Marco Rubio beats Gov. Charlie Crist by a 60-to-28 percent margin in a Republican Senate primary matchup, a Democratic polling firm says, but Rubio only has a 5-point lead over Democratic frontrunner Kendrick Meek in a hypothetical general election matchup.

The latest survey of 849 Florida voters by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling, which works primarily for Democratic candidates, shows former Florida House Speaker Rubio with a 44-to-39 percent lead over Miami U.S. Rep. Meek. Crist would beat Meek 46-to-33 percent, according to the poll.

If Crist were to run as an independent, the poll says, he’d finish second with 27 percent to Rubio’s 34 percent. Meek gets 25 percent in that scenario.

Gov. Charlie Crist said today he may veto a measure that would create a new public records exemption for 911 calls.

First Amendment advocates and some victims vigorously oppose the legislation, the brainchild of House Speaker Larry Cretul and other unidentified House GOP “leaders,” according to Cretul’s spokeswoman Jill Chamberlain.

Cretul believes the calls should be made secret to spare victims from reliving traumatic events when tapes of the emergency calls are broadcast.

But some victims, including the family of one of the most notorious 911-calls-gone wrong kidnap and murder victim Denise Amber Lee, want the calls to remain public to keep dispatchers and law enforcement officials accountable when they err.

Crist, whose first act after becoming governor in 2007 was to create the “Office of Open Government,” said he prefers greater openness and transparency.

“What we can learn after the fact many times with these 911 recordings can be beneficial to make sure that it’s done better in the future because you can discover mistakes or maybe better management practices that can be utilized in the application of 911,” Crist said this morning.

“It’s been a great thing for the people, a great thing for safety and it has saved a lot of lives. But if we keep those secret going forward, we might not be able to continue to learn from those experiences as to what might help people in the future,” he said.

The House Government Policy Accountability Council is slated to take up the measure (PCB GAP 10-3, PCB GAP 10-3A) tomorrow morning.

First, the good news: Florida’s fiscal forecast hasn’t changed much since the last time state economists met in December.

Now, the bad news: The state’s still facing about a $2.2 billion budget shortfall in its general revenue collections.

In December, the economists estimated about $22.5 billion in sales and other tax collections for 2010-2011.

Now, the legislature’s Bureau of Economic and Demographic Research is predicting that tax collections and other fees will bring in about $2.2 million less than the December projection, close to the Department of Revenue’s estimates that the collections will come in about $65.9 million short.

But Gov. Charlie Crist’s office is revising its estimate in the other direction, a reflection of the governor’s perennial optimism.

Crist’s budget gurus think the state will bring in $257.3 million more than they previously anticipated.

The revenue estimating conference will meet throughout the day and provide their final prognostications this afternoon.

But Gov. Charlie Crist’s office is showing about the about meeting with Gov. Charlie Crist’s budget gurus and the Department of Revenue’s economists

WEST PALM BEACH — After speaking to a packed Forum Club of the Palm Beaches lunch here today, once and possibly future Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney deflected questions about a 2012 White House run (he says he’ll think about his future after the November midterm elections) and punted on the Charlie Crist-Marco Rubio GOP Senate primary (”Usually I stay out of primaries”).

But Romney, in a brief sit-down with The Palm Beach Post, was a little more expansive in discussing his altercation last month with electro-hop artist Sky Blu on a plane waiting to take off from Vancouver.

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Santamaria

Damone

“He should have been here. It was disappointing,” Damone said of Santamaria.

Read more in this week’s Politics column.

Former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, who left office last year before finishing out his first term, has joined the board of directors of the state’s second largest utility.

Martinez, 63, was elected to Raleigh, N.C.-based Progress Energy’s board earlier this month.

Progress Energy operates Progress Energy Florida, which provides power to nearly 2 million customers in the Tampa Bay area. State utility regulators recently turned down the utility’s $500 million rate hike request.

