With state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, term-limited in 2010, Democrats are making a serious play for his District 87 seat. The district, which includes parts of southern Palm Beach County and a few Broward County precincts, has a slight Republican registration edge and was effectively out of reach for Dems when prolific fund-raiser Hasner was running.

In a sign that Democrats are more optimistic about their post-Hasner prospects, several A-list Dems are on the host committee for a fund-raiser next week for Democratic candidate Lori Berman, a former aide to U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton.

The money-raising committee includes Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson, state Sen. Ted Deutch and state Reps. Kelly Skidmore, Maria Sachs and Kevin Rader. Wexler’s top local aide, Wendi Lipsich, is also listed as one of the hosts.

Former Boca Raton councilman Bill Hager is the only Republican in the District 87 race.

With his wife managing a California gubernatorial campaign, House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, decides to sit out the 2010 election season.

Hasner, 39, had been mentioned as a potential candidate for a variety of seats — including Congress, state Senate, attorney general and chief financial officer.

Read about it here.

The Florida House just approved a bill that would cap annual property insurance increases at 10 percent for Citizens policy holders. But the 80-35 vote didn’t come easy.

Rep. Alan Hays, R-Umatilla, tried to blow up the bill (HB 1495) with a series of amendments he said would force the state to be more honest about the risks associated with the state-run insurer.

“I don’t know why I waste my breath, but I’m not going to be hushed,” Hays said, saying his fellow Republicans should be “embarrassed” by the bill.

At one point during debate, Hays called “bull-crap” three times on House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton. Hays’ microphone was not on and Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, R-Miami, pulled Hasner away from the confrontation.

After the vote, Hays then confronted Reps. Dean Cannon and Will Weatherford, who are expected to eventually succeed Larry Cretul as the top Republican in the House. Hays pointed at the pair several times, while staffers stood in front of the group, trying to block the view from the press gallery.

Eventually, the conversation moved to the side of the chamber, where Hays received a talking-to from Cretul and House Sergeant Ernie Sumner.

A constitutional amendment to guarantee secret-ballot elections when workers vote to unionize was approved this afternoon in a partisan vote by the Florida House. If the Senate approves the measure, the question would be place on the 2010 ballot.

In the House, the 74-44 vote narrowly exceeded the 72-vote threshold needed for a constitutional amendment to pass the chamber. Republicans argued the proposal would prevent worker intimidation and business lobbyists say its largely to block a pro-union change in federal labor law.

After the vote, Democrats requested that the debate be printed in the House journal, the official record of the chamber. Republicans voted the measure down.

Rep. Adam Hasner, a Boca Raton Republican sponsoring the measure (HJR 1013), said it was “no secret that our state and our nation face unprecedented economic challenges.”

“Protecting workers’ rights is essential if we want to create and protect jobs and get Florida’s economy moving again,” Hasner said in a press release.

As usual, the Florida House opened session today with a prayer. But for the first time this year (and possibly the first time ever), that prayer was led by an imam, Qasim Ahmed, from the Islamic Learning Institute in Tampa.

The prayer was videotaped by Ahmed Bedier, United Voices of America director, who remarked on the absence of House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton. Bedier said he was videotaping the “historic” moment.

“We did notice Hasner’s empty chair. That’s definitely noticed,” Bedier said.

Hasner led a press conference on Muslim Day at the Capitol last month to protest Bedier’s organization. This weekend, Hasner hosted a “Free Speech Summit” with controversial writer Geert Wilders, leading the Council On American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to demand Hasner be removed from his leadership position.

Hasner said he wasn’t on the floor this morning for personal reasons and noted the iman was in the House at the invitation of Rep. Jim Waldman, D-Coconut Creek.

“It’s Jim Waldman’s right as a member to invite whomever he wants,” Hasner said.

Former NYC mayor and onetime GOP presidential frontrunner Rudy Giuliani will headline a May 8 fund-raiser for 2010 Republican state House candidate Nick Loeb at the Manalapan home of Richard DeVos, the Amway-founding billionaire who owns the Orlando Magic.

Loeb and former Boca Raton Councilman Bill Hager are seeking the Republican nomination to replace term-limited state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, in District 87, which includes parts of southern Palm Beach County and a few Broward County precincts.

