Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson disagrees with President Obama‘s decision to require religious schools, hospitals and other non-church institutions to provide employee health plans that cover contraceptive services.

Says Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin: “The federal government already is making an exception for churches. And Sen. Nelson thinks there should be an exception for church-affiliated organizations. It’s a matter of religious freedom.”

The policy has created a firestorm of opposition from the Catholic church and Republicans, with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio emerging as a leading critic. Some Democrats have also expressed unease. Rubio and Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin are cosponsoring a bill to repeal the rule.

Nelson, who is up for reelection this year, wants a compromise solution, McLaughlin said.

“(H)e wants to make sure women’s health is protected,” McLaughlin said. “He feels there has to be way to do both of these things. One state, for instance, allows religious employers to enroll workers in a plan with a reduced premium, and then employees who want contraception can pay for the extra coverage.”

It’ll be more of a candidate forum than a back-and-forth debate this month when the Florida Federation of Republican Women hosts the first meeting of Republican U.S. Senate candidates since Rep. Connie Mack, R-Cape Coral, got into the race.

Mack, former appointed Sen. George LeMieux and businessman Mike McCalister are scheduled to participate in the Feb. 19 event in Tallahassee. The three are vying to run against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in November.

Candidates will appear together and make brief opening statements, then appear individually for 15 to 20 minutes apiece to answer questions from the audience and a moderator, said Federation 3rd VP Kim Carroll. While one candidate is answering questions, the others will be offstage and won’t hear the exchange with the audience, Caroll said. The candidates will then appear together at the end for a brief wrap-up.

“We don’t want to set it up so it’s a bash-my-fellow-candidate debate,” said Carroll, who said debates with all the candidates on stage together tend to devolve into “name-calling sessions” that distract from the issues.

Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Klein of Boca Raton is all over the internets today after The Washington Free Beacon noted that Klein is registered as a lobbyist for Spirit Airlines and listed by President Obama‘s reelection campaign as a bundler who has raised between $200,000 and $500,000 — an apparent violation of the Obama campaign’s self-imposed ban on accepting money from lobbyists.

Klein, however, said he’s not a lobbyist and the registration listing him as one was a “mistake” by someone at Holland & Knight, the law and lobbying firm that hired attorney Klein last year.

“I brought the client in in my business-development work, but we have other people that do lobbying on Capitol Hill,” Klein said in an interview.

A form filed with Congress last month by Holland & Knight lists three lobbyists for Miramar-based Spirit: Klein, former Tampa Democratic Rep. Jim Davis and Lisa Barkovic, who was an aide to former Republican Rep. Mark Foley.

Klein said he’s not doing any lobbying, but is active in bringing clients to the firm and recently took a trip to Israel to recruit high-tech businesses. Klein said he’s also been active in raising money for Democrats, including Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston.

Former Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse CEO and former National Restaurant Association Chairman Craig Miller is leaving the crowded Republican U.S. Senate race and says he’ll run instead for a new coastal congressional district that’s expected to include parts of Volusia, Flagler, St. Johns and Putnam counties.

Miller recently snagged the endorsement of fellow restaurateur Herman Cain for the Senate race.

Miller leaves without endorsing any of the other GOP Senate hopefuls — former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack of Cape Coral, former appointed Sen. George LeMieux and businessman Mike McCalister.

“There are several very qualified candidates in the U.S. Senate race to represent our party, some with more name recognition and resources than our campaign. Therefore, I have chosen to shift my focus to serving the people of the new Coastal District,” Miller said in a statement released this morning.

“Having grown up on the Intracoastal Waterway and having spent a lifetime working in the Hospitality and Tourism industry, including opening and operating businesses in Volusia and St. John Counties, this new District offers me a unique opportunity to serve.”

Gov. Rick Scott supports U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar‘s ban on the importation of Burmese pythons and three other non-native constrictive snakes, the governor said this afternoon.

MSNBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd asked Scott and Salazar about the snake ban at an Everglades Summit in Tallahassee this afternoon.

“People laugh about this but…it’s crazy,” said Todd, a Miami native. “This issue of my idiot old neighbors in South Florida. They import these pets then get scared of them and dump them in the Everglades.”

The pythons are “injurious and they are dangerous,” Salazar said.

Salazar said the python ban is part of a comprehensive approach to cleaning up the Everglades.

