Pam Wohlschlegel, the director of the Palm Beach County chapter of the South Florida Tea Party, has resigned, saying she disagrees with Chairman Everett Wilkinson‘s recent declaration that Republican House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan ‘s Medicare overhaul plan is a “public policy nightmare.”
Wohlschlegel, who helped organize tea party events and groups in Palm Beach County but didn’t have a policy-setting role, announced her resignation via an e-mail this evening that doesn’t cite specific reasons for her departure. She revealed more in an interview.
“If it were my organization, I would not speak for the organization without taking a poll and I don’t necessarily think that his positions on such things as E-Verify and his latest position on Paul Ryan, I don’t think it necessarily reflects the feelings of all the members of the organization,” Wohlschlegel said.
In addition to opposing the Ryan plan, which is popular with many in the tea party movement, Wilkinson bucked tea party sentiment by opposing a bill to require that businesses use the federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers.
Wilkinson said his criticism of the Ryan budget plan, sent late Thursday night in a “Dear Patriots” e-mail and later posted on the South Florida Tea Party website, “was in my name, it was not in the name of the tea party in general.”
South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson broke with many in the tea party movement by slamming House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan‘s Medicare overhaul plan as a “public policy nightmare” that could lead to “huge Democratic wins in 2012.”
Wilkinson said today he chatted with some high-profile foes of the Ryan plan — Donald Trump, Trump friend and adviser Roger Stone, and political strategist and Fox News analyst Dick Morris – as well as well-placed supporters of it before forming an opinion and weighing in against the Ryan plan.
Trump courted tea party support while weighing a GOP presidential bid and headlined an April 16 South Florida Tea Party rally in Boca Raton. The city and Wilkinson are still at odds over an outstanding bill of more than $6,000 for barriers and police officers deployed for the event.
South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson says he’s “disgusted at the political attacks” against his group over an outstanding bill of more than $6,000 from an April 15 rally in Boca Raton that featured Donald Trump.
Wilkinson is questioning the city’s claim that his group owes more than $3,000 for barriers put up around Sanborn Square and more than $3,000 for police officers assigned to the event. He says “various elements in the city” are trying to damage his group’s reputation.
Wilkinson said tea partyers budgeted about $3,000 for the rally, but costs mushroomed once Trump was announced as the keynote speaker and allowances were made for bigger crowds.
With the city of Boca Raton saying the South Florida Tea Party owes more than $6,000 for police and barricades used at an April Donald Trump rally, South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson says his group is seeking clarification for some of the charges and will come up with whatever it owes.
“We’re working on paying it,” Wilkinson says. “We don’t have the money right now, but we’re good at paying our bills.”
With Rick Scott poised to sign into law a new state budget, the focus Thursday morning remains on whether the first-year governor might also be out to set a new state record.
Scott has said — without providing details — that he plans to veto portions of the $69.7 billion spending plan approved earlier this month by lawmakers.
Tea party activists are expected to form a large share of the audience at today’s signing ceremony. And leading lawmakers think Scott could make a political statement by axing hundreds of millions of dollars in proposed spending.
Could he top former Gov. Charlie Crist’s $459.2 million record for vetoes?
“That wouldn’t surprise me,” said Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, chairman of the Senate’s Health and Human Services budget committee. “I think there’s a real possibility that the veto amount exceeds $459 million.”
The budget approved by lawmakers cuts $2.6 billion from schools, health and social service programs, bringing per-pupil funding to its lowest level in six years, while imposing deep cuts to hospitals, nursing homes and HMOs. Some economists warn the spending plan, which takes effect July 1, could slow the state’s recovery by adding more Floridians to the jobless ranks.
But among conservative tea party voters, who helped vault Scott to a narrow victory over Democratic opponent Alex Sink last fall, the Legislature’s spending plan is a failure.
“We were all disappointed that the House and Senate came out with a much higher budget than Gov. Scott proposed,” said Robin Stublen, a leader of the Charlotte County Tea Party, who helped draw supporters to Thursday’s signing event at The Villages, the Central Florida retirement community.
“But I think (Scott) will do what he thinks is right,” Stublen added. “He’s not concerned with his poll numbers or his next election.”