House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, said today that he won’t challenge U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, for Congress in 2010:

“This is the right decision for me and my wife at this time,” Hasner said. “Representing the people of Florida and serving as House majority leader remains the greatest honor, and I will continue to be an advocate for the policies and principles that will get our state and our country moving again.”

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The Florida House this morning restored about $63,000 in funding for the state Holocaust Museum, pictured left. And here’s the partisan press release from the House Republican Office that accuses a handful of Democrats of, well, partisanship.

“It is outrageous that 13 Democrats would put partisan politics ahead of increasing funding for education about the Holocaust by voting against this measure,” House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, said in the release.

What happened this morning was that Rep. Marty Kiar, D-Davie, offered this amendment to move about $35,000 away from the school recognition program to the holocaust museum, which is located in St. Petersburg.

Hasner then upped the ante by offering a substitute amendment that took even more money from the Excellent Teaching Program.

But several Democrats — 13 to be exact — voted against Hasner’s amendment, including several who said they didn’t want to take any money out of the state education budget.

Career hit a dead-end? Boss driving you crazy? Well, cheer up. At least you’re not the guy leaning against the wall in this photo whose job for at least the next few weeks is to follow around House Majority Leader Adam Hasner and videotape his every move on behalf of the Florida Democratic Party. (Hasner is the Boca Raton Republican just to the left of Rep. Perry Thurston, who appears to be pondering the House Rules Committee room ceiling in this superb example of photojournalism.)

Depending on what footage the cameraman can collect, here the only three ways we can see this turning out:

1. In the heat of a House floor debate (preferably on boot day), Hasner forgets all about the steady, unblinking camera eye and has a meltdown for the ages. FDP communications director Eric Jotkoff resigns hours later, announcing he has nothing left to accomplish.

2. A bunch of unflattering angles of Hasner get set to 28-seconds of the Halloween soundtrack fading out just in time to hear “Paid for by Citizens for Ron Klein.”

3. Cameraman goes rogue — He keeps all of the footage out of Democratic hands and instead assembles a heartbreaking documentary about the secret world of legislative bill drafting.

Here’s your latest sign of the impending apocalypse: State Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, received some face time Monday on Fox News for his bill (SB 614) to better track purchases of prescription drugs and other controlled substances in Florida while House Republican Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton was praised by liberals for his bill (HB 879) to create a sales tax exemption for electric cars.

Aronberg says that Broward County has more pain clinics than McDonalds. In this interview with Fox News, he says it’s “an embarrassment” that the state doesn’t have a prescription drug database.

“What’s happened is Florida has become a pill-mill for the rest of the country,” Aronberg says.

Meanwhile, Hasner received this shout-out Tuesday from the Mother Nature Network for a “thoughtful” column on electric vehicles that appeared in American Thinker. From the MNN:

Hasner pointed out that 80 percent of Americans drive less than 40 miles a day, so their range limitations are not necessarily a deal breaker. Hasner campaigned in a 2002 RAV4-EV battery car…and won! It’s 120-mile range was more than enough for daily swings through his coastal district, and it got him to events in West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, too.

Adam Hasner, left, on the 2002 Vespa he rode door-to-door across the coastal south Palm Beach County House district in his first campaign. Hasner, R-Boca Raton, has risen to House Majority Leader and is among the handful of GOP leaders who will determine the direction of the final three weeks of the legislative session.

Fast forward to 2008, and Hasner ran a $1-million campaign carrying the mantle of change. Listen to him here explain how a leader in the entrenched majority party can claim that image.

Read the profile of Hasner published in Sunday’s paper here.

Delray Beach activist Nick Loeb announced at tonight’s Palm Beach County GOP meeting that he’ll run in 2010 for the south-county seat of term-limited state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton. Former Boca councilman Bill Hager has also announced he’s running in the GOP primary. Democrats are expected to make a play for the seat as well. Loeb is managing partner of Carbon Solutions America, a company that helps businesses become more energy efficient.

This is a shot from the fourth floor of the state Capitol today, where the official state motto, song, fruit, beverage, etc., etc., are fastened to the marble walls.

If you’ll notice — just below mention of the state reptile — some jokester has identified the state car as “The Electric Hasner.”

We should make clear there is no state car (yet) or particular automobile manufactured in Florida or anywhere else under the name “The Electric Hasner.”

