WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, who’ll deliver the keynote speech later today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, just got through doing interviews with Geraldo Rivera and various bloggers and radio stations, then ran into singer Pat Boone. Boone received a lifetime achievement award at the conference. The crooner is wearing a “Kill The Death Tax” button and a lapel pin showing the flags of the U.S. and Israel.

Freshman U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, told a town hall crowd last month that he and the 86 other Republican freshmen in the House have “huge leverage” over GOP leaders.

The House GOP’s proposal for $100 billion in spending cuts bears him out, notes Politico.com in an article on the House “rookie rebellion” that prominently features West.

West will be keynoting tonight’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. Watch palmbeachpost.com for coverage….

Gov. Rick Scott will headline the Martin County GOP’s annual Lincoln Day dinner on March 5 at the Marriott on Hutchinson Island. Tickets are $125 a piece and go on sale Monday at the Martin County GOP website.

As promised by Senate President Mike Haridopolos yesterday, GOP lawmakers will get a visit from one of the likely 2012 presidential contenders – former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty – next week.

Tea party darling Pawlenty, slated to speak Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., will be the first of the presidential candidates to come to what the Merritt Island Republican, who’s running statewide for U.S. Senate, calls ground-zero in the 2012 race.

“T-Paw,” as he calls himself on his Website, has set up a political committee called “Freedom First” backing conservative candidates like himself, including Florida Gov. Rick Scott and new U.S. Reps. Daniel Webster and Steve Southerland.

Perhaps Haridopolos, hoping to unseat incumbent Democrat U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in what may be a crowded field, will get his endorsement (although Haridopolos was a Mike Huckabee supporter three years ago.) Haridopolos happily labels himself Florida’s most conservative senate president ever.

Haridopolos said that Florida is “the most important state in the presidential election” and will also likely determine who the next GOP nominee is.

“I think it will be beneficial for Florida to find out some of the ideas because we face a multitude of problems in the state and if a person is seeking the presidency I think they should come to Florida and let us know what they think,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, told reporters yesterday.

Voters in Boca Raton deserve a choice for mayor, Linda Spurling Gruneisen says. So when no one filed to challenge incumbent Susan Whelchel, Gruneisen decided to file papers Thursday about six hours before the deadline for candidates to qualify for the March 8 ballot.

“The main reason I’m running is because I woke up the other day and saw that no one was running for mayor,” Gruneisen said this morning. “I wanted to be sure that the people of Boca Raton have a choice.”

The mayor’s race will be the only one on the March 8 ballot. City council incumbents Susan Haynie and Michael Mullaugh didn’t draw any challengers and therefore were automatically reelected.

Conducting an election could cost the city about $100,000, City Clerk Susan Saxton said. The city’s last election, in 2009, cost about $94,000 to pay poll workers, print ballots, run required advertisements and move voting equipment to more than two dozen polling places.

The House Budget Committee drilled down into Gov. Rick Scott’s first-ever budget proposal this afternoon, prompting the same speculation lawmakers have expressed since Scott rolled it out on Monday.

Rep. Bill Proctor, a St. Augustine Republican and former head of Flagler College, questioned Scott’s backing $1.7 billion out of the state budget university tuition and fees and fees collected by clerks of courts. Scott’s accounting method allowed him to claim he cut $4.62 billion from the state budget; Scott’s budget director Jerry McDaniel conceded yesterday the real number was closer to $3 billion.

“We all know that those monies will be collected by state agencies and expended for state services,” Proctor lectured McDaniel. “If we follow that logic, we could perhaps pull some more state agencies off the books…and drop our budget down to possibly $60 billion. Am I correct?”

McDaniel agreed: “You could. You could pull more things off and not show it…In theory you could pull every state agency off the books and capture the costs in some other way and show a $0 state budget.”

Gov. Rick Scott is hosting another of his “social” dinners with lawmakers at the governor’s mansion this evening.

But this time, he’s limiting the supper club to two House members to avoid getting the legislators into trouble for possible violations of the state’s broad Sunshine laws.

