Gov. Rick Scott invoked history to prove the significance of Florida’s GOP presidential straw poll this weekend in Orlando.

Two of the winners of the Sunshine State’s three GOP straw polls in the past three decades went on to become president and the third became the party nominee, Scott pointed out to reporters early Wednesday afternoon.

Ronald Reagan, who won the straw poll in 1979, and George H.W. Bush, who won in 1987, both went on to the White House. In 1995, Bob Dole was the winner and became the nominee but was defeated by Bill Clinton in the general election.

“So there’s only been three straw polls and in each time the winner has been the Republican nominee and two out of three times has been the winner of the presidency. So this is significant,” Scott said.

Scott said again Wednesday that he does not currently plan to endorse one of the GOP contenders before Florida’s primary – but he left the door open.

“I might change my mind. But right now I don’t’ have a plan (to endorse),” he said.

And he repeated his contention that the country’s next president will be the candidate with the best jobs plan.

“I’d like them to have to explain to the public about what their plan is for job creation. Every candidate has different things they have to explain but I think the winner’s going to be, for the presidency next year, not just for the primary in Florida, is job creation,” said Scott, whose campaign for governor focused on creating 700,000 jobs in seven years. “Who’s got the right plan. It’s the biggest problem we have in the country. I think there’s secondary issues, you know balance the budget, things like that. But the biggest issue is jobs. It is a real problem. People are scared to death about jobs right now.”

MIAMI — There were several mentions of Ronald Reagan this morning when Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney held a town hall-style meeting with about 80 people at a hotel ballroom.

Gipper references are common in GOP primary settings. Not so common are approving mentions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New Deal architect who plays a heavy in Republican frontrunner Rick Perry‘s book Fed Up.

Romney managed both while taking a swipe at Perry’s Social Security stance.

“Ronald Reagan… was a believer in Social Security,” Romney said. “I believe in Social Security. There are tens of millions of Americans who rely upon Social Security to meet their needs. I want to protect it. I want to save it. I want to make sure that it’s there for coming generations. I think it’s a good thing. I don’t think everything that comes out of Democrats is good. But this came out of FDR, I think it’s pretty darn good. And I’m going to make sure, like Ronald Reagan, we keep it.”

Gov. Rick Scott’s popularity among voters grew a little over the past month, a new poll by Quinnipiac University found.

The poll released Wednesday found half of voters disapproved to his performance as governor, compared to 37 percent who approved. That’s about a two percent increase from a month ago, and an uptick from May when the first-term governor had his worst showing with 29 percent approval.

Voters still believe by a 48-41 percent margin that Scott’s budget was unfair to them, another improvement from August, when voters thought by a 51-43 percent margin his spending plan was unfair.

Voters were split by 37-37 percent when asked if they like Scott as a person, compared to a 45-34 dislike in the August 5 poll.

Scott’s improvement comes after the governor launched a PR campaign to better explain his policies to voters, pollster Peter Brown said.

“Gov. Rick Scott has been trying to put on a charm offensive – both in changing how he deals with the news media and spending more time meeting ordinary Floridians from around the state. It appears to be working, at least a little,” Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling institute, said in a press release. “During his first six months in office Gov. Scott alienated the news media and did not make the effort to explain his program to the general public, as he has been doing recently.”

The Q poll also found a large majority of voters — 71 percent — also approve of a new law requiring welfare recipients to pass drug tests to receive benefits. That law is currently being challenged in court.

Time Warner, Inc., joined Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday to announce that the media giant was moving its corporate human resources operations to the Tampa area, bringing with it at least 500 jobs over the next five years.

State officials and Hillsborough County officials steered $3 million in incentives to the broadcast and publishing company. Scott said the investment will pay off for the state, with Time Warner’s operation yielding a boost in sales, property and other taxes in coming years.

The announcement nudges the first-year governor closer toward his campaign promise of adding 700,000 jobs to Florida over the next seven years. Scott said Florida has added more than 87,000 jobs this year — even as the state’s 10.7 percent unemployment rate continues to outstrip the national level.

