A proposed $69.2 billion state budget, which pulls millions of dollars from health care programs and pours them into public schools, cleared the House on Thursday over opposition from outnumbered Democrats.

 A year after slashing classroom spending by $1.3 billion, the House is making an election-year reversal — looking to replenish $1 billion. But where ruling Republicans find the money fractured the House along partisan lines.

The measure was approved 79-38. With the Senate expected to complete its budget next week, the two sides are poised to spend the session’s closing month hammering out differences.

The Senate follows a similar course as the House – proposing $1.3 billion more for public schools, while sharply scaling back health and human services spending. But the approach frustrated Democrats, who said cuts ran too deep, and the school money is not enough.

“Florida may be a great place to visit,” said Rep. Mark Pafford, D-West Palm Beach. “But if you’re in the middle class, it stinks to live here right now.”

Veteran Tallahassee legislator Al Lawson, a Democrat, intends to run for Congress again, this time with the help of the GOP.

“Big Al” said he is going to make another stab at the Congressional seat now held by U.S. Rep. Steve Southerland, a tea party Republican who ousted long-time Democratic Congressman Allen Boyd in 2010.

After being termed out of the Senate in 2010, Lawson lost in a brutal primary by about 2,000 votes to Boyd, who held the seat for 16 years before losing to Southerland.

But the maps drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature, slated to be voted out of the Senate this week and sent on their way to Attorney General Pam Bondi and ultimately the courts for review, may give Lawson (and other Democrats) a leg up against the incumbent from Panama City.

Five GOP-leaning counties that helped Southerland get to Washington – Okaloosa, Walton, Dixie, Lafayette and Suwannee – will no longer be in the District 2 North Florida seat if the maps withstand Department of Justice scrutiny and expected legal challenges.

Lawson said one of the reasons he’s running again is because he didn’t like what Southerland said after Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot last summer. Southerland suggested his $174,000-a-year Congressional salary wasn’t worth the safety risks and the time away from his family and funeral home business.

“Throughout my political career, I’ve always fought hard for workers, for economic development and jobs for this district. And this Southerland complained about his $174,000 salary that was taking away from his business,” Lawson, who served in the Florida House and Senate for nearly three decades, said in a telephone interview. Lawson said he intends to formally file to run for the seat next week.

“He seems to be more concerned about the tea party than concerned about his distict where you have high unemployment, and people need somebody to fight for them in Congress. I have a 28-year history of doing that and it’s something the people need,” Lawson said. “I just need to retire him. And let him go back to the funeral home business.”

Lawson could face another veteran state lawmaker in what may be a crowded primary. Nancy Argenziano, a former Republican who switched to become an independent, wants to run as a Democrat for the seat. But she can’t because of a provision included in an election law (controversial for other reasons) approved by lawmakers last year and signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott in June. That provision bars candidates from switching parties one year before the qualifying period for the general election begins, meaning the candidate must be registered in the party for nearly 18 months before the 2012 November election. Argenziano, who served in both the state House and Senate and also as the chairwoman of the Florida Public Service Commission, is challenging that part of the election law in court.

State Rep. Leonard Bembry, a Greenville Democrat and Boyd look-alike, also intends to run for the seat.

Gov. Rick Scott acknowledged Tuesday that he’s been lobbied by Florida members of Congress on the redistricting plan expected to be sent his way soon.

But the Republican governor didn’t want to mention any names.

“Oh, I don’t think anybody wants me to talk about any of those conversations,” Scott said, when asked if U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation, was among those contacting him.

West last week announced that he would leave his battleground congressional district, straddling Palm Beach and Broward counties, to run this year in a proposed new district, which includes Martin and St. Lucie counties, and part of Palm Beach.

West’s decision emerged as part of a GOP three-step dance – touched off by U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, who said he’d run in a newly drawn, mostly rural and interior Florida district.

Former House majority leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton completed the moves by announcing he was abandoning his U.S. Senate run to run in the district that West was exiting.

House and Senate redistricting leaders say they have kept their distance from members of Congress, mostly in an effort to comply with constitutional amendments approved by voters in 2010, which ban new electoral boundaries from favoring incumbents or parties.

Scott, though, said at least some in Florida’s delegation have reached out directly to the executive office. While Scott isn’ authorized to act on legislative maps, he can veto the congressional plan.

“I’ll review it when I get it,” Scott said of the congressional proposal. “I’ve had a few phone calls from some people that have had questions about it. My response is, ‘send me what your proposal is, and I’ll review it at the time.’

Senate Reapportionment Chairman Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, said Scott’s contacts with unnamed members of Congress doesn’t strike him as out of line — or unconstitutional.

“Any citizen is entitled to petition their government for the redress of grievances,” Gaetz said.