Even as Florida State University administrators work to stiff-arm critics over the school’s $1.5 million donation from conservative titan Charles Koch, Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday added a couple prominent Republican leaders to its board of trustees.
Scott named former House Speaker Allan Bense of Panama City and Joe Gruters, chairman of the Sarasota Republican Party, and a recent candidate for state GOP boss, to the school’s board. Bense served as the state party’s finance chairman last year.
Both also are Noles.
But FSU President Eric Barron has been pushing back hard against criticism that the school has compromising its values — and strayed into the world of right-wing politics — with the contribution from Koch. The part-time Palm Beach resident’s cash will help pay for positions in the university’s economics department.
Koch, a part-owner of Koch Industries, is a prominent libertarian who has helped finance such organizations as Americans for Prosperity which, in turn, have served as a touchstone for the tea party movement.
The Senate Budget Committee, on its final day of hearings, rewrote portions of the measure (CS/SB 2078), before delaying a vote. But when the committee adjourned without a final vote, budget chief J.D. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, said that was the last lawmakers should expect to see of the proposal.
“We are disappointed, but we remain committed to working with the governor and Legislature to address Florida’s future energy needs,” said FPL spokeswoman Jackie Anderson.
Florida utilities, heavy contributors to both political parties, would have been allowed to tack on an additional charge – without prior approval by state regulators – to cover their costs of building solar and biomass energy plants or buying renewable energy from producers.
For FPL’s 4 million customers, mostly in South Florida, the Juno Beach-based utility’s $206.1 million share could mean an extra $2.40-a-month on average, or $28.80 annually, to encourage the use of alternate sources to oil-, gas-, coal-, or nuclear power.
Supporters said the move, sponsored by first-year Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Wellington, chair of the Senate’s Communications, Energy and Public Utilities Committee, would create jobs in the burgeoning renewable industry. Critics said the extra charge is a giveaway, especially to FPL which last year was denied most of a $1.25 billion rate hike by the Florida Public Service Commission.
While utilities are potent political forces, Benacquisto’s bill ran into tea party opposition. Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group founded by Palm Beach oil billionaire David Koch and a force in conservative politics, ran a full-page newspaper advertisement in the Tallahassee Democrat critical of the legislation.
Gov. Rick Scott also said he was wary of giving utilities the go-ahead to raise rates without regulatory oversight.
The liberal group MoveOn, labor unions and other groups are organizing tax day protests around the nation today — including events in 14 Florida cities — to accuse corporations of not paying their fair share of taxes.
Gary Coronado/Palm Beach Post
One “Fight For Florida” rally is planned for 3:15 p.m. outside a Bank of America office on East Palmetto Park Road in Boca Raton, with a follow-up event in nearby Sanborn Square. Sanborn Square is where more than 2,000 people showed up Saturday for a South Florida Tea Party rally headlined by Donald Trump.
Find a full list of Fight For Florida events after the jump….
Donald Trump and Amy Hair share the stage at Saturday's tea party rally in Boca Raton.
Donald Trump can be hard to interpret.
Is his flirtation with a 2012 presidential run for real, or a bid to promote himself and The Celebrity Apprentice?
Is he the soak-the-rich populist who advocated a 14.25 percent “wealth tax” and universal health care in 2000 or the no-tax-hikes conservative who has vowed to repeal the new federal health care law?
Lantana resident Amy Hair says Trump is easier to understand than most politicians when it comes to her area of expertise. Read about it in this week’s Politics column.
Donald Trump will headline a South Florida Tea Party rally in Boca Raton on April 16, the group’s chairman, Everett Wilkinson, confirmed this afternoon.
Part-time Palm Beacher Trump has been flirting with a 2012 run for president.
“I think he’s serious,” Wilkinson said. “This I think shows that he wants to talk to the average person and see how they feel about him running for president.”
The South Florida Tea Party’s first event, in West Palm Beach on April 15, 2009, featured longshot GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio as its keynote speaker.
This year’s event is scheduled for 1 p.m. on April 16 at Sanborn Square, 72 N. Federal Highway in Boca Raton.
Ft. Lauderdale businessman Patrick Murphy, a Democrat, is running against U.S. Rep. Allen West, a tea party favorite who unseated U.S. Rep. Ron Klein in November.