Florida’s open government laws require meetings with more than two lawmakers to be open to the public but there’s been a lot of debate within the Scott’s press office and the press corps about what exactly “open” means.

Scott’s dinner with three powerful GOP senators earlier this week may have violated the Senate’s rules regarding the constitutional requirements of open meetings.

Scott, who held a similar power dinner with House members previously, would not have broken any laws – they apply to lawmakers, not the governor. He’s restricted to opening the meetings if they involve the Senate President or House Speaker.

But to err on the side of caution, Scott’s dinner tonight will be limited to just two House members. His spokesman Brian Hughes wouldn’t say who they are.

Tampa tea party activists Sharon Calvert and Karen Jaroch got a 30-minute meeting with Gov. Rick Scott today to tell him about their opposition to the state’s plans for high-speed rail.

The pair, who also attended a tea party rally in Eustis on Monday where Scott rolled out his first-ever budget, said the high-speed rail project is symbolic of wasteful government spending of taxpayers’ money. The federal government has given Florida $2.4 billion for the Tampa-Orlando project, which is expected to cost at least $2.6 billion.

That’s not included cost overruns typical of such projects, the tea partiers pointed out.

“We’ve got to stop the spending,” Calvert told reporters after the meeting with Scott.

As to Scott’s budget, in which he claims to have cut $4.62 billion but in reality reduced spending by closer to $3 billion, the tea partiers were relatively unimpressed.

“We don’t think it went far enough,” Janoch said.

STUART — Martin County Circuit Judge Kathleen Roberts today set bond at $450,000 for Manuel Pintado, the self-described “political activist” from Massachusetts accused of threatening state Rep. William Snyder, R-Stuart, because he disagrees with Snyder’s proposed immigration bill.

Wearing an orange Martin County Jail uniform and glasses, Pintado said “No, your honor,” when Roberts asked if he had any questions after she read the charges and bond amounts and said she had appointed a public defender to represent him. Pintado appeared via closed circuit TV from the jail while Roberts was at the county courthouse.

Pintado, a 47-year-old University of Massachusetts sociology student described by friends as passionate about immigrants’ rights, is accused of sending an e-mail to Snyder that said: “You better just stop that ridiculous law if you value you rand your familie’s lives (expletive).”

Snyder has proposed an Arizona-style immigration law for Florida.

Roberts set a $300,000 bond for the charge of making a written threat to kill or do bodily injury and a $150,000 bond for the charge of corruption by threat.

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The Capitol will soon be the stumping ground for GOP White House hopefuls, according to Senate President Mike Haridopolos, who called the Sunshine State “the most important state in the presidential election.”

Haridopolos, who’s seeking the national spotlight himself as a U.S. senate candidate, said the unidentified candidates have “reached out to me” and “I’ve reached out to them” and will announce soon who’s coming to Tallahassee.

“I think it will be beneficial for Florida to find out some of the ideas because we face a multitude of problems in the state and if a person is seeking the presidency I think they should come to Florida and let us know what they think,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, told reporters at his weekly Q-and-A this morning.

UPDATE: Gov. Rick Scott and the Senate prez disagree on whether Florida should move back the presidential primary from January to March.

Here’s what Scott said on the issue today:

“My belief is I don’t want to lose any of the delegates, so I want to have it as early as we can. But I don’t want to lose any of the delegates,” Scott told reporters. That sort of sounds like he doesn’t want to anger national GOP leaders who will punish the state by slashing its number of delegates if the primaries aren’t later.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos says he’s “comfortable with where we’re at right now” regarding Florida’s early primaries that caused partisan turmoil three years ago.

“I didn’t see it as chaos. I thought it was great. I thought that Florida was a player,” said the Merritt Island Republican who’s seeking a spot on the national stage in the U.S. Senate. “Florida influenced in a huge way not just who won the presidency but who the nominee was. I think that was a good thing.”

Sen. Arthenia Joyner, a Democrat from Tampa, filed a bill this week that would push back Florida’s presidential primary until March after Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith asked his GOP counterpart Dave Bitner to support the move.

