HOLLYWOOD — U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, is endorsing state Sen. Dave Aronberg in the competitive Democratic primary for attorney general.

Deutch served in the Florida Senate with both Aronberg and his Democratic primary rival, state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach. Deutch cited Aronberg’s work on consumer issues and called him “a fighter for people who need it. Right now, the citizens of the state of Florida need someone who is going to fight for them.”

In a tight race between two South Florida Democrats with similar stands on issues and a similar lack of statewide name recognition, Aronberg called the Deutch endorsement “a big moment in the campaign.”

Deutch announced the endorsement at the Florida Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner gathering.

The dinner itself is this evening, but the Westin Diplomat hotel has been a Democratic Who’s Who all day with a variety of meetings and receptions that will continue Sunday morning.

State Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, picked up the endorsement of the 36,000-member Florida Police Benevolent Association for his Democratic primary against state Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach.

Aronberg also snagged the Dem primary endorsement of the state Fraternal Order of Police last fall.

The PBA also endorsed Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp in the Republican primary for attorney general.

In addition to its attorney general primary endorsements, the PBA issued three endorsements for the general election: Democrats Alex Sink for governor and Loranne Ausley for chief financial officer and Republican Adam Putnam for commissioner of agriculture.

Democratic state Sen. and attorney general candidate Dave Aronberg called Florida’s statutory ban on adoptions by gays and lesbians “immoral” and said he would not defend the law if he were Florida’s AG.

Aronberg also told The Palm Beach Post editorial board he’d discontinue Attorney General Bill McCollum’s “frivolous” lawsuit challenging the federal health care overhaul.

A Miami-Dade circuit judge in 2008 declared the state’s ban on gay adoptions unconstitutional and the state is now pursuing an appeal with the 3rd District Court of Appeal. The next step for whichever side loses is the Florida Supreme Court.

“If the 3rd DCA rules against the state, then the state would have to decide to appeal. And I would not appeal,” Aronberg said.

Aronberg’s rival in the Democratic attorney general primary, state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach, is also a vocal critic of the gay adoption ban and the health care lawsuit. Gelber said he, too, would not pursue an appeal of the adoption ban and would drop the health care challenge.

UPDATE: The Senate approved the abortion amendment by a 22-17 vote.

Florida GOP Senate leader Andy Gardiner tacked a controversial anti-abortion amendment onto a health care bill on the floor this morning, an identical measure that died on a 20-20 vote two years ago.

The proposal would require women seeking an abortion to have an ultrasound in the first trimester, already required for pregnant women in the second trimester. The women would also have to look at the ultrasound unless she has proof that she has been raped or is a domestic violence victim.

The decidedly more conservative Senate will likely approve the contentious amendment this time around.

Moderate Republican Jim King, who voted on the winning “no” side, passed away last summer and was replaced by conservative John Thrasher.

Ted Deutch, a Boca Raton Democrat who also helped kill the bill, is now in Congress.

And Republicans have easily shot down a number of amendments offered by Democrats trying to water down the Gardiner proposal, indicating the bill would pass.

But they may not take a full vote on the measure (HB 1143) today, and the House would have to approve the changes for it to pass and head to Gov. Charlie Crist.

Sen. Dan Gelber, who was in the House two years ago, objected that no committee had fully vetted the proposal before it arose today on the floor.

Gelber, who is running for attorney general, gave a heated argument against the amendment after offering several of his own that failed.

“You are go to put in Florida law a provision that requires a victim of a rape to actually tell someone she was raped, to get proof of the rape before she can be excused by the state of Florida from getting an ultrasound. How wrong is that,” said Gelber, D-Miami Beach. “Shame on the state of Florida.”

Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a campaign finance measure pushed by GOP lawmakers that would have given powerful legislative leaders the ability to open “leadership funds” to influence elections.

Crist said in his veto letter that the accounts, done away with by lawmakers more than two decades ago, “allowed legislative leaders to solicit and accept campaign contributions during the legislative session from lobbyists and interest groups outside of the public view.”

The bill (HB 1207) also would have shed light on electioneering communications organizations, or ECOs, that advertise against candidates or issues without having to identify who they are.

Crist, who is running for U.S. Senate, liked that part of the proposal and asked lawmakers to send him back a revised version.

Democrats praised Crist’s veto while his partisan colleagues blasted it.

“If Governor Crist was serious about giving the people of Florida real election reform and providing accountability for the campaign activity of leaders in the Legislature and at the state’s political parties, he would have made this the law of our great state,” Senate Majority Leader Alex Diaz de la Portilla said in a statement.

“Instead, the veto indicates he may be more interested in protecting the status quo and scoring points in his quest for higher office, than he is in providing the people of Florida real and meaningful election reforms,” Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, said.

But Sen. Dan Gelber lauded Crist’s action.