“I love my country. I love South Florida. I’m not going to stand by while right wing extremists like Allen West divide us,” Murphy, vice president of Coastal Environmental Services, said in a press release today announcing his candidacy for District 22, which includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties.
National Democrats have targeted West in next year’s elections.
“South Florida simply deserves better than what it’s now getting out of Washington. If we’re going to actually create jobs and protect families, we need representation that isn’t looking backwards,” Murphy said.
Murphy’s company specializes in disaster relief and environmental cleanup, and last year, the native Floridian spent six months in the Gulf of Mexico doing clean-up work after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. West, who lives in Plantation, supports offshore oil drilling.
In his State of the State speech, Gov. Rick Scott made a passing reference to his push to eliminate teacher tenure and introduce performance-based pay over opposition from the state’s largest teachers’ union.
The Republican governor conceded, he loves teachers. But….
“Great educators are priceless. Every one of us has a teacher in our past who made a lifelong difference in our lives,” Scott said.
“Educators, like other professionals, should be rewarded based on the effectiveness of their work, not the length of their professional life. That’s why Florida needs to pay the best educators more and end the practice of guaranteeing educators a job for life regardless of their performance.”
In his first State of the State speech, Republican Gov. Rick Scott wasted little time in taking on past administrations and Legislature — many of them Republican.
In a House chamber crowded with lawmakers and family members, Scott affirmed his favorite role as a government outsider by blistering Tallahassee’s spending practices within moments of taking the mike.
He also downplayed the unions, teachers and other Democratic-allies who demonstrated Tuesday outside the Capitol, while paying homage to the tea party activists who rallied in support of his budget-cutting.
“Thousands of our fellow Floridians have assembled here in our Capital – some to criticize our budget priorities, and far more to thank us for our willingness to make hard choices,” Scott said.
”For years, politicians have not dared to face the full extent of our financial problems,” he added. “Politics prevailed, even when the numbers did not add up. All the cans that have been kicked down the road are now piled up in front of us.
“Floridians have been encouraged to believe that government could take care of us. But government always takes more than it gives back,” Scott said.
Gov. Rick Scott drew cheers from a tea party rally on the steps of the Old Capitol when he pledged, “the right things are happening,” and urged the 300 activists to keep the heat on Tallahassee.
“We’ve got the next 60 days,” Scott said on the Legislature’s opening day, as a similar crowd opposing his budget proposal rallied across the street. “We’ve got to make sure we finish strong. Show up every day, and let everyone know what you believe in. Don’t be hesitant, don’t be shy.”
Scott hinted he needed help from the crowd of conservative activists to get his pension-cutting, government-shrinking budget approved by fellow Republicans in the Legislature. The crowd roared.
“Thanks for working for us,” shouted Jack Pritchard, 70 a retired mechanical contractor from Marion County.
Scott kept talking, “The right things are happening because of you,” the governor said.
“This is America. People have every right to protest, positively or negatively. I think it’s exciting that people are taking such an interest in their government and they want to be vocal about where they stand,” the Merritt Island Republican, running for U.S. Senate, said. “If there are protests on either side, welcome to America.”
Asked if the protests might reach the heated level as Wisconsin, where union activists have camped out for weeks in the Capitol, Haridopolos shrugged.
“It might happen. If I was a protester and I had the choice of going to Wisconsin or Florida, I’d probably come here too,” he quipped.
Facing the worst budget year in memory, new Republican Gov. Rick Scott and the GOP-packed Florida Legislature begin the 2011 session this week, pledging to slash spending and make good on campaign pledges that powered them last fall.
With the approach of the opening day Tuesday, unions, teachers and scores of groups in the cross hairs of budget cuts have been rallying against Scott and fellow Republican leaders who, in turn, are pulling support from tea party loyalists eager to shrink government.
Though it hasn’t commanded the national attention of Wisconsin and other partisan battlegrounds, purple state Florida is in for a bruising spring, with lawmakers looking to close a $3.6 billion budget hole and revive an economy flat-lined by an almost 12 percent jobless rate.
“Priority number one is the budget,” said House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park. “Everything else is number two.”