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Manuel Pintado, a 47-year-old University of Massachusetts sociology student described by friends as passionate about immigrants’ rights, was taken into custody by Martin County sheriff’s deputies today and will appear before a judge Thursday on charges he threatened the life of state Rep. William Snyder, R-Stuart.

Pintado was arrested in Massachusetts on Jan. 31, then released on his own recognizance by a Massachusetts judge on Monday with orders to fly to Florida to face charges. The Martin County Sheriff’s Office said two deputies arrested Pintado “without incident” this morning at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers.

On Jan. 8 — shortly after the assassination attempt on U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., in which six others were killed — Snyder received an unsigned e-mail that said: “You better just stop that ridiculous law if you value you rand your familie’s lives (expletive).”

Snyder has proposed a law cracking down on illegal immigration in Florida similar to a controversial measure in Arizona.

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Sharp-elbowed Boca Raton conservative operative Jack Furnari has resigned from the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee to join with Business Political Action Committee Chairman John R. Smith in launching a for-profit conservative news website called BizPacReview.com.

Smith is also stepping down from his non-voting role on the county GOP’s board of directors.

The pair say they are severing their formal GOP ties so they’ll have the editorial independence to criticize Republicans who fall short of their conservative standards.

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Confirming his rock star status in the conservative movement, freshman U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, will deliver the closing address Saturday at this year’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

West — whose picture is featured on CPAC’s Web site in a montage with Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — is taking a prime slot originally offered to Sarah Palin, who cited a scheduling conflict in passing up the conference.

West, who spoke at last year’s CPAC, tweeted the news of his 2011 speaking role this morning: “I’ve been asked today to have the honor of giving the closing keynote address at CPAC Saturday. I’m humbled.”

Former state House member and ex-Palm Beach County Commissioner Addie Greene is trying to pull a John Quincy Adams.

Adams, the nation’s sixth president, lost his reelection bid in 1828. He then took a few steps down the political ladder and served in the House of Representatives from 1831 to 1848.

Greene, who served on the Mangonia Park town council in the late 1980s and early 1990s, went on to the state House from 1992 to 2000, then served on the county commission from 2000 to 2009, when she cited health concerns and retired.

Now Greene wants to go from multibillion-dollar county budgets and megadeals like luring The Scripps Research Institute to a seat on the Mangonia Park town council, where pressing issues include complaints about smoke from a popular barbecue stand.

The Mangonia Park race between Greene and council incumbent Mark Trueblood was one of several set Tuesday when most of Palm Beach County’s cities and towns finalized their ballots for the March 8 municipal elections.

Click here for a wrap-up story.

Click here for an up-to-date list of municipal candidates.

Former Gov. Charlie Crist and former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink will lead a bipartisan rally today to support a constitutional ban on offshore drilling today.

Crist, a Republican-turned-independent, and Sink, a Democrat, will appear with lawmakers and others at an event at 12:30 on the steps of the Old Capitol in Tallahassee.

Crist called lawmakers in for a special session last year to pass a similar amendment to put on the November 2010 ballot, but they snubbed him. The legislature met briefly and adjourned without doing anything after Crist abandoned the GOP and became an independent to avoid a Republican primary in the U.S. Senate race, which he eventually lost to Marco Rubio.

Before leaving office in January, Sink struggled to get BP claims czar Ken Feinberg to improve his claims process after tens of thousands of Panhandle residents, and hundreds of Floridians throughout the state, complained about problems with his Gulf Coast Claims Facility.

That system remains troubled as Feinberg is set to begin making final payments to more than 500,000 applicants for damages caused by the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

Yesterday, senators discussed creating a state system for victims of BP’s massive oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico to expedite the claims system.

Next Friday, Feinberg will appear before a House committee at the behest of House Speaker Dean Cannon. Hundreds of Panhandle officials and residents are expected to show up. Complaints about Feinberg’s payments from the $20 billion fund set up by BP include delays, an inability to find out where claims are in the process, and inconsistencies in who gets paid and how much.

A federal judge recently ruled that Feinberg is not independent of BP, as he contends, and ordered him to quit saying that he is.