“We need to make sure the investments that we’re making…that they’re not for naught,” he said.

The invasive snakes are killing native habitat and wildlife, Salazar said.

“We need to make sure that what we are doing is comprehensive,” he said. “We need to look at the Everglades as an entire ecosystem.”

Critics said Salazar’s ban doesn’t go far enough because he only targeted four of nine dangerous snakes.

“We tailored our regulation to go after the present danger that we have in the Everglades and right now it’s the Burmese python, which is making up habitat with tens of thousands of Burmese pythons that are out there,” Salazar said after the meeting.

Salazar said his agency his “going after those species that present the greatest threat right now” and that five other species are being scrutinized scientifically and for the economic implications of banning those as well.

“But these four are the first step and we have the other five under consideration,” he said.

Scott said he supports the new federal rule, especially because Congress has failed for three years to pass U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson’s legislation that would have outlawed pythons.

Nelson praised Salazar and blasted critics for trying to “delay and obstruct” the new rule.

“These giant constrictor snakes do not belong in the Everglades and they do not belong in people’s back yards. Not only are they upsetting the ecological balance because they’re at the top of the food chain. They even attack alligators and consume them,” Nelson said.

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U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Cape Coral, raised $758,395 in the fourth quarter of 2011 for his Republican U.S. Senate bid and, thanks to leftover money from his House races, has $917,926 in cash on hand, his campaign announced this morning.

Mack got into the race at the end of October.

In a new twist on the expectations game, Mack’s campaign announced last week — after the quarter had ended — that it had set a goal of raising about $500,000 in the fourth quarter. That allowed Mack spokesman David James to tell supporters today that the campaign had “smashed our previous expectations.”

To put Mack’s numbers in some perspective, former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton raised $535,000 in the third quarter for the Senate race and former appointed Sen. George LeMieux‘s top quarter was a $951,000 haul between April 1 and June 30.

Hasner and LeMieux haven’t announced fourth-quarter fundraising numbers yet. Nor has Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who raised $1.9 million during the third quarter of 2011.

Perennial swing state Florida is too close to call in a hypothetical general election match-up between President Obama and either Republican Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum, a new Quinnipiac University poll says.

A Senate race between Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson and Republican U.s. Rep. Connie Mack would also be a virtual tie, the new poll says.

The poll shows Obama, who carried Florida with 51 percent in 2008, continues to have underlying job-approval and favorability problems in the Sunshine State. Fifty-four percent of Florida voters disapprove of the job he’s doing, 52 percent say he doesn’t deserve to be reelected and 50 percent say they have an unfavorable opinion of him.

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Former state House majority leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton has sent a letter to U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Cape Coral, and former appointed Sen. George LeMieux calling for a series of 10 debates around Florida in the crowded GOP Senate primary.

Despite strong support from national movement conservatives, Hasner has lagged in the polls behind not only Mack and LeMieux but businessman Mike McCalister and in the same single-digit neighborhood as businessman Craig Miller. Hasner addressed his letter only to Mack and LeMieux, but the letter says he hopes the Republican Party of Florida will invite McCalister and Miller as well.

The Republicans are vying for the right to challenge Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson in November.

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Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who spent six days orbiting the earth on the space shuttle Columbia nearly 26 years ago, had this to say about the death of Korean dictator Kim Jong Il:

“Astronauts looking from the window of a space craft on the night side of the Earth see a Korea that is clearly divided – dark in the North and lit up with bright lights and alive in the South. But it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. I think this could prove to be a great opportunity for reform in North Korea. Let’s hope so.”

Just days before Florida holds its first election under a voter law blasted by Democrats, a Senate panel announced Monday it will hold a hearing in Tampa to gauge public reaction to the new measure.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson spearheaded the call for fellow Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois to bring his Judiciary subcommittee on Constitution and Civil Rights to the state. The panel is scheduled to hold a hearing Jan. 27 in Tampa, four days before Florida’s Republican presidential primary.

Tampa’s Hillsborough County is among five Florida counties where voting law changes must be approved by the federal Justice Department because  past racial conditions threatened voting rights.  Nelson said, “The community has many diverse groups of voters that might be affected the most under Florida’s new law, like seniors, young voters and minorities.  One recent and credible study says new laws like Florida’s could suppress millions of votes nationwide in the 2012 election.”