Supporters of President Barack Obama can rub elbows with the candidate at two fundraisers in Coral Gables later this month.

Obama will be at a luncheon at 1 p.m. at the swank Biltmore Hotel on Feb. 23, and Democratic money-man Chris Korge will host a dinner reception at 4 p.m. at his home later that night. Korge, a prominent lawyer and real estate developer, was an early Obama supporter four years ago.

“There are a limited number of tickets available. Please do not wait to purchase these tickets as they are expected to sell out quickly,” the e-mailed invitation reads.

In partyline votes, the House on Friday approved redrawn boundaries for legislative and congressional districts — sending the maps back to the Senate, which is expected to sign-off on the proposal next week.

The move came with few fireworks. But it did include efforts by ruling Republicans and outnumbered Democrats to set some legal standards for redistricting’s upcoming course through the courts.

Spanning seven hours of debate over two days, Democrats basically charged the proposed maps again pack minority voters into select districts, “bleaching” surrounding seats to make them more likely to elect Republican lawmakers. Democrats say maps were flawed early, when Republicans sought to maintain current minority access districts.

House Redistricting Committee Chairman Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, denied the allegation.

“The last thing we would ever want to do is pack, and there is none of that in any way, shape or form,” Weatherford said.

Weatherford also blistered Democrats for listening more to legal advice than judging the merits of the maps.

“If a decision is based on politics, and if you’re pushing the red button because an attorney told you to, I can’t respect that,” Weatherford said.

Redrawn legislative and congressional district maps, which Democrats say will unfairly maintain Florida’s Republican dominance,  are readied for a final vote Friday in the state House.

Redistricting Chairman Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, withstood hours of questioning Thursday from Democrats. He denied that new electoral boundaries were drawn to help or hurt incumbents, or assure that Republicans retain control of the Legislature or congressional delegation.

“At no point, were these maps drawn with any political intent,” Weatherford said.

But the Democrats are clearly looking to build a legal case against the maps, which must be reviewed by the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Justice Department, to assure minority-voting rights are protected.

The House is poised to vote Friday, sending the plans back to the Senate for final action, probably next week. The courts would then begin their work.

Here’s the rest of the story: http://bit.ly/yaNwA4

House redistricting maps slated for a vote this week put a number of incumbent Republicans in tough spots, including U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation.

But the chairman of the House Redistricting Committee, Rep. Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, fired off a statement Monday refuting lingering speculation that West was being singled out.

In both the House and Senate congressional plans, West loses a Republican-leaning section of his district in northern Palm Beach County to the seat now held by fellow Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta.

Rooney’s brother, Patrick, is a Republican state representative from West Palm Beach. The Rooney family’s ownership of  Palm Beach Kennel Club also has positioned them as political players in Tallahassee for decades.

“There are rumors that the Florida Legislature has targeted Congressman Allen West,” Weatherford said Monday. “This is patently false. I personally have supported and endorsed Allen West. I will continue to support this extraordinary member of Congress who has brought a much needed conservative voice to Washington, D.C.

“However, my personal support cannot and will not trump the Constitution,” Weatherford said, pointing out that the redistricting effort is guided by a range of state and federal standards.

West apparently doesn’t feel he’s getting the short end of the stick from state lawmakers. West’s chief of staff, Jonathan Blyth, told the Post last month his boss is taking a long view of the redistricting proposals, which may undergo further changes following eventual court reviews.

“This is the second minute of the first round of a boxing match,” Blyth said, when the House congressional maps surfaced and bore a strong resemblance to those out of the Senate.

While West loses a key piece of Palm Beach County, the redistricting plans push him deeper into Democratic-leaning Broward County.

Rooney’s district is reduced from a rambling eight counties to a more manageable four, under both the House and Senate proposals. But while still Republican-leaning, Rooney’s district doesn’t clearly favor the GOP, since it also acquires large portions of St. Lucie County that backed Barack Obama in 2008.

Organizations which backed the voter-approved constitutional amendments guiding redistricting Friday blasted proposed maps slated to be voted on later in the day by the House Redistricting Committee.

In a 12-page letter to House Redistricting chief Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, former state Sen. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat serving as legal counsel to Fair Districts supporters, effectively urged lawmakers to scrap the plans they’ve been working on.

The League of Women Voters, Common Cause and the National Council of La Raza have submitted an alternate approach to district maps that Weatherford today plans to introduce as an amendment to the House plan.

 The alternate proposal would “nest” three House districts within the 40-seat state Senate plan, making the boundaries more compact and logical for voters, Gelber said in his letter.

Congressional districts also would meander less, under the proposal. House, Senate and congressional maps recommended by the groups also would lean less Republican and prove more reflective of a state where registered voters are closely divided, with Democrats still holding a 500,000-voter edge.

