Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum is bringing buddy Rudy Giuliani back to Florida for a breakfast fundraiser in West Palm Beach on March 12.
McCollum, who endorsed Giuliani in the ‘08 Republican presidential primary in Florida, is holding his $40/person fundraiser at Howley’s Restaurant on South Dixie Highway at 7:30 a.m.
“It is always nice to enjoy a good meal with friends prior to a day on the campaign trail,” McCollum writes in the invitation.
The host committee for the event includes Palm Beach County Commissioner Steve Abrams, Teresa Bailey, Marie Davis, Palm Beach Councilman Bill Diamond, Sid Dinerstein, Peter Feaman, Jay Goldfarb, Fran Hancock, Mark Hoch, Beth Kigel, Greg Langowski, Cheryl Mullings, Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits, Joe Penkala, Jonathan Satter, Tom Sliney, Ben Starling, Joy Stone and Palm Beach Shores Mayor John Workman
It was a mostly festive day in the Florida legislature today, although you wouldn’t know it from this Associated Press photo of the state’s two leading gubernatorial candidates.
Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum, left, and Democratic state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, right, already fully engaged in a political battle over who is the better fiscal conservative, were seated next to each other today during opening day ceremonies.
The political jockeying between McCollum and Alex Sink is expected to continue throughout the legislature’s 60-day session.
See more AP photos from the Capitol today after the jump.
Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, gavels in the Florida Senate during opening day ceremonies.
Gov. Charlie Crist, center, poses for a picture with Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, right, and Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood.
Rep. Evan Jenne, D-Dania Beach, listens to the Speaker of the House's opening day speech.
Sen. Durrell Peaden, R-Crestview, shares a moment with Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami.
House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, gives a thumbs up as the Florida Legislature convenes.
The FDP ad blames McCollum for costing taxpayers billions of dollars during his two decades in Congress.
The RGA ad roasts Sink for earning millions of dollars as NationsBank’s Florida chief in 1998 while giving pink slips to thousands of bank workers during the financial institution’s buy-out of Barnett Bank.
The Democrats’ ad skewers McCollum for voting for Congressional pay hikes four times, for his $75,000-a-year Congressional pension taxpayers are now footing and for voting five times to increase the national debt that skyrocketed to $4.7 trillion while the Republican was in office.
“Bill McCollum. Just another Washington politician Florida can’t afford,” the 30-second commercial ends.
McCollum’s campaign dismissed the Sink ad in much the same way her campaign responded to the RGA ad earlier today. Both sides accused the other of being “misleading” and “desperate.”
“This is a weak, misleading ad from a candidate and party desperate to salvage a message-less, issue-less campaign that has been roundly derided by even their strongest supporters. Alex Sink needs to stop complaining and start explaining. She eliminated thousands of Florida jobs will taking millions in salary and bonuses. The Republican Governors Association raises serious questions and Alex Sink will have to answer to Florida voters in November,” McCollum campaign Kristy Campbell wrote in a press release.
State senator and GOP governor hopeful Paula Dockery blasted Republican operative Michael Caputo for linking her with Orlando politico Doug Guetzloe, the center of a Tea Party turf battle playing out in federal court.
Guetzloe joined forces with Dockery in fighting the SunRail/CSX deal during the special legislative session and has supported her candidacy against Attorney General Bill McCollum in the Republican primary for governor.
Caputo, a Republican operative who has worked on campaigns in and out of the U.S. and who is closely linked with Roger Stone, and a variety of local Tea Party groups filed a lawsuit against Guetzloe and his cohorts accusing them of hijacking the “real” Tea Party and asking the court to order him to stop using the “Tea Party” moniker.
The flame war began when Caputo sent out an e-mail questioning whether Guetzloe is secretly backing Dockery’s campaign and calling the Lakeland Republican a “liberal.”
Dockery responded with an e-mail asking Caputo with some answers plus her own list of questions.
Guetzloe “is not and has not been paid by my campaign or on behalf of my campaign. I am asking you to refrain from making this claim as you have now been formally told there is no truth to your assertion. Please provide your rationale for making these false claims,” she writes.
The exchange also includes a “Who’s the better Republican?” line with Dockery saying she’s a life-long GOP’er who was first elected in 1996.
