-party Gov. Charlie Crist and Republican Marco Rubio, just two weeks after a Wall Street Journal story sparked similar talk in the campaign trail.

The Meek campaign denies that the Miami congressman is dropping out, and is once again blaming the Crist camp for spreading “an ugly lie … that has very deep consequences for voters who are trying to figure out what is going on.”

The most recent report by The Daily Caller, a political blog founded by conservative political correspondent and Fox News Channel contributor Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney, published today that a tipster claimed Meek and Crist had a “private talk” at an event in Hollywood on Monday to possibly join forces against Rubio, who leads both men in the polls.

Earlier this month, a Wall Street Journal writer quoted two anonymous Republican sources saying Meek would drop out and support Crist because the governor had a better chance of beating Rubio.

“This is a two-week old lie. It was a lie then. It’s a lie now,” said Meek’s communication director, Adam Sharon. (more…)