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.
Rick Scott’s TV campaign in the Republican gubernatorial primary focused heavily on making Bill McCollum appear indecisive on immigration issues.
But now Scott’s own running mate doesn’t seem to be up to speed on the topic. Asked whether she supports one of Scott’s top priorities — bringing an Arizona-style immigration law to Florida — Carroll said the two haven’t talked about the “nit-picky” details. It’s also unclear whether she knew what an “Arizona-style” law entails.
From Attorney General Bill McCollum this morning on Republican gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott:
“I still have serious questions and I have had them throughout the time that I’ve had the very brief acquaintanceship with Rick Scott about issues of his character, his integrity, his honesty, things that go back to Columbia/HCA,” McCollum said.
Gov. Charlie Crist, running for U.S. Senate with no party affiliation, said today that there’s a chance he would not caucus with either party if he was elected.
In an argument laid out by Roll Call this morning, some say Crist’s power to legislate would be determined largely by which party he chooses to caucus.
The St. Pete Times in June also foreshadowed Crist future by referencing the roller coaster ride of Oregon’s former U.S. Sen. Wayne Morse, an independent who opted to not caucus with either party.
Just moments after former Gov. Jeb Bush said Florida needs a governor who won’t vacillate on important issues, Bill McCollum, Bush’s choice for the office, highlighted the nuance in his support for an Arizona-style immigration law in the state.
“We won’t bring exactly Arizona’s law to Florida,” Republican Bill McCollum said. “We’re two different states.”
About 11 percent of the state’s 4 million Republican voters are Hispanic and many pollsters and operatives are watching to see how the immigration issue will sit with them this year. A Wall Street Journal/NBC national poll in May showed 70 percent of Hispanics opposed Arizona’s law.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink said she was discouraged after watching the debate Thursday between Republican primary opponents, Bill McCollum and Rick Scott.
“The real losers from last night were the people of Florida, because we didn’t hear anything about what kind of governors these guys would be,” she said.
Asked if she was ready for that kind of fight, Sink said she’d stick to the issues. But she wouldn’t commit to not running negative TV ads.
The most widely reported exchange from the first debate Monday between Republican gubernatorial candidates Rick Scott and Bill McCollum was about $1.7 billion in fines Scott’s hospital chain paid after a Medicare fraud investigation. From our recap of the debate:
Scott said that while he took responsibility for Columbia/HCA’s actions, politicians typically don’t take responsibility for failures in government.
“Rick, let’s get serious,” McCollum shot back. “You say you took responsibility, but the only thing you took was $300 million. Your company stole that money from the senior citizens of this country.”
As McCollum and Scott prepare for what appears to be their final debate tonight, the video above uses footage from the campaign trail to explore how Scott handles Medicare fraud questions and exactly what he takes responsibility for.
Scribbles in my notebook as Rick Scott’s six-day bus tour of Florida comes to an end.
1. EXCLUSIVE – Former Florida House Speaker Allan Bense, R-Panama City, was spotted boarding Scott’s campaign bus late Sunday night for a private meeting with the upstart Republican outsider.
2. The secret meeting is significant because Bense is one of the important fundraisers for Scott’s gubernatorial rival, Attorney General Bill McCollum. The two have had a long relationship, with McCollum recently turning to Bense to take over state party finances as the Jim Greer fiasco exploded.
3. The Scott bus was parked outside the Shrimp Boat restaurant in Panama City, where about 100 Republicans showed up to meet Scott. Yes, it’s the same Shrimp Boat restaurant where Bense helped organize a fundraiser for McCollum a few days prior.
Rosemary Currie of Venice got a round of applause from a room of about 400 Sarasota County Republicans today when she asked GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott to sit down with primary opponent Bill McCollum and hash out a deal to end the barrage of negative television advertisements the two are unloading on one another.
“I feel it’s pretty much helping Alex Sink sink our chances,” Currie said, referring to the probable Democratic nominee.
Scott, who compared McCollum to a dirty diaper in one TV spot, has a personal fortune that gives him a decided spending advantage over McCollum, who is running his fourth statewide campaign. And Scott gave no indication that he was about to give that up.
Scott told the woman it was important for him to distinguish himself from his opponent. Then he implied that McCollum was out of ideas for Florida.
“The difference is this,” Scott said at a campaign stop at Trotter’s Dutch Heritage restaurant. “You have a choice between somebody that’s been in office and hopefully tried all of their ideas or you have somebody that’s new that is going to bring their business credentials to the table.”
We were the first to tell you earlier this week of the seven-figure ad buy the conservative advocacy group, League of American Voters, made for McCollum. In all, McCollum and his supporters have spent about $8.4 million on television. Scott’s campaign has spent $25.8 million on TV.
House Majority Leader Adam Hasner’s staff director e-mailed reporters saying Gov. Charlie Crist’s press conference today should win “the Oscar for best performance of planned faux indignation.”
Some will argue that, politically, it might be better for Crist, a U.S. Senate candidate, that lawmakers refused to vote. After all, anger does seem to be it’s own political ideology these days.