“In sum, we believe that we have provided the committee with alternative proposals that comply with the Fair Districts amendments, while the proposals currently under consideration by the committee and those already passed by the Senate fail to comply with those amendments,” leaders of the organizations concluded in the letter to Weatherford.

The alternate maps likely stand little chance of being approved today.

But the letter lays out what could emerge as the central argument against the legislative maps when Florida’s redistricting effort advances for review to the state Supreme Court and U.S. Justice Department in coming weeks, and when Fair Districts advocate file an expected legal challenge.

The House’s push to meet Gov. Rick Scott’s demand for $1 billion more in school spending came into sharper focus Tuesday, as a budget panel unveiled about $300 million in health and humans services cuts aimed at freeing-up dollars for classrooms.

Emergency room visits would be limited to a dozen per-year for adults in the state’s Medicaid program, while chiropractic and podiatry services for some 34,000 mostly low-income and elderly Floridians would be eliminated under the House’s approach, which cleared the Health Care budget subcommittee on a 10-4 vote, with Democrats opposed.

Chairman Matt Hudson, R-Naples, said House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, had hinted that cuts in many programs would be needed to meet a goal of pumping more money into public schools this election year — blunting a $1.3 billion cut schools weathered last year.

“He certainly is going to make sure we spend money on people over things,” Hudson said. “And students are certainly a priority for the speaker.

“ I would anticipate that when the other budgets roll out, you’ll see they’re a collective package in that we will be very aggressive in making sure that not only are we meeting the health care needs, but we are meeting the education needs.”

Democrats, however, urged that Republican leaders find more deft ways to make budget reductions. Eliminating some routine health coverage completely for some of the frailest Floridians can result in the state absorbing costs elsewhere.

Several college students who said they received $1,200-a-month from the state as part of the Department of Children & Families’ ‘road-to-independence’ program for youngsters who have been in foster care, argued against another House plan to cut the program’s maximum eligibility age to 21 — down from the current age 23.

The change would save about $10 million, but eliminate 657 people from the program.

Those who testified Tuesday before the committee recalled childhoods spent cycling through foster homes and schools before setting themselves on a path to college and a professional future only with the help of mentoring and the program’s cash.

“It’d be absolutely devastating to end these services at age 21, just when people are getting their feet under them,” said Andrea Cowart, 22, of Dunedin, who attends St. Petersburg College.

Cowart said she was in foster care for almost seven years and attended 10 to 15 schools. She had dropped out of high school her freshman year and had a child at age 17. Motherhood, she said, changed her course — but only with the financial help from the state program.

“It made what was impossible, possible to me,” she said.

 

Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich said Friday that she will not propose alternative maps next week when the Republican-controlled chamber is expected to approve new boundaries for congressional and Senate districts.

Rich said outnumbered Democrats will take their chances that judges — who get to review the redistricting plans — will find the GOP-led effort unconstitutional.

“The court will have the last word,” Rich said.

Earlier this week, Rich said she planned to introduce a Senate Democratic plan modeled heavily on proposals already unveiled by the League of Women Voters, Democracia USA and Common Cause, which slightly reduce the minority voting populations in several districts now represented by black lawmakers.

Rich accused Republicans of “packing” Democrats into districts under the plans now before the Senate. She said the approach violates the voter-approved Amendments 5 and 6, measures, supported by most Democratic legislators and allied groups. The amendments bar district lines from being drawn that help a party or incumbents.

But Rich’s plan to unveil a map as a floor amendment was criticized by Republican senators, who said the move didn’t allow time for the revamped plan to be reviewed. More telling, though, may have been that Rich drew resistence from a few fellow Democrats — with Sen. Larcenia Bullard, D-Miami, critical of any effort that would reduce minority voting strength.

In explaining her decision to drop plans to propose maps, Rich said Friday that in debate before the Senate Reapportionment Committee earlier this week, ”there was so much vitriol, I didn’t want to see that happen on the Senate floor.”  

 

Florida Republicans are narrowing their voter registration gap with Democrats as presidential primary season opens.

The state party said Friday that in December, there were 502,861 more registered Democrats than Republicans in Florida, a roughly 4.5 million to 4 million separation. But the margin is down from a 580,666 difference when 2011 opened — a 77,805 shift in the GOP’s favor.

Earlier this week was the deadline for Republicans to register to vote in Florida’s Jan. 31 primary, the nation’s largest, early nominating contest. The Florida Division of Elections said it will be Jan. 17 before it releases final voter totals for the primary.

“RPOF is working at the grassroots level to bring new voters, Democrats, and independent voters into our party,” said Chairman Lenny Curry. “We are also letting former Republicans know we want them to come back and join us to get Florida and the nation back on the path to prosperity.”

 

 

House Redistricting Chairman Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, has reached an accord with Senate counterpart Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, on redrawing political boundaries for the Legislature.

