Florida Republican Party Chairman Dave Bitner told GOP leaders Wednesday that he was resigning because of health problems and urged them to elect Vice Chairman Lenny Curry of Jacksonville as his successor. 

Bitner, a former Charlotte County legislator and lobbyist, was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in April. Bitner has been using a mechanized wheelchair to get around.

 But in an afternoon conference call with members of the state party’s executive committee, Bitner hinted that his condition was growing more challenging.

Bitner also mentioned his wife, Wendy, who had played a central role in his campaign for the party chairmanship last winter.

“Now is a time when Wendy and I look to God for his grace and wisdom, as we write my life’s next chapter,” Bitner told REC members, reading from his resignation letter.

Bitner said he would step down Fri., Sept. 23, toward the end of the Florida GOP’s Presidency 5 convention. Bitner called a special meeting of party leaders in Orlando that day to elect his successor, endorsing Curry for the post. Curry is a businessman and Duval County chairman.

  ”Through it all, our vice chairman has shown the leadership and tenacity that makes our party such an effective political force,” Bitner said.

Bitner’s resignation — and the likely transition — will provide a coda to the P-5 event, scheduled for Sept. 22-24 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. The conference will include a nationally televised presidential debate, slated to be broadcast Sept. 22 on Fox-News.

The chairman’s role is expected to prove demanding in coming months, with Presidency 5 marking the effective launch of the 2012 presidential campaign in Florida. Next summer, the state party also will gain more prominence, with officials helping host the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

Bitner’s move drew condolences and praise from leadership within both of the state’s major parties Wednesday.

“I have known Chairman Bitner for a number of years,” said Florida Democratic Chairman Rod Smith. “While we often differ on our views, I have always respected him as a talented andable spokesman on behalf of his party. Party allegiance aside, we all wish Bitner the very best in the difficult days ahead.”

 Senate Majority Leader Andy Gardiner, R-Orlando, also said Bitner’s short reign at the party’s helm will endure.

“During the 15 years or so I’ve known Dave, he’s been an upbeat, loyal friend and leader,” Gardiner said. “He maintained those characteristics through his struggles with ALS while RPOF Chair. Following his resignation, he will leave an undeniable legacy in his professional path and as an example to us all.”

 

U.S. Rep. and tea party superstar Allen West, R-Plantation, says he’s reconsidering his membership in the Congressional Black Caucus because of disparaging remarks from caucus members toward the tea party movement.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., recently said the tea party “can go straight to hell.”

U.S. Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., said some in the tea party would like to see blacks “hanging on a tree.”

West, the only Republican in the Black Caucus, sent a letter to caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., calling on him “to both condemn these types of hate-filled comments, and to disassociate the Congressional Black Caucus from these types of remarks. Otherwise, I will have to seriously reconsider my membership within the organization.”

Adds West in his letter: “Congressman Carson’s desire to generally criticize a large grassroots group as racist is baseless and desperate. When individuals believe they are defeated in a political disagreement, they normally resort to race-baiting, which in my opinion is in itself racist.

“As a member of the CBC, I look forward to working with you to help end this practice. All of us, especially Congressman Carson, Congresswoman Waters and others who have engaged in racially-motivated rhetoric, should follow the example of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., not the example of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.”

Florida Republican Party Chairman Dave Bitner, who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease in April,  has scheduled a conference call this afternoon with members of the Republican Executive Committee to address his future as leader of the state party.

Bitner has been in a mechanized wheelchair for several months. What had been initially thought to be neuropathy, was revealed by tests to be  amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),  a disease of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal column.

Bitner was elected party chief in January. Coming up for the party is the Sept. 22-24 Presidency 5 event, featuring a Fox-News nationally televised presidential debate. Next year, the Republican National Convention will be held in Tampa.

With Hurricane Irene bypassing Florida, the Sunshine State was spared death and destruction — as well as the weirdness of dealing with the “federal family” for post-storm assistance.

