Had Charlie Crist remained a Republican, there’s little chance he would have stopped by today’s meeting of the Democratic-tilting Alliance of Delray Residential Associations, said group president Robert Schulbaum.
“You’re not going to mine very many Republican votes here,” Schulbaum said.
Which explains why GOP candidate Marco Rubio turned down an invitation, and Crist, who needs all the Democratic votes he can get in his independent run for the U.S. Senate, stopped by before heading to Orlando to prepare for tonight’s debate. Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek said he had a scheduling conflict, Schulbaum said.
As the solo Senate candidate on the dias, the governor hammered on an issue dear to the roughly 250 seniors who gathered at the South County Civic Center: Social Security. (more…)
Barack Obama carried congressional District 22 in 2008, but Republican congressional challenger Allen West’s latest ad is banking on significant Obama fatigue in the swing district. With Obama coming to Alonzo Mourning’s house in Coral Gables next week to raise money for Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, West’s ad portrays Klein and Obama as out of touch with economic miseries.
“You and Ron Klein should leave that closed-door, high-roller fund-raiser and drive by our shuttered businesses and foreclosed homes,” says West. “I’ll go anywhere you wish to debate your failed big government policies.”
Palin: no West meeting
Klein’s camp, meanwhile, notes that Sarah Palin — who endorsed West in March — will be at The Breakers in Palm Beach tonight for what our Jose Lambiet reports is a private dinner hosted by Newsmax owner Chris Ruddy.
West won’t be there, campaign manager Josh Grodin said. While Klein and Dems regularly play up Palin’s endorsement of West, Grodin said West didn’t know Palin was coming to town, has never met her and didn’t know he was being endorsed by her until it showed up on her Facebook page.
West and Klein are among the candidates expected at a League of Women Voters forum at Temple Torah at 8600 Jog Road west of Boynton Beach tonight beginning at 7 p.m.
Gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink speaks to business leaders on March 17, 2010, in downtown West Palm Beach during a Business Development Board meeting. Staff photo by Damon Higgins/The Palm Beach Post.
Alex Sink, the Democratic nominee for governor and current state Chief Financial Officer, will speak live tomorrow with The Palm Beach Post editorial board.
Watch it live here at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday on PalmBeachPost.com
Got a question for her? Submit your suggestions in the comment section below.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Michael McAuliffe and Martin County Sheriff Robert Crowder are among the law enforcement types who weigh in against Rick Scott and in favor of Alex Sink.
“Take it from prosecutors who know: Rick Scott just can’t be trusted,” McAuliffe says in a new TV ad paid for by the Florida Democratic Party.
“Rick Scott couldn’t be trusted as CEO, and Florida can’t trust Rick Scott as governor,” the Republican Crowder says in another spot. (more…)
Kendrick Meek has become very familiar with airport terminals and hangars over his last few weeks of campaigning throughout the state.
The Democrat met with airline maintenance workers in Orlando and Tampa a couple weeks ago, and today chatted with American Airlines technicians at Miami International Airport about the lack of jobs due to cheaper labor overseas.
“If U.S. companies continue to go to China, where companies pay workers $16 a day, these guys jobs are in jeopardy and it could jeopardize air safety,” Meek said as he walked off a Boeing 767 that was undergoing engine repairs.
During his visit at MIA, Meek also told workers he was the only candidate that could be a voice for the working class in Washington D.C., a message he has delivered to labor unions , teachers and service workers throughout Florida over the past few weeks.
After today’s in Miami, Meek will head to Orlando on Wednesday for a senatorial debate with Republican Marco Rubio and no-party Gov. Charlie Crist.
Bush lost a close 1994 challenge to Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles. Crist, then a Republican state Senator, chaired hearings in 1995 that helped reveal that the Chiles campaign had authorized thousands of phone calls from phony groups to seniors claiming that Bush opposed Social Security and Medicare.
“Charlie Crist used to believe that scaring seniors to win votes was wrong. I know this first-hand because in 1995 he spoke out forcefully in my defense when the very same kind of false attacks were made against me,” Bush said in a statement today.