The Senate this week unveiled plans only for the Senate and Congress. And the House next week will follow suit with proposals that rework lines only for Florida’s congressional seats and the House.

 In other words, the House will accept senators’ proposals for redrawing their own boundaries — and the House expects the Senate to accept its proposal for reshaping those districts. Only the state’s congressional lines would be subject to competing plans from the two chambers, under this approach.

Weatherford made the deal known Friday in a letter to members of the House’s redistricting panels. The House proposals are slated to be showcased Tuesday.

Florida Democrats said Thursday they’ve added a new honoree to their ‘Rickpublican’ hall of fame — Senate President Mike Haridopolos.

The Melbourne Republican gets the nod for recently acknowledging in a deposition that he tried to mislead a reporter months back when he was asked whether he agreed to give former Florida GOP Chair Jim Greer a lucrative severance package for leaving the party post. The deal fell apart, and Greer’s facing felony charges for allegedly directing thousands of dollars in party funds to an account he controlled.

“Backroom dealings and outright lies are a go-to in the Florida GOP playbook. While Haridopolos might not be able to remember much, he clearly hasn’t forgotten how to avoid the truth,” said Democratic Party executive director Scott Arceneaux.

In the deposition taken by Greer lawyers last month, Haridopolos said he was  “not telling the whole story” when he described what he knew of  the severance.

Haridopolos is among the first to be enshrined in the ‘hall.’ But with eyes on next year’s election season, state Democrats unveiled the website www.rickpublicans.com  in October to taunt state Republicans by tying them to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, whose poll numbers have languished most of this year. 

 

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.

Democrats unleashed an attack ad – “Trapped” – targeting Mitt Romney in his bid to unseat President Barack Obama. The movie trailer-style TV ad portrays Romney’s political career as “the story of two men trapped in one body” and directs viewers to a longer, online ad entitled “Mitt v. Mitt”

The ads characterize the former Massachusetts governor “for what he truly is: a flip-flopper, a candidate without core beliefs, and someone who’s simply without conviction,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters on a conference call this morning.

“The American people appreciate that there are many different points of view in our diverse nation. That is something that people expect. They just don’t expect one candidate to espouse all of them,” Wasserman Schultz, a Congresswoman from Weston, said.

Democrats are feverishly portraying Romney, in Florida on fundraising sweep tonight and tomorrow, as inconsistent in an effort to peel off support from conservative GOP voters with six weeks until Republicans begin choosing their nominee. They’re targeting Romney although recent polls show Newt Gingrich at the top of the GOP pack.

The DNC ad, showing contradictory clips of Romney on health care and abortion, is running in Albuquerque, N.M., Raleigh, N.C., Columbus, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Washington.

“From the creator of `I’m running for office for Pete’s sake,’ comes the story of two men trapped in one body,” the ad says.

The four-minute video, entitled “Mitt versus Mitt,” also includes clips of Romney reversing his positions on issues.

Former state Sen. Dave Aronberg says he’s still doing some “due diligence” before deciding whether to challenge Palm Beach County State Attorney Michael McAuliffe in a 2012 Democratic primary.

McAuliffe’s consultant says he expects Aronberg to run, while many party bigs say they are hoping to avoid a primary that county Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel says would be “heartbreaking.”

Read about it in this week’s Politics column.

A new report from a nationwide campaign watchdog shows spending by shadowy independent political organizations has spiked in Florida, with one Tampa address serving as home for many of these cash machines.

The National Institute on Money in State Politics found that political spending by electioneering communications organizations (ECOs), sometimes dubbed 527 committees, has climbed 53 percent from 2006 to 2010 in Florida.

During last year’s elections, $48.2 million was spent by groups, with the largest being Gov. Rick Scott’s own Let’s Get to Work ECO, which poured $17.5 million into helping him defeat Democrat Alex Sink.

In federal races, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year in the Citizens United case helped kick the door open for corporate spending. Florida already allowed business interests to contribute in state races, so the ruling hasn’t directly affected elections for the Legislature, governor or Cabinet posts.

But Florida corporations are increasingly anteing up big bets in state races — behind the cover of vaguely named organizations, the institute report shows.

“Nearly 300 independent spending committees have been created since 2005, with innocuous names like ‘Let’s Get To Work,’ ‘Florida’s Working Families,’ and ‘Floridians for Truth and Integrity in Government,’ with little or no identifying information,” according to the report. “Yet many of these committees are registered to a small group of people. Of the $96.8 million of total independent spending during the study period, $38.8 million, 40 percent of the overall total, was routed through ECOs controlled by just four individuals.”

Nancy Watkins is one of those guiding the cash. The Tampa accountant’s office at 610 South Boulevard is the address for 88 different political committees.

The institute’s report is here: http://bit.ly/sjK3Gj

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.