Here’s the headline on a Tuesday news release from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that landed in the PostOnPolitics.com inbox:

“FEDERAL FAMILY CONTINUES TO SUPPORT RESPONSE AND RECOVERY EFFORTS IN COMMUNTIES [sic] IMPACTED BY IRENE”

According to the FEMA release, “Under the direction of President Obama and Secretary Janet Napolitano, the entire federal family is continuing to lean forward to support our state, tribal, territorial and local partners as they respond to and begin to recover from Hurricane Irene….”

Read the whole thing after the jump…

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PALM BEACH GARDENS — U.S. Rep. Allen West told a town hall audience today that Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann made “an incredible faux pas” when she said she is open to allowing drilling for oil and natural gas in the Everglades if it can be done safely.

“When I see her next week, I’ll straighten her out about that,” West said of the Minnesota congresswoman.

West is a member of the House Tea Party Caucus, which Bachmann chairs.

For complete coverage of West’s town hall, click here.

Once they were colleagues, he as owner and she as CEO of Solantic Walk-In Urgent Care, the multi-million-dollar clinic chain.

On Tuesday, Rick Scott and Karen Bowling, were brought together again, this time as a pair of public officials as the state’s Republican governor named his former top administrator to the board of trustees at Florida State College in Jacksonville.

Bowling was CEO at Solantic for the duration of Scott’s ownership of the company, which he had tranferred to his wife, Ann, shortly before taking office in January. Scott sold the company earlier this summer for an undisclosed amount — but purported to be around $50 million — to its minority shareholder, private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe of New York.

Scott had poured about $28 million of his own money into Solantic’s early founding. He and Bowling grew the firm to 32 clinics statewide, including two in Palm Beach County.

But Scott’s ownership also drew heat when his health care policies intersected with Solantic’s business model. He pushed — but later hit pause — on a plan to require drug-testing for state employees, while also signing into law a Medicaid overhaul that would put almost 3 million low-income, elderly and disabled Floridians into managed care.

The chairman of the Florida Government Efficiency Task Force set an “ambitious goal” at the panel’s first meeting Tuesday – $3 billion in savings over four years.

Abraham Uccello, appointed by Gov. Rick Scott to head the 15-member task force, asked the panelists for ideas exhibiting “the most creativity, the most productivity, the most possibility” to “change the culture” of government.

Uccello said he and Scott “talked about numbers” but the governor did not insist on the $3 billion target.

Kicking off on an extremely efficient note, Uccello gave the task force members less than a week to come up with ways to save the state big bucks. He wants their suggestions by Monday, two weeks before they meet again on Sept. 19. Before the brief meeting ended, the panel tapped Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Wellington, to serve as as vice-chairwoman.

After the meeting, which lasted less than half an hour in a virtually empty room in the Capitol, Uccello acknowledged $3 billion is a lofty goal.

“It’s one of those things where we reach high and we probably will not achieve a number like that but at least it gets everyone thinking,” said Uccello, head of Sarasota-based Harvester Consulting.

The task force has met once before, in 2007, after being created as part of a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2006. The governor, Senate president and House speaker each appoint five members.

State law requires the task force to meet every four years and submit its recommendations to the governor, the legislative budget commission and the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Efficiency fiends may have a difficult time, however, ferreting out what the last commission called for – or if the legislature or Gov. Charlie Crist implemented any suggestions.

The penny-saving proposals will include ways to reduce duplicative government functions, Uccello said, and a “cultural change” in government “where folks feel incentivized and part of a program to help build efficient government.

“I don’t think that’s part of the culture across the board today. It would be nice to see some of that implemented.”

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Forget the drilling/conservation or church/state debates fueled by Republican presidential hopeful and recent Florida barnstormer Michele Bachmann. Her use of Elvis Presley‘s Promised Land as intro music at her rallies leaves PostOnPolitics.com wondering which version is better: Presley’s 1974 rendition or the original 1965 release by Chuck Berry.