Not a bad part-time gig for Martinez. The annual pay for outside directors like him is $80,000 including $30,000 towards a deferred compensation plan, according to the company’s federal SEC filings.

Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate in 2005, Martinez was the mayor of Orange County and was on the Orlando Utilities Commission. He’s been lobbying as a partner with the law firm DLA Piper since leaving office last year.

Martinez’s early retirement set off a political cascade in Florida and paved the way for Gov. Charlie Crist to take his place.

Crist appointed his own former chief of staff George LeMieux as a place-holder to fill in for Martinez until the November election. Crist is running in a GOP primary for the seat against former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

TALLAHASSEE — Palm Beach County Commissioner Jess Santamaria won’t be here this afternoon to talk with Gov. Charlie Crist’s staff about elevated childhood cancer rates in his commission district.

Santamaria said he wanted an extended sit-down with the governor himself to discuss the cancer cluster in The Acreage. Instead Santamaria was told he’d be one of several people talking to Crist aides with the possibility the governor might briefly drop by.

“There’s going to be eight or nine people in the room with the assistants of Gov. Crist and sometime in the 20 or 30 minutes, he’s going to drop in. That’s not the type of meeting I hoped to have,” Santamaria said this morning.

Instead, Santamaria said he’s been working with Sen. Bill Nelson’s office to try to assure more testing in The Acreage.

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State lawmakers are considering a bill that would make tapes of all 911 calls secret.

Opponents of the measure, including First Amendment watchdogs, say that the tapes are rarely requested but when they are released often reveal errors by 911 dispatchers that resulted in the deaths of callers seeking help.

Gov. Charlie Crist doesn’t think creating a new exemption for the emergency calls from the state’s broad open records laws is a good idea.

“No, I favor transparency why would they be taken off,” Crist said. “It’s always better when you shed light on any situation, whether it’s a 911 call, whether it’s public expenditures. No matter what it might be, transparency is always the right call.”

First Amendment Foundation President Barbara Petersen gave examples of 911 calls released to the public that revealed errors by 911 operators that resulted in the deaths of callers seeking help.

_ In Tampa, a 911 dispatcher didn’t follow procedure and as a result, the caller died.
- In Detroit, a 911 dispatcher chastised a small boy for “playing on the phone” while his mother was unconscious. When the police arrived, the mother was dead.

A Memphis 911 dispatcher fell asleep after asking “What’s your emergency?”

Supporters of the measure argue that victims may avoid getting aid through 911 because they are afraid recordings of the call may end up on the 6 p.m. news.

A House committee this morning delayed taking a vote on the measure (PCB 10-3).

“Ideology” was a bad word in Gov. Charlie Crist’s State of the State address, which called on lawmakers — and, indirectly, Republican voters in this year’s U.S. Senate primary — to elevate “problem-solving” over rigid adherence to ideological positions.

“During these very difficult economic times, we do a disservice to the people who elected us – the people who are counting on us – to elevate ideology over problem-solving,” Crist said.

Hasner: defends the I-word

House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, took issue with Crist’s stigmatizing of the I-word.

“I’m as much of a problem solver as anybody else in the legislature or anybody else who serves. But I come to solve problems based on my principles, based on the beliefs that I hold and that the people elected me to come and carry out,” Hasner said afterward.

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Senate President Jeff Atwater said he is more than willing to hand over his Republican Party of Florida-issued American Express credit card statements but that the party’s new chairman, Sen. John Thrasher, won’t do it.

Reporters asked Atwater, who is running statewide for chief financial officer, about the notorious AmEx spending that’s embroiled former House Speaker and U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio and former House Speaker Ray Sansom.

“I asked Chairman Thrasher if he would release the statements of the RPOF credit card that was assigned to me and he said no,” Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said. “He said he has his internal process going on…I have asked him and he has said no. That is the party’s card. It is not my card. I do not have the statements.”

When pressed about why Atwater did not request the statements, he insisted he could not.