Democrats have pushed hard against voter laws approved in Florida and 13 other Republican-ruled states which they say are aimed at blunting Democratic turnout in next year’s presidential contest.

 Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Davie, earlier this month announced that  the party has launched a new website www.protectingthevote.org aimed at informing voters of the new standards — and rallying support for having them overturned.

Florida’s law is already the subject of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and voting rights organizations.

Supporters of the state’s new law deny any partisan motivation, instead saying the stricter standards are merely intended to reduce the risk of voter-fraud.

The new measure reduces the number of days available for early voting, while also imposes tighter reporting standards for third-party groups that register voters.  But a study earlier this year by the Brennan Center for Justice found that Florida’s law is part of a larger mosaic of stricter standards which could keep 5 million people nationwide from voting next year.

 

 

Democrats continued Thursday to blast new voter laws in Florida and 13 other states which they say have been crafted by Republican leaders to blunt turnout and damage President Obama’s re-election bid next year.

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress from Davie, said the party has launched a new website www.protectingthevote.org aimed at informing voters of the new standards — and rallying support for having them overturned. Florida’s law is already the subject of  a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and voting rights organizations.

A U.S. Senate subcommittee also plans to hold a hearing in Florida in coming weeks on the new law, following a request by Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who said the state’s new standard violates “basic rights.”

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, Wasserman Schultz said Republicans are out to “rig elections.”

“By now, it’s well known they’re determined to roll back the right to vote and skew the 2012 presidential election,” Wasserman Schultz said.

Democrats and their allies have blistered the new Florida law, which reduces turnout by reducing the number of days available for early voting, while also imposing tighter reporting standards for third-party groups that register voters.

 A study earlier this year by the Brennan Center for Justice found the new laws could keep 5 million people nationwide from voting next year.

Supporters of the measures deny any partisan motivation, instead saying the stricter standards are intended to reduce voter-fraud.

Wasserman Schultz, though, isn’t buying that.

A 74-page report released Thursday by the Democratic Party concluded, “every major investigation into voter fraud in the United States has arrived at the same conclusion: There is almost none. The real fraud has been the use of baseless allegations to change election laws in ways that will lead to partisan Republican gains.”

 

 

 

 

Launching his campaign by deriding rival Bill Nelson as one of President Obama’s “lockstep liberals,” Republican U.S. Senate contender Connie Mack is expecting to be picketed by what his office staff called  ”loony liberals” Thursday.

Mack’s namesake father punctured Democratic opponent Buddy Mackay 23 years ago with the phrase, “Hey Buddy, you’re liberal.” The son’s days-old campaign seems to be sticking to a similar script.

Southwest Florida supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement plan to protest at 1 p.m. today outside Mack’s Cape Coral office. But once Mack staffers got hold of the rally’s electronic sign-up sheet, they fired out a press release, tying the demonstration to MoveOn.org, the left-leaning activist group founded by billionaire George Soros.

“It’s appalling that George Soros and the loony liberals of MoveOn.org are protecting Bill Nelson by staging a sit-in protest at Congressman Mack’s office,” said David James, Mack’s deputy campaign manager. ”Three days after Connie Mack entered the race for U.S. Senate, these leftists are scared of the Mack candidacy and Connie’s message of freedom, security and prosperity.  Florida has had enough of the loony left and will bring an end to their big government, big taxation and big spending agenda next November.”

Polls show Mack is the frontrunner in five-person Republican field. At least one survey also shows him with enough current support to knock off Nelson, if Mack wins the GOP primary.

A new Public Policy Polling survey also shows Mack well out front in the Republican contest. It also examines the potency of name identification, but doesn’t attribute all of Mack’s success to having a well-known monicker.

The poll found Mack’s name is recognized by 57 percent of Republican voters in Florida, about double his nearest rival, short-term Senate-appointee George LeMieux. Others in the race were far back.

But the survey also found that voters familiar with the other candidates, still liked Mack best. 

“Name recognition is certainly an important part of the equation, but even when you account for that Mack’s well ahead,” PPP concluded. “And he has strong numbers across the ideological lines of the GOP, getting 44 percent with ‘very conservative’ voters, 43 percent with ’somewhat conservative’ ones, and 32 percent with moderates.”

Tarring Democratic opponent Bill Nelson as one of President Obama’s “lockstep liberals”, Republican U.S. Rep. Connie Mack said Tuesday that Floridians are looking for a change in the U.S. Senate.