You be the judge. And note the pronunciation of “a la carte” in Berry’s original and Presley’s cover.

Former state House Speaker Larry Cretul of Ocala has endorsed Republican Adam Hasner‘s U.S. Senate bid.

Cretul joins former Speaker Allen Bense in backing Hasner, who faces former appointed Sen. George LeMieux and businessmen Craig Miller and Mike McCalister in the GOP primary to challenge Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.

Says Cretul: “I’m endorsing Adam because he is the Republican Party’s best choice to defeat Senator Nelson and take a mainstream conservative message to Washington. During his service in the Florida House Adam built an impressive record and was a forceful spokesman for the principles and ideas of our Party – even when it wasn’t popular. Adam is a fighter and the only candidate in the race with a consistent, limited-government record that voters can trust to be a reliable alternative to the agenda we see coming out of Washington today.”

Hasner, a former state House Majority Leader, has also snagged endorsements from current Majority Leader Carlos Lopez-Cantera of Miami, state Reps. Dennis Baxley and Scott Plakon and state Sens. Alan Hays and Anitere Flores.

MIAMI — If you’re a Republican seeking the presidency or statewide office, you haven’t really campaigned in Florida until you’ve done the Little Havana tour and partaken of some Castro-bashing and a cortadito at Versailles.

Michele Bachmann‘s initiation came today.

Read about it here.

One of Gov. Rick Scott’s closest advisors wanted to keep the newly-elected governor out of meetings about the state budget, a recently released batch of e-mails from Scott’s transition team revealed.

Mary Anne Carter – one of Scott’s two key players in his transition – tried to keep Scott out of preliminary meeting with the Office of Policy and Budget staff in an attempt to insulate him.

Donna Arduin, a long-time budget director for several governors including Jeb Bush, served as Scott’s budget advisor during his campaign and transition. She was trying to set up a meeting with Scott and the budget staff to give the newly elected governor and his aides an inside look at how the budget is crafted.

But writing to Arduin on Dec. 15, Carter (who calls Scott “RLS” in her messages) asked, “Are we not better off going through it without RLS and then determine what decisions need to be made? If there are going to be areas where policy and politics collide, I think it’s best to know ahead of time and not have him involved in initial conversations.”

Arduin didn’t back down.

“You will see how budget meetings go by observing tomorrow,” Arduin wrote. “The meetings are the governor meeting with his opb staff and making decisions.”

The politically-savvy Arduin then sent Susie Wiles, Scott’s campaign manager who later became his legislative liaison, a more pointed note: “Keep the governor out of his budget decisions because we don’t want him involved in political decisions….really??!!!”

“This process is beyond amazing to me,” Wiles, who has since left Scott’s administration, responded. “I am praying hard for Rick.”

NAPLES — Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann visited about 100 people at a cafe this morning and sparked a brief parking lot debate about energy and the environment when she told reporters she’s open to drilling in the Everglades if it can be shown it won’t cause “environmental degradation.”

As Bachmann spoke to reporters before boarding her campaign bus, a heckler shouted “No drilling in the Gulf, Michele” and another said “I support the EPA,” a reference to Bachmann’s frequent calls to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency. Some Bachmann supporters then chanted “Drill here, drill now.”

Asked about Everglades drilling, Bachmann said, “The problem has been the federal government has locked up America’s energy resources. We can access these resources responsibly. That’s what we need to do. And the determination needs to be made: can we responsibly access these resources? If we can’t do it without causing environmental degradation, then we can’t unlock them in certain regions. But if we can do this responsibly, we should.”

Bachmann is now headed to Miami’s Little Havana for some campaign appearances this afternoon.

LUTZ — Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann will extend her Florida campaign swing into Monday because Hurricane Irene scuttled plans to travel north, a Bachmann spokeswoman said today.