“I’m not the card. That would be RPOF. It’s RPOF’s card. So if RPOF were to request those statements I assume they could get them. At this point, it is the party’s card. And I have asked the chairman would you release any card statements that were associated with me? I have no qualms about what anyone would see on that and he said no, we’re doing our process.”

Atwater had one of the AmEx cards while he was recruiting Republican Senate candidates and raising money for the party in 2007 and 2008. He says he used the card strictly for party-related business.

The cards, issued to an undisclosed group of top elected Republicans and party officials, have been a continuing source of embarrassment as details have emerged of lavish spending by former Chairman Jim Greer (including that $3,600 meal at Brasserie L’Escalier), indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom (his $173,000 in AmEx charges included a family trip to Europe and an $893 Starbucks tab) and former exec director Delmar Johnson ($133,763 in a single month last summer).

Rubio got his turn in the AmEx spotlight last week when someone, presumably a supporter of opponent Gov. Charlie Crist’s slumping GOP Senate bid, leaked records of Rubio’s $125,000 in charges from 2006 to 2008. No Greer-scale extravagances emerged, but the records showed a $133.75 visit to Churchill’s Barber Shop in Miami that Rubio said he paid himself.

Sen. Mike Haridopolos and Rep. Dean Cannon - on tap to be the next Senate President and House Speaker - aren’t coughing up their state GOP-issued credit card statements, the pair said in a press release today.

“While the media is now calling for the release of many of the Party’s internal financial records, it is our firm belief that the professional auditors should be allowed to do their job without the interference of a media circus surrounding the release of any records,” Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, and Cannon, R-Winter Park, said in the release.

The leaders-to-be issued the release after former House Speaker Marco Rubio’s American Express statements were leaked to the media earlier this week, causing embarrassment for Rubio’s U.S. Senate campaign and glee for his GOP primary opponent Gov. Charlie Crist.

Crist has said that the Republican Party of Florida books should be opened up because of questionable spending by RPOF staff. The party’s spending was among the reasons former state GOP boss Jim Greer was forced out last month.

New RPOF Chairman Sen. John Thrasher, R-Jacksonville, ordered an audit of the party’s books to begin on Monday.

But he won’t release the statements, either.

The Democratic National Committee released a second video highlighting U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio’s state GOP party-issued credit card spending when Rubio was Florida House Speaker.

The Dems’ attack ad is curious, however, because it appears to promote Rubio’s opponent Gov. Charlie Crist.

Interspersed with newsclips from MSNBC and FoxNews are interviews with Crist in which he criticizes Rubio’s AmEx spending and comments that if Rubio doesn’t like the flak, “That’s too bad. Welcome to the NFL.”

Rubio racked up nearly $110,000 on his Republican Party of Florida American Express card -including expenditures for items like Internet music, wine and repairs to his family mini-van - that are raising eyebrows on TV news shows nationwide.

The first ad is a take-off on the MasterCard “Priceless” marketing campaign. It also ends with the RPOF’s Tallahassee street address and advises watchers to send their credit card bills there.

It’s no secret that the Florida U.S. Senate race has captured the attention of the national media and is a crucial race for both parties.

But much of the focus has been on the GOP primary featuring Gov. Charlie Crist, who is leaving office after only one term to pursue the post, and former House Speaker Marco Rubio, the first Cuban-American speaker of the Florida House whose somber face ran on the cover of The New York Times Sunday magazine not long ago, prompting Crist’s campaign to dub him “New York Times Cover Boy.”

While Rubio and Crist slug it out (and it’s getting uglier every day), U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, the Democrat who will likely face off against one of them in November, has been busily stumping around the state gathering petition signatures in the hopes of becoming the first U.S. Senate candidate from Florida ever to qualify by petition.

Read today’s New York Times article on Meek here.

The Palm Beach Post’s Editorial Board met with Gov. Charlie Crist this morning.

A replay of the video will be available here early this afternoon, so check back.