“It’s pretty clear to me that this country, our country, is moving in the wrong directions,” Mack said in a conference call with reporters from his Fort Myers hometown.

Mack made his candidacy official Monday night in an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox-TV show. Mack, first elected to Congress in 2004, is the fifth Republican in the race to unseat Nelson, who is seeking his third term.

Mack is looking to win the same seat held by his father and namesake, former Republican U.S. Sen. Connie Mack. His dad defeated Democrat Buddy MacKay in 1988 after taunting him with the phrase, “Hey Buddy, you’re liberal.” And on Tuesday, the political apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

“Bill Nelson has become one of Barack Obama’s leading guys in the United States Senate,” Mack said, deriding his Democratic rival for supporting the president’s push on health care, stimulus spending, and energy cap-and-trade legislation.

Nelson is among the “lockstep liberals in Washington” the president depends on to advance his agenda, Mack said. The Republican contender, however, disputed that he, like his father, is looking to win by demonizing liberals.

“It’s not an attempt to demonize,” Mack said. “It’s to point out the differences.”

When those close to Mack confirmed a few weeks ago that he was planning to enter the race, the congressman immediately became the favorite, according to polls.

 A Quinnipiac University survey earlier this month showed Mack with a formidable lead over the four Republicans already in the race. A Rasmussen Reports poll also showed Mack could be trouble for Nelson, with the congressman favored by 43 percent of voters to 39 percent for the Democrat. The survey of 500 likely voters had a margin-of-error of plus-or-minus 4.5 percent.

The National Journal‘s Hotline ranks Democratic Florida Sen. Bill Nelson‘s seat as the 12th most likely to change partisan hands in 2012.

Florida should be a prime pickup opportunity for the GOP, Hotline notes, “but the party is curiously pessimistic about their chances to beat Nelson.”

In a line already being circulated by GOP Senate hopeful Adam Hasner‘s campaign to conservative base voters, Hotline notes that U.S. Rep. Connie Mack leads the Republican field, “but there are openings for a more conservative candidate to emerge.”

Hotline says the Senate seat most likely to see a change of parties is in North Dakota, where Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad is retiring and the GOP is favored to take over.

See the complete Top 20 by clicking here.

Republican Connie Mack is shaping up as big trouble — not only for his fellow GOP contenders for the U.S. Senate nomination, but two-term Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson, a poll shows Friday.

Mack, a Cape Coral congressman, is the favorite of 43 percent of Florida voters, to 39 percent for Nelson, according to the survey of 500 likely voters conducted Thursday by Rasmussen Reports. The poll has a margin-of-error of plus-or-minus 4.5 percent.

The survey also shows Nelson holding comfortable leads over other Republican contenders, former U.S. Senate-appointee George LeMieux and former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner. A Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed Mack holding a formidable lead over the four GOP candidates already in the U.S. Senate race.

Mack’s father, who shares the same name, represented Florida in the U.S. Senate from 1989 to his retirement in 2001, when he was succeeded by Nelson.

The ACLU of Florida, already suing to overturn the state’s new voting law, urged a Senate panel Wednesday to hold its planned hearing on the measure — preferably before the state’s Jan. 31 presidential primary.

Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin said Tuesday that his Senate subcommittee will hold a ”field hearing” in Florida on the voting standards approved earlier this year by the Republican-ruled Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.

The state’s senior senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, called for Durbin to stage the hearing, saying the new measure is designed to blunt Democratic turnout in next year’s presidential election – by imposing stricter limits on third-party groups that register voters and shortening the number of days available for early voting.

 Florida is among 14 Republican-ruled states where new voting laws have been approved that Democrats and allied groups say are motivated by presidential politics.

 ”We agree with your assessment that these new restrictions will disenfranchise a great number of Floridians including young, disabled and lower income voters,” ACLU executive director Howard Simon wrote Durbin. “Moreover, these restrictions were intended to, and will, have a regressive impact on the voting rights of racial and language minority voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.”

Simon said Durbin’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights should consider holding three hearings, in Fort Lauderdale, St. Petersburg, and Tallahassee — before the scheduled Jan. 31 primary.

Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin approved Tuesday fellow Democrat Bill Nelson’s request for a congressional hearing in Florida on the state’s new voter law, which critics say is part of a Republican-driven effort to supress voter turnout in next year’s presidential election.