“It was the right thing to do. Floridians are tired of the shenanigans that are increasingly defining state government. The bill was a step in the wrong direction, and I think Gov. Crist recognized so. We need to put an end to cash register politics, not enable it,” Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said in a statement. Gelber is running statewide for attorney general.

House and Senate Democratic leaders want the state auditor general to investigate Attorney General Bill McCollum after he filed a lawsuit challenging the federal health care reforms approved by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama.

Democrats accuse McCollum, a Republican who is running for governor, of using his office as the state’s chief legal eagle to promote his candidacy for governor.

“When a state official can deploy not only the vast resources of his office, but hire outside counsel at taxpayer expense to try and block millions of Floridians from finally getting access to health care, it’s time to stop and demand some accountability,” Senate Democratic Leader Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, said at a press conference this afternoon. “When the same state official, who happens to be a Republican, leads the charge on a national Republican mission to use health care reform as a rally cry in the upcoming elections, it’s time this legislature stops and asks how much in taxpayer money is being diverted from critical issues to advance a political agenda.”

The Dems complained that McCollum should be protecting consumers by going after pill mills and mortgage foreclosures and instead is using state funds to appeal to conservative Republican voters with the lawsuit.

“This is…for the rank political ambitions of the candidate,” Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said. Gelber is running for attorney general in a Democratic primary against Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres.

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Sen. Dan Gelber, a Democrat running for attorney general, sparked a mini-debate on the national health care package after he accused Attorney General Bill McCollum of political gamesmanship by filing a federal lawsuit over the reforms.

Gelber filed an amendment on an attorney general-related bill that would bar the AG from hiring private lawyers to challenge the constitutionality of the federal health reform act.

In what sounded a lot like a campaign speech of his own, Gelber accused McCollum, a Republican running for governor, of using his office to launch a headline-grabbing “ideological escapade” and “political frolic” to boost his popularity.

“This is nothing other than a political fraud,” Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said. “Yes, the the attorney general may have been the first one (to file the lawsuit). But he had a press conference every single day on this. It was nothing but a political issue…
The question we should ask ourselves is why is the attorney general…on this political frolic whose only purpose is to simply get headlines? It is wrong.”

McCollum is simply trying to “defend us from a mandate that has never before in the history of our country been done wherein we have to purchase insurance and if we don’t we have some kind of statutory violation,” said Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, the bill (SB 712) sponsor.

Thrasher said that if the attorney general stops defending the rights of Floridians, “then we ought to get a new one.”

“I share your view that we ought to get rid of the current attorney general if that’s what you just said,” Gelber quipped.

Gelber’s amendment failed, but the state senator-attorney general candidate debate didn’t stop there.
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Sheriff Morris Young of Gadsden County announced today he’s backing state Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, in the Democratic primary for attorney general.

Young is the 13th Florida sheriff to endorse Aronberg, who has sought to boost his law enforcement cred against primary rival Dan Gelber, a state Senator from Miami Beach who is a former federal prosecutor.

Aronberg’s sheriff endorsements include Palm Beach County’s Ric Bradshaw and St. Lucie County’s Ken Mascara and the sheriffs of Calhoun, Jackson, Citrus, Hamilton, Wakulla, Alachua, Glades, Hendry, Baker and Bradford counties.

Attorney General Bill McCollum said today that the state will not join a federal whistleblower lawsuit against a PVC pipe manufacturer accused of selling millions of dollars of faulty water and sewer lines to local governments on projects around the country.

McCollum said his office agreed with the U.S. Justice Department that the case is without merit.

“After we looked at it, we concluded the same thing. So we chose not to join in this one,” McCollum, who is running in a GOP primary against Sen. Paula Dockery for governor, said.

McCollum has a team of lawyers looking into about 150 whistleblower – or qui tam – lawsuits at any given time, he said.

McCollum said his office will announce its involvement in a similar case within a few days “but not this one.”

State Sen. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat running to replace McCollum, asked the attorney general yesterday to join four other states and dozens of cities, counties and water districts in the whistleblower suit filed in federal court in California.

Gelber bristled at McCollum’s reason for not joining the suit.

“That’s perplexing to me. Is the AG’s position that Florida won’t initiate an action unless the federal government does? I can’t believe that that is their position because that defeats the purpose of having your own attorney general who can vindicate the rights of your citizens,” Gelber said. “You must have got his quote wrong because no attorney general would cede the right of their citizens in that manner.”

A former employee of the company alleges that the pipes, used for sewer and water lines and supposed to last up to 50 years, leak and break as quickly as the first year of use and can rupture and explode.

Court documents show that Florida was among the governments initially involved in the lawsuit in 2006.

The allegedly faulty pipe was used in a Ft. Pierce project in 2003.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs claim that it will cost millions of dollars for local governments to dig up and replace the faulty sewer and water lines at a time when they can least afford it.