“We’ll get a great return on the dollars that we’re putting up,” Scott said.

Scott was accompanied Tuesday by John Martin, chief financial officer of Time Warner, who said the Tampa area was selected over another finalist, Atlanta. The company had looked at 59 cities over the past six months in making the selection, Martin said.

Martin added that the handful of cities the company focused on while narrowing its selection all offered incentive packages similar to those dangled by Florida.

 ”The labor pool was probably the leading factor,” Martin said, in siding with the Tampa area.

There were also “modestly lower costs” associated with the Tampa area compared with Atlanta, he said. One site in Tampa and another in Temple Terrace are being considered for the HR operations. Another factor going for the area was that Time Warner has had a customer service unit operating there for years, Martin said.

The company expects to bring 50 jobs from established HR units around the country to the new site. But Scott’s office said that 500 Florida jobs would be created at the new facility over the next five years.

Martin said the jobs — mostly in HR and information technology — will pay “north of $50,000 a year.”

At a Capitol crowded with what he called 500 of “friends and neighbors” from the Florida Panhandle, Niceville Republican Don Gaetz was designated Monday as the next president of the Florida Senate.

Gaetz will assume the job following next year’s elections — should the GOP retain its Senate majority, a likely development. Republicans now hold 28 seats in the 40-member Senate.

Gaetz, first elected in 2006, is the wealthiest member of the Legislature.  A retired co-founder of Vitas Healthcare Corp., a hospice care provider, Gaetz devoted most of his acceptance speech to touting plans for reviving Florida’s faltering economy.

Gaetz recalled the words of Winston Churchill, anguishing over “what a waste to be a great man in small times.”

“One thing is sure. These are not small times,” Gaets said. “They are hard times. But they can be great times.”

On track to succeed Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, following the November elections, Gaetz encapsulated his future leadership in three promises.

He vowed to bolster the state’s political ethics, make education meet the state’s economic needs, and turn Florida into a “cradle of common sense solutions,” that can draw businesses with smaller government, low taxes, and reduced regulations.

“In an angry sea of economic chaos, Florida can become a safe harbor,” Gaetz said.  

Another multi-millionaire who has pledged to fix Florida’ s economy, Gov. Rick Scott, said he liked what he heard from Gaetz, a former county school board member and superintendent.

“He understands that we really have to do the right thing with regard to education. Science, technology, engineering and math are clearly going to be key to growing our state. It’s going to be a real key to getting companies to move here,” Scott said. “I like the challenge that he set down.”

West Palm Beach Democrat Mack Bernard earned a shout-out Monday for being among only a handful of lawmakers attending all 26 public hearings this summer on redistricting.

The grueling tour spanned from the Pensacola to Key West, with stops rural and urban along the way. “We learned a lot. And saw a lot,” said Bernard, after the House Redistricting Subcommittee noted his wide-ranging schlep.

With lawmakers returning to the Capitol for a week’s worth of committee hearings, recapping those redistricting hearings consumed much of the House’s day.

When it comes to redrawing district lines for the 120 House seats, members of the public, community groups, and local elected officials often urged lawmakers to strive to keep municipalities whole, without dividing them across more than one district.

Boca Raton and West Palm Beach were among the communities making such pitches; of course, some areas — like rural Jackson County in North Florida — sought to be divided among two state House seats, in hopes of gaining more oomph in Tallahassee.

Singled out during the summer’s hearing in Boca Raton were a couple districts – held by Rep. Steve Perman, a Democrat and Bill Hager, a Republican. Perman’s District 78 was criticized as unwieldy, stretching from the Fort Pierce area to Boca Raton; Hager’s district should be confined to Palm Beach County, some of those testifying said, rather than stretching as it does now, into Broward.

For Senate districts, Palm Beach County commissioners this summer also urged lawmakers when they begin creating maps next year, at least keep the current compliment of three Senate districts with a majority of their population in the county — out of the six districts that now touch the county.

A select committee headed by Sen. Joe Negron began looking into whether Florida’s laws need to be changed in reaction to the Casey Anthony case, in which a jury cleared the Orange County woman of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee Marie.