“In a democracy as vibrant as ours, there is perhaps no right that is so sacred or fundamental than the right to vote,” Durbin wrote Nelson. “I am deeply troubled by the disenfranchising impact of these recently passed state voting laws.”

Durbin is chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights. Durbin said the panel will hold a “field hearing” in the state, examining the impact of the new Florida law and those approved in nearby states.

Nelson wrote Durbin last month, seeking the hearing. He said new voter laws approved in Florida and 13 other Republican-ruled states violate “basic rights.”

Democrats and allied organizations say Republican legislators are trying to reduce turnout by limiting early voting and imposing tighter restrictions on third-party groups that register voters.

The ACLU and other voting rights groups have already sued to stop implementation of the law.  A study by the Brennan Center for Justice found the new laws could keep 5 million people from voting next year.

Supporters of the measures deny any partisan motivation, instead saying the stricter standards are intended to reduce voter-fraud.

 

U.S. Rep. Connie Mack, R-Cape Coral, has become the instant frontrunner in the GOP Senate primary and runs virtually even with Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, a new Quinnipiac University poll says.

“The entrance of Congressman Connie Mack into the Senate race changes what had been shaping up as an easy reelection for Sen. Bill Nelson into a tough fight that the incumbent could lose,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “The fact that Mack is essentially tied with Nelson, who has been a statewide political figure for two decades, should set off warning bells at Democratic headquarters.”

Mack, whose office announced he would enter the race Oct. 26, gets 32 percent of GOP primary support in a poll taken Oct. 31 to Nov. 7. Placing a distant second is former appointed Sen. George LeMieux at 9 percent, followed by businessman Mike McCalister at 6 percent and 2 percent apiece for former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner and former restaurant CEO Craig Miller.

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Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, whose bid for a third term next year may be hinged on a strong turnout among Florida Democrats, continued to put heat on the strict new elections law approved earlier this year by the Republican-ruled Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott.

Nelson on Thursday called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether new standards that took effect in Florida and 13 other states are part of a GOP-backed effort at keeping minorities, college students and other Democratic-leaning voters from the polls.

“These voting changes could make it significantly harder for an estimated five-million eligible voters in numerous states to cast their ballots in 2012,” Nelson wrote, in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, citing the findings of the first comprehensive study of the voting laws’ impact by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.

Florida’s new law imposes tougher requirements on such third-party organizations as unions, the NAACP and the League of Women Voters when helping  citizens register to vote. The league announced earlier this year that it was abandoning its traditional voter registration efforts in Florida because it feared penalties stemming from any possible violations.

The law, which is being challenged as unconstitutional by the ACLU and other groups, also reduces the number of days in Florida available for early voting.

Nelson is facing a five-man field of Republicans seeking to challenge him. And in the last 10 days, he’s sought to keep questions about the new elections law simmering.

Nelson has met with a Volusia County teacher warned for apparently violating the new law by helping students register — with the senator then writing Scott urging that he soften the new law. Nelson also has taken to the Senate floor to condemn the law as violating basic constitutional rights, urging that a committee hold public hearings in states where new laws have taken effect.

 

One-time U.S. Senate candidate and Senate President Mike Haridopolos is backing long-time friend U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV in the GOP primary, Haridopolos told editors and reporters this morning.

Haridopolos said he’s supporting Mack because he’s disappointed in the negative campaigning that’s dominated the GOP race thus far.

“I was not exactly pleased in the direction in which the senate primary was moving,” Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, told a gathering of reporters and editors at the Associated Press Florida Legislative Planning Session shortly before noon. “I think he’d make an outstanding senator, not just candidate…I want to see us elevate the political discussion. What has disappointed me…is there’s a lot of finger-pointing. Let’s elevate the debate…as opposed to the negative campaigning that’s been done to this point.”

After initially saying he would not get into the race, Mack has now thrown his hat into a crowded GOP field. Former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, former state representative Adam Hasner of Delray Beach, businessman Craig Miller and Mike McAllister are all vying to unseat incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat. The four declared GOP candidates have been plagued by underwhelming poll numbers and fundraising.

Early this spring, Mack, a Cape Coral Republican who served in the Florida House alongside Haridopolos, endorsed Haridopolos, who dropped out of the race this summer.