In the meantime, recap Crist’s most notable quotes from his talk on Twitter @pbpOpinion.

Capitalizing on the scandal erupting over the state GOP’s credit card spending, national Democrats released a video take-off of the MasterCard “Priceless” television campaign.

The spoof highlights some of the Republican Party of Florida-issued credit card charges now-U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio made when Florida House Speaker, including $1,000 in repairs to his family mini-van.

“Getting your personal bills paid for by the Republican Party of Florida like Marco Rubio: Priceless,” the Democratic National Committee video mocks.

The state GOP may get some unwanted mail as a result of the “Priceless” satire.

“Want your bills paid for by the Republican Party of Florida? Just send them in. 420 E. Jefferson Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32301,” it concludes.

The DNC ad targets Rubio at a time when the once-long-shot candidate’s popularity is soaring while his GOP primary opponent Gov. Charlie Crist’s is on the wane.

The Florida Supreme Court overturned a death sentence for Alwin Tumblin, convicted of murdering a Ft. Pierce auto shop owner in 2004.

The 5-2 ruling also threw out all the convictions associated with the robbery and murder of Jimmy Johns and ordered a new trial for Tumblin.

It is the fifth death sentence the Supreme Court has thrown out in the past four years.

Justices Charles Canady and Ricky Polston, both appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist, dissented.

Tumblin’s accomplice Anthony Mayes testified against Tumblin and provided the only eyewitness testimony to the crimes. There was no DNA evidence linking Tumblin, then 25, to the murder.

The high court ruled that Tumblin’s previous trial should have ended in a mistrial because St. Lucie County Deputy Dennis Smith’s testimony that Mayes was telling the truth could have tainted the jury’s decision.

For more on this topic, read the TCoastTalk post, Supreme Court orders new trial for man convicted of Fort Pierce murder

Marco Rubio’s Senate campaign fired back at GOP primary rival Charlie Crist late Wednesday night following the release to the Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times of Rubio’s Republican Party of Florida credit card statements from 2005-2008. Rubio accuses Crist of trying to “change the subject” from his own record.

Unlike a letter Rubio released Wednesday night, the new video doesn’t address the specifics related to the RPOF American Express card — perhaps because it appears to have been shot months ago, at the same time Rubio was taping this video on health care reform.

Rubio: leads GOP race 54-36

Former Florida House speaker Rubio has a 54-to-36 percent lead over Crist in a poll of 442 likely Republican voters taken last Thursday — the day Rubio made a much-publicized speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

Crist: approval numbers slipping

Rubio had a 12-point lead in a late-January Rasmussen poll. Rubio and Crist were tied in December.

Gov. Charlie Crist for the second time ordered David Eugene Johnston to be put to death by lethal injection, decades after the Death Row inmate convicted of killing an elderly woman was first ordered to be executed.

Crist first ordered Johnston, now 49, to be put to death last year in April but the Florida Supreme Court stayed the execution until DNA tests could be done. Johnston has spent nearly 25 years on Death Row and is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on March 9 at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison in Starke.

Gov. Bob Martinez signed Johnston’s first death warrant in 1988 after he was sentenced to die for killing 84-year-old Mary Hammond in Orlando.

Johnston appealed that order on a variety of issues, including a claim that he is severely mentally ill.

The DNA tests taken from Hammond’s fingernail clippings could not exclude Johnston as a contributor of the DNA.

The high court ruled last month that the new evidence, including the DNA test results, would not have exonerated him and denied his request for a new trial. And the court ruled that, while Johnston may be mentally ill, he is not mentally retarded and thus can still be executed.

Rubio

And he’s hoping to return to Washington in January as a Republican U.S. Senator.

But Rubio, who has pulled ahead of GOP primary rival Charlie Crist in the polls, will pledge in his speech to thousands of conservative activists that he’ll come to Washington to combat big government and “not be co-opted by it.”

A few advance excerpts of Rubio’s speech after the jump…..

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