Caylee Anthony was last seen on June 15, 2008. Her mother waited a month before telling her parents or police that the child was missing. Caylee Anthony’s body was found in December 2008, but her body was so decomposed medical examiners could not determine the cause of death.

Following Casey Anthony’s acquittal, state lawmakers filed more than a half-dozen bills that would impose fines or jail sentences for failing to report a missing child, currently not a crime in Florida or any other state.

Senate President Mike Haridopolos created the Select Committee on Protecting Florida’s Children to make recommendations on possible changes to the law.

At the committee’s first meeting Monday afternoon, Negron said the select committee’s first order of business will be to decide whether new laws are needed and cautioned against allowing emotions to prevail in crafting legislation.

“The committee is not here to second guess the jury,” Negron, R-Stuart, said.

(more…)

Fresh from cutting $210 million in taxes and scores of jobs at Florida’s water management districts, Gov. Rick Scott is sizing up a new target in his drive to shrink government.

The rest of Florida’s more than 1,600 special districts, and the $15.5 billion in taxpayer money they command, are suddenly in Scott’s cross hairs.

“I was shocked that it was $15 billion,” Scott said last week of district revenues. “On behalf of the citizens of the state, we have to look at what return we’re getting for those dollars.”

The little-understood agencies trace their roots to log-­cabin Florida and provide a variety of environmental, health care, community development and other services. Palm Beach County has 94 special districts, among the most in the state.

Critics deride special districts as “shadow governments” that burden Floridians with taxes, fees and costly bond issues to finance big projects. Members of the tea party movement, an influential supporter of Florida’s Republican governor, have grown increasingly wary of districts’ authority.

Full story here:  http://bit.ly/qkRKCi

So much for the “Dissent Is Patriotic” talk that was popular with Dems during the George W. Bush era.

Trying to fire up the crowd at Saturday night’s Palm Beach County Democratic Party fundraising dinner, County Commissioner Burt Aaronson suggested a new way of dealing with President Obama‘s foes:

Click here to hear the audio.

“You know, if a ballplayer threw a game and they get caught, they go to jail. Well, what are we going to do to the Republicans who are throwing the country?

“They’re throwing our country, and they all should be put in jail for what they’re doing, because they’re destroying our country, because they said at the beginning our one mission is to get rid of President Obama. That was their mission. They don’t care how much they destroy other people. They don’t care whether you go to work. They don’t care about anything.

“All they want to do is destroy the president. And in destroying the president of the United States, you destroy our country. They should be put in jail, each and every one of them, for throwing the country.”

An appeals court has temporarily halted the deposition of former Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Buss, scheduled for this afternoon, in a lawsuit over prison privatization in the southern portion of Florida.

Friday’s First District Court of Appeals ruling overturned a lower court’s ruling yesterday forcing Buss to testify in the lawsuit filed by the Florida Police Benevolent Association against Gov. Rick Scott’s administration, granting DOC’s request for an emergency stay.

Scott forced Buss to resign late last month citing “differences in philosophy and management styles arose which made the separation in the best interests of the state.” One of the reasons for Buss’s ouster was his apparently less-than-enthusiastic support of the privatization of the 30 prisons from Manatee County to Indian River County south to the Keys.

The PBA, which represents prison workers, is challenging the privatization effort – the largest in the nation – because it was included in proviso language in the budget, which the union says is unconstitutional.

Yesterday, Tallahassee Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford ordered Buss to give his deposition, rejecting the state’s request that not have to testify because he is no longer secretary.

Buss is “reasonably likely to have unique discoverable knowledge of potentially relevant subject matter,” Fulford wrote in his order yesterday.

This morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi, representing Scott’s administration, appealed Fulford’s ruling, asking for an emergency stay in the deposition originally scheduled for 2:30 p.m. today.

The PBA is “on a fishing expedition to explore Mr. Buss’s legally irrelevant views about the wisdom of privatizing portions of the prison system, the effectiveness of privatizing in saving money, the procurement process and other similar issues that do not speak to the constitutionality of the proviso,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Glogau wrote in the emergency petition. “At worst, respondents are seeking to sensationalize an already high-profile case by taking the deposition of an agency head who recently resigned.”