But there is a House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, who trumpeted his use of an electric car during his campaign last year and is pushing a bill this year to create sales tax exemptions for electric cars.

The content of the podcast informed this story that was published Sunday. The interviews are still timely and, by at least one account, still entertaining.

The first 14 minutes is an interview with designated House Democratic Leader Ron Saunders of Key West talking about how Republican leaders are more interested in “hijacking” bills than fulfilling their responsibilities. He admires Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, for her “blatant partisanship,” anticipates the next “memo” from House Republican Majority Adam Hasner, apologizes on behalf of the Democratic caucus “for not being stupid,” and says he’s going “do my best” to flip the 76-44 majority the GOP enjoys in the chamber.

“We are the minority party,” Saunders says. “We are their conscience.”

The 12 minutes that follow is a separate interview with Hasner, R-Boca Raton, who gets in his own jabs. He says the House Democrats “have become a party of no” — just like Republicans in the U.S. House. He says their a “continental divide” in the minority party and that the stimulus will “potentially create more problems in the future than it solves.”

Listen to the podcast here. (Right click on the link to download)

House Democrats reached into their transitive property bag today to paint Republican Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton as against the federal stimulus package and therefore against Gov. Charlie Crist and Florida’s families.

To do so, Democrats pulled a quote from this Post story, which, ironically, was a report about the bipartisan finger pointing in the House and the chamber’s reluctance (just like Crist) to support deep cuts or new revenues to deal with a $3 billion shortfall.

Hasner, meanwhile, defended his own honor with this press release. He insists Crist and the legislature are on the same page, and that lawmakers are just waiting for the Obama Administration to release details about the federal waiver needed to collect stimulus money for schools. Hasner writes:

“Until the Obama Administration gives their final answer on a federal waiver, the Legislature cannot accept stimulus dollars that have not been offered.”

So does this mean Republican leaders will wait to put $1 billion in stimulus money into their K-12 budget proposal until the stimulus arrives? We’ll find out this week when House lawmakers begin assembling the 2009-10 budget this week.

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From left: U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton; state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton

After not initially signing on and setting off a flurry of speculation on the left and right, U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, has decided to be a cosponsor of the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act. He cosponsored the legislation in the last Congress.

The legislation would allow unions to bypass secret-ballot elections and organize by collecting authorization cards from a majority of employees. Supporters say the measure allows labor to counter intimidation by employers. Foes say it will allow labor organizers to coerce and pressure workers to support unionization.

In Florida, state House Majority Leader — and potential Klein challenger — Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, is leading the drive for a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right of Floridians to cast secret ballots in all elections, including votes on whether to unionize.

The national fight over ensuring secret ballots for union votes erupted Wednesday in an emotional quarrel between two Palm Beach County lawmakers that included one calling the other a “jerk” in a Florida House committee meeting.

Rep. Mary Brandenburg, D-West Palm Beach, called Rep. Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, a “jerk” from her seat in the House Policy Committee. Her microphone was turned off, but her comment was audible from at least the third row in the meeting room.

Listen to their dialogue during the committee here. Then read the rest of the story here.

Florida labor leaders said at a press conference today that a constitutional amendment (HJR 1013) from House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, “targets working people.”

“The proposed constitutional amendment is not about the protection of secret ballot. It’s all about political gamesmanship in an effort to launch an anti-worker campaign in Florida, a campaign being disguised as a pro-worker effort,” said Mike Williams, president of the Florida Building & Construction Trades Council.

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As Congress gears up for a debate over the labor-backed Employee Free Choice Act, unions are touting a a new Gallup poll that finds 53 percent of Americans favor a law “that would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers.”

Beyond that fuzzy concept, however, it appears voters in Florida are uncomfortable with a key aspect of the proposed legislation.

The bill would make it easier for unions to form by allowing them to bypass current requirements that employee votes on whether to unionize be conducted by secret ballot. Instead, a union could form if a majority of workers sign authorization forms.

A new Florida poll commissioned by foes of the congressional bill finds that 86 percent of the state’s voters favor a proposed state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to cast a secret ballot in all elections, including employee votes on whether to unionize.

To read the polling memo, click here.

House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, is heading efforts to get the constitutional question on the Florida ballot in 2010. If Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act and Florida voters approve the secret-ballot amendment, courts would likely decide which measure would take precedence in Florida.