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is so fed up with Feinberg’s erratic claims system that on Monday he asked a federal judge to take it over “to facilitate the timely and just processing of claims.”

BP claims czar Ken Feinberg will appear before the House Economic Affairs Committee on Feb. 18, his office confirmed to committee chairwoman Dorothy Hukill.

Hukill, R-Port Orange, and other lawmakers want Feinberg to explain why tens of thousands of Florida business owners, most of them in the Panhandle, are having so much trouble having their claims paid after the massive oil spill last spring created an economic catastrophe in the region.

Feinberg, in charge of the $20 billion Gulf Coast Claims Facility, has been the target of attack by numerous lawyer, lawmakers, Florida residents, and, most recently, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who’s demanding a White House investigation into Feinberg’s process.

Among the complaints: applicants are paid a fraction of what they believe they should receive, with no explanation; individuals are unable to speak with anyone directly about the details of their claims or where they are in the process; a seemingly willy-nilly approach to payment of claims that are nearly identical.

Feinberg insists he’s doing the best he can with the more than half million claims he’s received, and he continues to promise to improve his system.

The public can comment on Feinberg’s draft protocols, released last week, for handling interim and final payments by e-mailing: MethodologyComments@gccf-claims.com.

The methodology for determining eligibility and payment can be viewed here.

Gov. Rick Scott, a few of his closest aides and three of the Senate’s most powerful lawmakers broke bread at the governor’s mansion last night, covering a variety of topics ranging from Ironman triathlons to Scott’s $65 billion budget. The dinner took place just a few hours after Scott released his first-ever budget to the public earlier in the day.

But questions about whether the dinner violated the spirit of Florida’s open government laws – if not the laws themselves – have Scott’s office reconsidering future soirees.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander and Senate Majority Leader Andy Gardiner and Sen. Don Gaetz – two probable future senate presidents – also discussed major league baseball and the use of psychotropic drugs on children at the hour-long dinner with Scott, his wife Ann, and Scott’s chief of staff Mike Prendergast, special advisor Mary Ann “Mac” Carter, special counsel Hayden Dempsey and communications director Brian Burgess. Two reporters also attended at Scott’s invitation.

The governor and Senate trio discussed in broad terms his request that lawmakers give him $800 million to attract new businesses to the state and help existing ones expand. Scott said he was told that the current process – requiring approval from a legislative committee before the economic development grants or tax credits can be spent – is too lengthy and has caused the state to lose some deals because other states swooped in.

Whether the lawmakers’ chat was a violation of state Sunshine Laws is unclear.

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Newly elected U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, has the fourth-toughest 2012 reelection battle of all House members, according to early handicapping by Politico.

The publication mentions West’s recent dust-up with Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and the fact that West was introduced at his West Palm Beach office-opening by former Republican Rep. Mark Foley.

Tops on Politico‘s endangered list is freshman U.S. Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, who’s ensnared in ethics controversies.

Manuel Pintado, the 47-year-old University of Massachusetts sociology student and self-described “political activist” accused of threatening state Rep. William Snyder of Stuart, was released from custody by a Massachusetts judge Monday and ordered to present himself in court in Martin County by Friday morning to face charges.

Martin County Sheriff Robert Crowder, who sent detectives to Massachusetts to escort Pintado to Florida, said he’s “baffled” by the judge’s decision and has “grave concerns” that Pintado won’t show up. (Read Crowder’s entire statement after the jump.)

A lengthy article on Pintado in the University of Massachusetts Daily Collegian says friends and relatives describe Pintado as “an amiable pacifist with a passion for immigrants’ rights and state support of public higher education, though they said he suffers from anxiety and could sometimes become swept up in his own dedication and act excitedly.”

The article quotes Pintado’s son-in-law as saying Pintado did something dumb, “right up there with all the teenagers who call in fake bomb threats to their junior high schools and people like Sharron Angle who call for citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights, or Sarah Palin or people who show up to political rallies with nooses and shotguns, but he is not a killer, not even close.”

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