(more…)

Former Gov. Bob Martinez and a raft of Tallahassee insiders have been named to a nine-member commission that will choose a date for Florida’s 2012 presidential primary. The panel must decide on a date by Oct. 1.

House Speaker Dean Cannon, who named three of the panelists, said this week he wants Florida to schedule an early primary even if that brings sanctions from the Republican National Committee, which forbids primaries before March 6 in all but four traditional early states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith, whose party doesn’t have to worry about presidential primaries because President Obama isn’t expected to face any serious Democratic challenge, blasted the committee selections as “a waste of time and taxpayer money. In a time of fiscal crisis for Florida’s families, Republican leaders in Tallahassee have created a dog-and-pony show committee tasked with setting a primary date we all know GOP insiders have already agreed upon.

“It’s time to stop wasting the state’s money and leaving Florida voters in limbo. Both the Republican and Democratic national committees have agreed to rules and those rules need to be followed. I would urge this committee to do just that.”

A list of the committee members is after the jump…

(more…)

A judge ordered former Department of Corrections Secretary Ed Buss to testify in a lawsuit about the state’s privatization of prisons in the southern part of Florida.

Tallahassee Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford denied the state’s request to keep Buss, fired by Gov. Rick Scott late last month, from having to give a deposition in the lawsuit filed by the Florida Police Benevolent Association.

Buss left the agency amid the privatization of more than one-third of the state’s prisons, the largest privatization effort in the country.

His abrupt resignation came after Scott’s office twice rebuked the former Indiana prisons chief over state contracts and after the termination of a contract with Elizabeth “Betty” Gondles, one of Buss’s hand-picked aides, for a possible conflict of interest with the privatization of the department’s health services.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, representing Scott’s administration in the lawsuit, argued that, because he is no longer secretary, Buss should not have to give a deposition.

But Fulford sided with the PBA, saying that Buss is “reasonably likely to have unique discoverable knowledge of potentially relevant subject matter” and that the PBA had tried unsuccessfully to get the information elsewhere.

The PBA is challenging the privatization, alleging that it is unconstitutional because it was included in proviso language in the state budget instead of a stand-alone bill creating state policy.

A hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29.

Former Utah Gov. and Republican White House aspirant Jon Huntsman‘s reference to Gen X troubadour Kurt Cobain fell flat during Monday’s GOP debate in Tampa.

Now Huntsman is launching an appeal for 18- to 35-year-old “GenH” voters with Jeb Bush Jr. as chairman.

Huntsman’s campaign today announced the GenH program has 139 campus chapters in 42 states and is “the most broad-based youth program in the Republican field.”

During a discussion of Social Security in Monday’s CNN/Tea Party Express debate, Huntsman mentioned rival Mitt Romney‘s 2010 book No Apology and quipped: “I don’t know if that was written by Kurt Cobain or not.”

The allusion to All Apologies, a Cobain-penned song that charted for Nirvana in 1993, did not seem to register with the other GOP candidates or the tea party audience.

Grunge icon Cobain died in an apparent suicide in 1994, the year Romney ran as a moderate Republican against Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts.

Florida TaxWatch, the business-backed public policy group, has come up with more than $4.1 billion in potential state savings — if lawmakers and state government implement 135 cost-cutting recommendations.

Among the highlights: increasing good-behavior gain time for prison inmates, expanding electronic monitoring of criminals, and cutting back on stiff penalties for marijuana and cocaine possession. Reducing Medicaid fraud — which has bedeviled officials at the state and federal levels — could save $223.8 million alone, a TaxWatch cost-saving task force found.

TaxWatch said similar recommendations made since 2009 have saved the state more than $1 billion.

Some of the recommendations appear obvious: urging state agencies to buy generics over name-brand products could save $305 million, the organization said. And some of the ideas show some out-of-the-box thinking: selling ads on some DOT road signs could pull in $75 million, TaxWatch estimated.