Crist campaign spokesman Danny Kanner said there’s an important difference between the Chiles attacks of 1994 and Crist’s new ad.
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink’s office is holding a workshop in Panama City tomorrow for Floridians wanting help getting their BP claims paid.
Sink’s staff will be at the Marina Civic Center from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will meet with individuals and business owners trying to get speedier payments – or any at all – from BP claims czar Ken Feinberg, in charge of doling out the $20 billion Gulf Coast Claims Facility fund.
Sink, the Democrat candidate for governor, has been critical of Feinberg’s claims process and took credit yesterday after the Boston lawyer decided to expand eligibility for claims payments to businesses located far away from where oil washed up on the beach.
She’s also launched a website where Floridians can share their horror tales about navigating the claims process.
Indie Senate candidate Charlie Crist’s new 30-second ad says Republican frontrunner Marco Rubio’s Social Security plan calls for seniors to “work longer, get by on less.” Then, although Rubio has never held federal office, the ad reaches for some anti-Washington mojo by saying: “That’s Washington for you — balance the budget on the backs of seniors.”
Rubio, eyeing Social Security’s long-term solvency problems, has said Congress should explore raising the retirement age and changing the way benefits are indexed for inflation — but he says any changes should not apply to current beneficiaries or anyone who’s now 55 and older.
During a campaign stop in West Palm Beach this morning, Alex Sink’s running mate blasted Rick Scott’s character and integrity.
In remarks to two dozen supporters of Sink, Rod Smith stressed the $1.7 billion in fines hospital company Columbia/HCA paid for fraud committed during Scott’s tenure. Smith also said he read the deposition in which Scott took the Fifth Amendment 75 times.
“You can’t run for governor and tell the people of this state to ignore that,” Smith said.
UPDATE: Alex Sink’s campaign spokeswoman Kyra Jennings calls Scott’s ad a lie.
“This is just one more deceptive ad from Rick Scott. The facts are that this is a company Alex Sink flat-out did not run and even the lawyer from the suit mentioned in Scott’s ad said today that Alex Sink was not involved in any way. But obviously Rick Scott has a very hard time telling the truth and can’t be trusted,” Jennings said in an e-mail.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott released a new attack ad today slamming Democrat opponent Alex Sink for $6.75 million in fines her former bank was forced to pay the federal government for selling risky investments, mostly to seniors.
NationsBank and its securities division was also forced to repay $30 million to customers duped into buying the investments. Sink was head of NationsBank’s Florida operations.
Former Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole has gone to work for Juno Beach-based Florida Power & Light.
The marine biologist is the vice president of the power company’s government affairs department, according to an internal FPL memo.
Sole, appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist shortly after he took office four years ago, stepped down as DEP chief this summer in the midst of overseeing the state’s response to the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
Longtime legislative staffer Kathy Mears, whose most recent government post was as Gov. Charlie Crist’s liaison with the legislature, has gone to work for her former boss Daniel Webster’s campaign for Congress.
Webster, a former House Speaker who also served as Senate Majority Leader before leaving office due to term limits two years ago, is running against U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the outspoken Orlando Democrat who consistently gets into trouble for his controversial remarks.
“Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly,” was Grayson’s analysis of GOP opposition to Democrats’ health care reforms in Sept. 2009 and likened the current health care system to a holocaust. Grayson also suggested that former VP Dick Cheney was a vampire.
More recently, Grayson got into hot water for running a campaign attack ad calling Webster “Taliban Dan” in which he uses a video clip of Webster saying wives should submit to their husbands and accusing accusing the Christian conservative of wanting to “impose his radical fundamentalism on us.”
Webster was actually instructing husbands not to rely solely on the Bible’s instructions for wives to submit but to pray for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church.
Republican Senate nominee Marco Rubio embarks on an 11-city bus tour later this week that will take the frontrunner and his family from Wednesday night’s debate in Orlando to Jacksonville and back down the state to his hometown of West Miami.