The Minnesota congresswoman attended a church service with about 3,000 people at Idlewild Baptist Church near Tampa this morning and plans to attend a rally in Sarasota this afternoon. She will be in South Florida Monday, spokeswoman Alice Stewart said, but specific events haven’t been announced.

Bachmann and her husband, Marcus, sat in the seventh row of the massive church auditorium and were introduced by Pastor Ken Whitten. After the service, she greeted church members, signed autographs and posed for snapshots in a lobby bigger than most shopping mall food courts.

“Florida’s an extremely important state for who will be chosen the next president of the United States, so we intend to be here meeting as many people as we can,” Bachmann told reporters in a brief appearance before boarding her campaign bus.

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Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann is making her first extended campaign swing through Florida this weekend.

Minnesota U.S. Rep. Bachmann, leader of the House Tea Party Caucus, won the recent Ames Straw Poll in Iowa but lost some of the spotlight to Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who launched his presidential campaign the same day in South Carolina.

Bachmann is expected at a Jacksonville Beach sub shop this afternoon. On Saturday, she’ll attend a morning town hall meeting in Poinciana in Central Florida, then give the keynote speech at a Florida Family Policy Council dinner in Orlando.

On Sunday, Bachmann plans to attend a service at Idlewild Baptist Church in Lutz, near Tampa, then appear at a Republican rally in Sarasota where more than 1,000 people are expected.

New Florida polls by Mason-Dixon Polling Research for Ron Sachs Communications show President Obama with a 56 percent disapproval rating and losing a hypothetical race to Republican Mitt Romney while Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson holds a big lead over his potential GOP rivals.

In the presidential poll released Thursday, 41 percent of Floridians approve of Obama’s job performance and 56 percent disapprove. Romney defeats Obama by a 51-to-43 percent margin. Given the poll’s 4 percent margin of error, Obama is in a virtual tie with Texas Gov. Rick Perry (Perry up 46-45) and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (Obama ahead 46-44).

Among Republicans, Romney leads with 28 percent, followed by Perry at 21 percent and Bachmann at 13 percent.

In the Senate race, Mason-Dixon finds 52 percent of Republicans undecided. Among announced candidates, former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton leads with 8 percent and former appointed Sen. George LeMieux has 7 percent. U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan, who isn’t running, leads the GOP pack at 14 percent with U.S. Rep. Allen West, who ruled out a run last week, garnering 11 percent.

In a hypothetical general election race, Nelson defeats LeMieux by a 49-to-34 percent margin and beats Hasner 45-to-34.

U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, is in Israel this week with a large congressional delegation, but The Jerusalem Post reports he stands out among his colleagues.

At Jerusalem’s David Citadel, “West walks through the lobby almost like a rock star – not the world’s most famous rock star, but one that enough people have seen, and heard, to attract attention.”

Here’s The Jerusalem Post account, with a lengthy Q-and-A with West about U.S.-Israel relations.

Two influential GOP operatives who served as chiefs of staff to former Gov. Jeb Bush are backing former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton in the 2012 Republican Senate primary.

The endorsements from Sally Bradshaw and Kathleen Shananahan were reported Thursday — the same day the Florida Commission on Ethics released a stipulation signed by Hasner last month admitting he failed to file a financial disclosure form within 60 days of the end of his state House term. The stipulation, which will be considered by the commission next month, calls for a public report on the matter as the commission doesn’t have the authority to levy fines against lawmakers.

The complaint against Hasner was filed in April by Palm Beach County Democratic activist Diana Demarest, who said she did so because “I didn’t like Adam Hasner when he was in the House. I certainly don’t want him in the Senate.”

Senate budget chief JD Alexander sat down with Gov. Rick Scott for an hour this afternoon at the Lake Wales lawmaker’s request. Alexander was there to pitch Scott on allowing USF Polytechnic to become a stand-alone university at its campus near his hometown.