Some proposals also carry plenty of controversy. Boosting eligibility requirements for students earning Bright Futures scholarships, eliminating the state’s traditional pension plan, ending the state’s Deferred Retirement Option Program for public employees are put in play, but would surely face stiff opposition from some fronts in the Legislature.

The full report is at www.FloridaTaxWatch.org

Days after a Miami judge ruled against a pair of Florida members of Congress, leaders of the so-called Fair Districts campaign Wednesday called on House Speaker Dean Cannon to abandon financing any further challenges to the voter-approved standard for drawing congressional district lines.

“We believe that it is time for the Florida Legislature to quit using taxpayer money to battle its own constituents,” Dan Gelber, a former Democratic state senator wrote on behalf of Fair Districts supporters. “Your efforts in this case are nothing more than an ill-advised attempt to obstruct a reform the people overwhelmingly supported.

“Surely, given the state’s economic challenges, there are better uses for taxpayer dollars,” Gelber concluded.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro dismissed the lawsuit by U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, and Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, who sought to have Amendment 6 declared unconstitutional. The House had intervened in the case, but Cannon insisted it was only because the Legislature would have to implement whatever ruling came out of the court.

Now that the court effectively ended the legal challenge, the NAACP, League of Women Voters, and other backers of the Fair Districts effort — mostly Democratic-allied organizations — said the Republican speaker ought to also call off the lawyers.

A Cannon spokeswoman, Katie Betta, said the speaker was still reviewing the judge’s order and hadn’t yet determined the House’s next step.

 

A Miami federal judge blocked a new Florida law Wednesday that would have barred doctors from asking patients whether they own firearms, rejecting the state’s claim that the measure was designed to protect constitutional rights to gun ownership protected by the Second Amendment.

U.S. District Judge Marcia G. Cooke said the law — approved by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Scott — did not affect gun rights. Instead, she found that it did potentially interfere with free speech, and the constitutional rights of doctors to inform patients.

“Laws on professional speech or occupational conduct, however, are generally directed at regulating the access or practice of a profession, not at burdening or censoring private, constitutionally protected speech on a particular subject matter,” Cooke wrote in her 22-page order.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Palm Beach County Medical Society, American Academy of Family Practitioners, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and ACLU were among those challenging the new law. Lawmakers supporting the measure, which was promoted by the National Rifle Association, said it was needed to stop anti-gun doctors from bullying patients or refusing to treat them.

“The privacy provision of the Firearms’ Ownership Privacy Act was carefully crafted to respect the First Amendment,” said Lane Wright, a Scott spokesman. “We’re pretty sure we’re going to win this one,” in later court action.

Daniel Vice, a lawyer with the Brady Center, acknowledged that the temporary injunction granted by the judge is not the final word in the case. But he said the order’s tough tone could signal that the new law is doomed.

He also said that the ruling likely blunts NRA efforts to expand the doctor prohibition into other states.

“This sends a very strong signal,” Vice said.

Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said he expected a favorable ruling. And he also said few legislators should be surprised.

“I don’t know how any of them could really think a federal court was going to let stand this kind of intrusion into the doctor-patient relationship,” Simon said.

The law took effect June 2, and the legal challenge was filed with the court a month later.

Under the law, doctors and other health care professionals could  face sanctions including fines and losing their licenses if they ask patients about guns in the home without a direct belief that the inquiry is relevant to the patient’s safety or health.  Pediatricians said the law keeps them from doing their jobs.

A more sweeping earlier proposal was watered down by state lawmakers to allow exceptions.  Doctors could ask a person with mental problems about guns at home.  But physicians still were concerned a patient could file a complaint that might lead to loss of their medical licenses and fines up to $10,000.

 

 

The Florida Education Association sued Wednesday to overturn the new state law that ends teacher tenure and introduces merit pay based in large part on how students perform on standardized tests.

The state’s largest teachers’ union said the measure — approved by the Republican-ruled Legislature and the first bill signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott — violates constitutional collective bargaining guarantees. Employment terms are to be decided by negotiations between teachers and school districts — not by state lawmakers, said Ron Meyer, attorney for the FEA, which filed the suit on behalf of six school teachers.