When Democratic Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson expressed his support for Democratic Senate nominee Kendrick Meek in early September, he said he might reconsider around Oct. 1 and back independent Charlie Crist if Meek continued to be a distant third in the polls and appeared unable to defeat Republican frontrunner Marco Rubio.
Oct. 1 came last week with Meek continuing to trail Rubio and Crist. Aaronson made no announcement. This morning, Aaronson said he’ll decide next week — before the Oct. 18 beginning of early voting.
“I’ll make my decision between the 11th and the 15th. I’m looking at the polls very closely,” Aaronson said.
Aaronson and Crist are both expected at Wednesday’s Alliance of Delray Residential Associations meeting, but Aaronson said no one-on-one meeting with Crist is planned.
How close a business is to where oil actually washed up on the beach won’t be a factor in determining whether it is eligible to be paid for lost revenues, BP claims czar Ken Feinberg has decided.
Today, Kenneth Feinberg, Administrator of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, announced that geographic proximity to the BP oil spill would not prevent a legitimate individual or business claim from being processed.
“I have heard from elected officials in Florida, including Governor Crist, Attorney General McCollum, CFO Sink and others, about their concerns regarding Floridians’ proximity to the spill and how, regardless of distance, there has been economic impact beyond the areas closest to the spill. After listening to these concerns, I have concluded that a geographic test to determine eligibility regarding economic harm due to the oil spill is unwarranted,” Feinberg said in the statement.
Claimants must “rove damages resulting from the spill itself and not other causes, but “physical proximity from the spill will not, in and of itself, bar the processing of legitimate claims,” he said.
His reversal on proximity is a victory for Florida hotel and restaurant owners, who hired a legal dream team to fight Feinberg and help businesses get their claims paid.
The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association and state elected officials objected to Feinberg’s inclusion of proximity as a factor in paying claims. They said tourists stayed away from the Sunshine State because they had the perception that oil had contaminated areas of Florida even where it hadn’t.
U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Miramar, declined an invitation last week from Tea Party Fort Lauderdale to debate longshot Republican challenger Bernard Sansaricq. His initial response to the group is described in this week’s Politics column (second item).
The tea party group then said it didn’t need to host the event and asked Hastings and Sansaricq to suggest other sponsors. Hastings replied Sunday that he doesn’t see any need to “subject myself to any Tea Party shenanigans.”
“For the last 234 years, Americans have built here in this country the most successful society in all of human history,” Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio says. “We should not be embarrassed to say that America is not just unique, it’s quite frankly better than anything else that has ever existed in the history of mankind.”
But Rubio says American exceptionalism is threatened by Democratic big-government policies, so the Nov. 2 election isn’t merely about selecting a junior Senator, it’s “a referendum on our identity.”
The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association will hold the first of 19 workshops on Monday in Pensacola for business owners struggling to get their claims paid by BP claims czar Ken Feinberg.
The association hired a legal dream team to negotiate with Feinberg, who balked at paying for damages to businesses not directly impacted by oil-stained beaches caused by the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
The lawyers will be at the Hilton Pensacola Gulf Front hotel from 10 a.m. to noon C.T. and will give an overview of the claims process and help assist business owners to figure out whether they are eligible for payments and, if so, how much. They’ll also provide individual assistance.
The FRLA recently won a concession – of sorts – from Feinberg. He said he’d take into consideration tourists’ perception that Florida’s beaches were tar-infested, even when they were not, and the overall damage to Florida’s tourism brand caused by the oil spill.
The PAC for the nation’s largest veterans group has has endorsed Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Klein over Republican challenger and war veteran Allen West.
“This endorsement is based on your strong support for veterans, national security & defense, and military personnel issues,” says a letter to Klein from Veterans of Foreign Wars PAC Director Salvatore Capirchio.
West
The VFW represents more than 2.1 million vets. Its PAC mainly endorses incumbents from both parties and in 2008 gave 55 percent of its contributions to Democrats and 45 percent to Republicans.
Klein also was endorsed this week by Veterans and Military Families for Progress.
West has been endorsed by Veterans for Freedom, Combat Veterans for Congress, Iraq Vetrans for Freedom and the National Vietnam & Gulf War Veterans Committee.
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