But it’s not a simple numbers game.
Political ideology is shading most of the exchanges between Republicans in power and Democrats pushed to Florida’s fringe by the November elections.
Organizers across the political spectrum Friday began taking aim at the state Capitol for next week’s opening of the two-month legislative session.
The Facebook-drive Awake The State protest has about 30 rallies planned Tuesday from Key West to Pensacola — with critics of Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-led Legislature’s budget-cutting the focus.
Teachers, government employees, cops and firefighters form the core of those pushing back against proposed pension overhauls, but expected reductions in schools and health-care programs are drawing more opponents, said Damien Filer of Progress Florida.
“I’ve heard from a lot of people who say, `this is going to be my first rally of any kind,’” Filer said. “I’ll be interested to see what kind of momentum remains among people after next week.”
A West Palm Beach rally is planned from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday, in the 100 block of Clematis Street.
Tea Party activists expect to counter-punch, with several thousand Scott supporters expected in Tallahassee. (more…)
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., the House Tea Party Caucus leader and potential 2012 presidential candidate, will be making the rounds in Palm Beach County on Friday.
She’ll be meeting with local GOP heavyweights in West Palm Beach, speaking at a South Florida Tea Party event in Jupiter, appearing at a conservative Club For Growth conference and sitting for an interview with influential conservative mag NewsMax.
Florida is one of several early Republican primary states on Bachmann’s itinerary. She has visited South Carolina and Iowa and plans a trip to New Hampshire soon. Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad recently told PBS he’s hoping for a Bachmann-Sarah Palin presidential showdown in his state.
Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature’s ruling Republicans have kicked over a political hornet’s nest by promoting budget cuts, pension overhauls and civil justice changes, which are now emerging as targets for statewide rallies by Democratic-allied organizations.
The GOP’s tough medicine for a state pocked by foreclosures and almost 12 percent unemployment may be breathing life into a Florida Democratic Party, virtually left for dead after wholesale election defeats last fall. It also may effectively prove the opening round of the 2012 presidential contest in the nation’s biggest battleground state.
“Democrats last fall were down and outspent,” said Susannah Randolph, campaign manager for defeated Orlando Democratic U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson and now an organizer of the March 8 rallies.
“Now we’re seeing that we have to respond to a threat level like DEFCON 1,” said Randolph, who also is a leader of Florida Watch Action. “And sure, we want to keep this energy going.”
Using a Facebook page, “Awake The State,” organizers are planning events in most major Florida cities on the legislature’s opening day. Although locations are still being determined, teachers and public employees’ unions, including police and firefighters, are forming the core of those protesting expected cuts in education, pensions and government workforces.
Counter-punching, tea party supporters are rallying behind Scott, and looking to converge on the state Capitol for the session’s launch, which coincides with the new governor’s first State of the State address.
Florida’s spring training season goes beyond baseball. The parties are gearing up for the 2012 campaigns by energizing their political bases around Scott and the Legislature’s plans.
Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi’s call Thursday to erase Florida’s already restricted system for automatically restoring civil rights to felons is leaving some Democrats shaking their heads — and blaming politics, of both the tea party and presidential election variety.
Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, said he plans to sponsor legislation that runs counter to the Republican attorney general’s stance – effectively making it easier for felons to obtain occupational licenses after they complete their criminal sentences.
Smith said Bondi was appealing to conservative voters with her calls for slowing down rights restoration.
“It’s tough on crime, bumper-sticker politics,” Smith said. “But that flies in the face of what we’ve seen in other states – even Texas – where people are looking at the economics of crime. Corrections is costly, and the quicker you can integrate someone back into society after they serve their time, the better.”
Controversy surrounding civil rights restoration has clouded Florida before. Thousands of Floridians – including many Democratic-leaning black voters – were purged from state rolls before the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, sparking widespread criticism of then-Gov. Jeb Bush, whose brother was on the ballot both years.
Republican Gov. Charlie Crist relaxed the rights restoration process during his term. But Smith said Bondi appears poised to turn back the clock on the eve of another big presidential year.
“I think it’s somewhat motivated by that,” Smith said. “But maybe more by the perception that you have to pander to the tea party, which wants tougher sanctions on crime.”
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