“It strains credulity that people in Tallahassee,  over in the Capitol, know better than the people on the ground,”  Meyer said.

Andy Ford, FEA president, said the new standard — approved in a mostly party-line vote, with legislative Democrats opposed — “totally changed the teaching profession in Florida.”

“It denies teachers the constitutional right to collective bargaining,” Ford said.

The merit pay legislation requires that 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation be based on student achievement on tests — including the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) and other standardized exams, most of which must still be developed by state and local educators.

Under the bill, current teachers would retain existing pay schedules and contracts — even those spanning multi-years. They could lose their jobs, though, if they drew two subpar annual evaluations within three years.

Teachers hired after July 1, however, are limited to one-year contracts and would draw raises only if rated “effective” or “highly effective.”

Former Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a similar bill last year. But during last fall’s governor’s race, Scott made ending teacher tenure and enacting merit pay a central portion of his campaign, with the FEA throwing in heavily behind Democrat Alex Sink.

When Democrats captured a Republican-leaning congressional seat in western New York during a May special election, party leaders cast the victory as a national repudiation of a GOP Medicare proposal.

Now it’s the GOP’s turn to extrapolate a national message from another New York congressional special election with South Florida implications.

In an election Tuesday to replace disgraced Twitter enthusiast and former Palm Beach County Democratic keynoter Anthony Weiner in a heavily Democratic district, Republican Bob Turner upset Democratic State Assemblyman David Weprin. It’s the first time a Republican has represented the Queens district since the 1920s.

Turner linked Weprin to President Obama and, in a district with a heavy Orthodox Jewish population, blasted the Obama administration’s policy on Israel and the Middle East.

Orthodox Jews tend to be far more conservative than other Jewish voters, but look for Tuesday’s result to invigorate Republican efforts in Florida and elsewhere to peel away Jewish support from Obama and other Democrats in 2012.

Gov. Rick Scott scheduled Sept. 28 as the date for the execution of convicted Miami-Dade cop killer Manuel Valle.

Valle’s execution has been put off twice this summer, first by the Florida Supreme Court and later by federal judges in Atlanta. Those stays, however, have been lifted as courts have effectively endorsed the state’s use of the compound pentobarbital for the lethal injection needed, a change forced by a manufacturer’s discontinuing the three-drug round of chemicals formerly used.

Valle’s execution has been set for 4 p.m. that day, a Wednesday. Valle is the first death warrant signed by Florida’s new governor.

Since his conviction for the 1978 killing of Coral Gables police officer Louis Pena, Valle has been sentenced to death and re-sentenced three times in legal wrangling that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned his death penalty in 1987. Courts later reaffirmed his death penalty conviction.

After months of promising action, the state’s largest teachers’ union looks ready to bring Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-ruled Legislature to court in an attempt to overturn a measure that creates a new merit pay standard and ends teacher tenure.

The legislation (CS/SB 736) was the first bill signed into law this spring by Scott. But it also marked was the culmination of a increasingly bitter clash between Florida Republicans and the Democratic-allied Florida Education Association, a struggle whose roots are deep.

FEA President Andy Ford and other leaders of the teachers’ group plan to outline the lawsuit they plan to file during a news conference and media call tomorrow.

The merit pay legislation requires that 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation be based on student achievement on tests — including the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) and other standardized exams, most of which must still be developed by state and local educators.

Under the bill, current teachers would retain existing pay schedules and contracts — even those spanning multi-years. They could lose their jobs, though, if they drew two subpar annual evaluations within three years.

Teachers hired after July 1, however, are limited to one-year contracts and would draw raises only if rated “effective” or “highly effective.”

Former Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a similar bill last year. But during last fall’s governor’s race, Scott made ending teacher tenure and enacting merit pay a central portion of his campaign, with the FEA throwing in heavily behind Democrat Alex Sink.

The FEA is already squared off against the Legislature, having earlier this summer sued to overturn a proposed constitutional amendment put on next year’s ballot to lift the state’s more than century-old prohibition on tax dollars flowing to religious institutions.