That said, Crist seemed as fired up as anyone has ever seen him after House and Senate Republicans refused to vote on whether or not Florida voters should decide to amend the state constitution to ban oil drilling. The only votes the two chambers took today were to adjourn.
Gov. Charlie Crist met with about 50 environmental activists in the Capitol today for the legislature’s special session.
“It’s your constitution. It’s not the House of Representatives constitution. It’s not the Senate’s constitution. It’s not my constitution. It’s the people’s constitution,” he said.
Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican running for governor, said today that someone with no political experience might be better suited for city council than the governor’s office.
Wonder what Jeb Bush might have to say about that…
Anyway, the line was a shot at McCollum’s GOP primary rival, Rick Scott. Scott is running for his first political office and, predictably, spins the experience question a bit different. A former CEO of Columbia/HCA, who resigned amid a Medicare fraud investigation that cost his company $1.7 billion in fines, says the state needs a fresh face to pull it out of an economic funk.
“Of all the ridiculous things Bill McCollum has said about Rick Scott the last few weeks, this attack we welcome,” Scott spokesman Joe Kildea said. “Career politicians are not the solution to our problems as great Governors such as Ronald Reagan have shown us. Looks like it’s Bill McCollum making the rookie mistakes.”
Video of McCollum at Tallahassee’s Capital City Republican Club above.
Rick Scott, who has spent $15 million in nine weeks to turn himself from a political unknown into the front-runner for the Republican Party gubernatorial nomination, brought his campaign to Tallahassee today, where he filed qualifying papers and addressed the Tallahassee Tiger Bay club.
While at the Secretary of State offices, Scott narrowly missed running into his GOP primary opponent, Attorney General Bill McCollum, who took aim at Scott after filling his own qualifying papers. One weapon McCollum brought with him was former Florida Christian Coalition director Dennis Baxley, who accused Scott, a former health care executive, of profiting from abortions.
“It’s unfortunate that I have a fellow who’s been spending the kind of money that he has been spending, his personal money, and he wants to be governor. I think he’s flawed,” McCollum said. “Rick Scott has had a very suspicious background.”
Watch the video above for Scott’s response and a few snippets from his speech today.
Democrat Alex Sink officially qualified her gubernatorial campaign this morning, promising an aggressive effort to deliver state government’s top job to her party for the first time in 12 years. (Watch it here.)
But Sink’s oath of assertiveness doesn’t extend to Bud Chiles’ independent campaign. Sink would barely acknowledge the late governor’s son who grabbed about 20 percent in a recent poll.
Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson thinks Chiles is a threat to Sink, but Sink lumps Chiles in with the other two dozen or so candidates running for governor.
“There will be many candidates in the campaign, many candidates names on the ballots in November,” she said today when asked if she agreed with Aaronson’s letter.
Sink said she recently talked with Chiles, but neither she nor her campaign urged him to fold his campaign. “No, no,” she said. “Not at all. Anybody can run for governor.” (We’re awaiting Chiles’ characterization of that conversation…)
Meanwhile, if Sink’s response to Chiles sounds somewhat familiar, consider Gov. Charlie Crist’s initial reaction to Marco Rubio’s underdog U.S. Senate campaign: “Everybody has the right to run.” That was a little more than 12 months before Rubio forced him out of the GOP primary.
JACKSONVILLE — Gov. Charlie Crist’s unprecedented independent bid for U.S. Senate brought him to a strange place today: an endorsement convention for the state’s largest labor movement.
In nearly 20 years as a Republican, Crist had never visited the Florida AFL-CIO conference, where Democrats usually earn the group’s support.
But with no party affiliation and strong backing from public school teachers, who account for more than half of the AFL-CIO, Crist launched a bid to steal the endorsement that, until recently, many assumed would go to Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek.
Gov. Charlie Crist bought his independent U.S. Senate campaign to the state’s largest labor movement, the first time he addressed the AFL-CIO in his nearly three decades in politics.
“I’m here to learn. I’m here to listen. And I’m here to show respect,” Crist told about 200 union members. “There’s not enough of that happening right now in government, in politics. I think we have to do a lot more of it.”
The union welcomed Crist by playing the Michael McDonald, “Takin’ It To the Streets.” The song opens with the lyric: “You don’t know me but I’m your brother.”
Crist wants to steal the group’s endorsement from Democrat Kendrick Meek, who won the labor’s support in his primary race. Meek will address the group tomorrow and endorsements will be announced Sunday.
“I want your help,” Crist said. “I want your vote. I want your support. I want your endorsement. I am asking for it.”
That’s the news from BP CEO Tony Hayward, who just emerged from a closed-door meeting with Gov. Charlie Crist. It’s the second $25 million grant the company has given the state since their Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and started spewing 210,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico.
State officials have been calling for an advertising campaign as Panhandle beach resorts and restaurants head into their 90-day tourist season. Despite the oil plume still 70 miles from Florida’s closest beaches in Pensacola, business owners there say they’ve already lost millions as tourists cancel reservations or wait to schedule their trip.
BP is also giving $15 million to Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
Click here for continuing coverage of the oil spill.
Where's the money? Use The Post's interactive database of who wants and who's getting federal dollars.
Use these interactive graphics to find and contact Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast legislators.