Before leaving the Capitol, Alexander shared some thoughts about Scott’s ouster of corrections secretary Ed Buss, the $700 million cut to water management districts’ spending and issues coming up in the next legislative session.

Alexander said Buss’s resignation was called for, citing concerns about a possible conflict of interest with the woman Buss hired to oversee the privatization of the prison system’s health care.

And Alexander harshly criticized Buss’s business plan justifying the privatization of all prisons within an 18-county region encompassing the southern portion of the state, calling it “wholly inadequate.”

Alexander included the privatization of the Department of Corrections Region IV in the budget late during the legislative session that ended in May. He’s convinced it will save the state about $45 million.

Perhaps Buss was not as keen on privatization as others in Scott’s administration or the legislature had hoped, Alexander was asked.

“That’s probably true. Looking not from what he told me during session but what he did after session didn’t seem like he was really taking that seriously,” Alexander said.

Read what Alexander says about what the legislature may do about the water management districts, the shuttering of the prison health care watchdog and state contracts after the jump.
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Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Buss has resigned six months after going to work for Gov. Rick Scott.

Buss will be replaced by Ken Tucker, currently assistant director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Tucker will not be named as an interim secretary but will take on full leadership of the department, sources in Scott’s office said.

In a statement, Scott said “differences in philosophy and management styles arose which made the separation in the best interests of the state.”

Buss leaves as his agency undertakes the privatization of more than one-third of the state’s prisons in the region south of Ocala.

And his abrupt resignation comes after Scott’s office twice rebuked the former Indiana prisons chief over state contracts. Scott’s office this week forced out one of Buss’s hand-picked aides – Elizabeth “Betty” Gondles” after citing concerns about a possible conflict of interest with the privatization of the department’s health care services. Gondles’ $180,000, 10-month contract was terminated two months before it was scheduled to run out in October.

Last week, Scott’s office pulled requests for proposals from vendors bidding on health services for the state’s 100,000 inmates. Gondles, who oversaw the RFPs, is married to Jim Gondles, head of the American Correctional Association that accredits the facilities. The RFPs required that vendors pay for ACA membership and pay the organization to perform audits.

Also last week, Scott’s office canceled a contract Buss signed with MSNBC’s “Lockup” allowing a crew to film the reality show at a Panhandle prison. Scott’s aides said Buss hadn’t vetted the contract with them before signing it.

Florida officials are scheduled to put Manuel Valle to death on Sept. 6 at 6 p.m. after the Florida Supreme Court yesterday approved the state’s new lethal injection drug cocktail.

Valle has spent more than three decades on Death Row and has avoided execution through a series of appeals, reversals and other legal wranglings that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned his death penalty. In all, courts have re-sentenced Valle to death three times.

Valle, who was born in Cuba, was sentenced to death for the 1978 murder of a Coral Gables police officer, Louis Pena. Valle, now 61, shot Pena after the police officer pulled him over on a routine traffic stop.

The state’s highest court put the execution, originally ordered by Gov. Rick Scott for Aug. 2, back on track on Tuesday with an order approving the state’s new lethal injection drug protocol.

The court in July halted the execution and ordered a hearing on the Department of Corrections’ new drug – pentobarbital – substituted for a drug no longer manufactured and used as the first of the three-drug lethal injection “cocktail.”

On Tuesday, the court approved the new protocol, saying it did not pose a substantial risk of harm to the inmate. Valle’s lawyers argued that pentobarbital, also known as Nebutal, may not render him unconscious, thus subjecting him to undue pain induced by the following drugs used in the procedure.

But the Supreme Court agreed with three other federal courts who also found no credible evidence that administering the drug in the method proscribed – 10 times the dosage required for sedation – would not render Valle unconscious. Pentobarbital is also used in animal euthanasia and assisted suicide, but its manufacturer has asked prison officials as well as Scott not to use it to kill prisoners.

Lawyers for Valle are still pursuing a challenge against lethal injection in federal court and other appeals, including with the U.S. Supreme Court.