Caputo one-ups her there: He says he’s been a Republican since he first got into politics in the 1980s when he worked on President Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign.
Dockery also tries to extricate herself from the Tea Party wars, writing: “I have absolutely nothing to do with the forming of another party and have, in fact, suggested that the formation of a “tea party” will actually harm reform-minded Republican candidates like me.”
Caputo’s snarky response to Dockery also challenges her to distance herself from Guetzloe.
“If you seek Tea Party support for your candidacy, your work with Doug Guetzloe does not endear you to thousands of authentic Florida Tea Party activists who are enflamed by his hijack attempt of their name and cause,” Caputo wrote.
“If what you say is true, it is not enough to stand silently. We ask you to denounce Guetzloe’s Tea Party political party. Please call upon him to disband it immediately and demand he end his personal threats
on true citizen activists in Florida’s Tea Party movement. Our plaintiffs - 34 Tea Party activists and organizations deeply concerned about the damage of Guetzloe’s third party - can help get your message out.”
The Republican Governors Association hammered Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the state’s presumptive Democratic candidate for governor and former banker.
The ad is the RGA’s first TV campaign for the 2010 election season and shows that the Florida governor’s race will be one of the premier gubernatorial battles in the country.
Attorney General Bill McCollum is facing off against long-shot state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, in a GOP primary.
The ad charges that Sink did away with thousands of jobs while president of Florida’s NationsBank operations while earning $8 million in salary and bonuses, capitalizing on the current animosity toward bankers who took billions of dollars in federal bail-out money, spent much of it on executive bonuses and did little to ease the nation’s credit crunch.
The RGA also launched a new website - alexsinksflorida.com - featuring the video, which ends “Alex Sink. Not one of us. One of them.”
Sink was head of NationsBank in Florida when the financial institution acquired Barnett Bank, in 1998, for $62 billion. The merger resulted in the loss of 6,000 jobs, many of them in Florida, according to the ad.
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.”
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.
After more than four years, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum remains on the fence about whether to go after potentially millions of dollars from the manufacturers of faulty water and sewer pipes, a state senator who wants McCollum’s job charges.
Sen. Dan Gelber, a Democrat running for attorney general in a primary against Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres, asked McCollum to join other state attorneys general in a whistleblower lawsuit that Florida was initially involved in.
But McCollum, a Republican running for governor, has not officially joined at least four other states and numerous towns, cities and counties that are moving forward with the lawsuit against Los Angeles-based JM Eagle and its former parent company, makers of the PVC pipe.
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.
Delaware, Nevada, Tennessee, Virginia and at least 40 California water districts have joined the whistleblower lawsuit filed in federal court in California seeking millions of dollars in damages. Court documents show that Florida was among the governments initially involved in the lawsuit in 2006.
“These are not allegations that should be sat on,” Gelber, D-Miami Beach, said. “If something improper happened, people have a right to know and seek a remedy and it’s the attorney general’s obligation to make a decision ASAP. If there is a righteous cause of action for consumers, the last thing we want to be is late to the battle.”
The gubernatorial campaign fur continues to fly in the battle between Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Attorney General Bill McCollum, this time over what is a tax “cut” and whether they’re good or bad for businesses.
Sink’s campaign took a swing at McCollum for opposing tax cuts for small businesses to jump-start the economy and create jobs.
In fact, McCollum told reporters yesterday that he didn’t think targeted tax credits or incentives work out so great in the long term.
Here’s what McCollum said after a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business.
“Targeted tax credits, in my experience in Washington, were minimally effective. They can be in the short run but they’re not in the long run very effective,” the former Congressman said.
“Career politician Bill McCollum says tax cuts don’t work, but he’s just plain wrong- wrong for small businesses, wrong for our economy, and wrong for everyday Floridians. The choice in this election just got a little clearer- a career politician who cites his decades in Congress as a reason to oppose tax cuts versus a businesswoman who knows what it’s going to take to get our economy back on track,” reads a press release issued by Sink’s campaign spokeswoman Conchita Cruz.
Hang on.
McCollum spoke about tax credits or tax incentives. Are they the same as tax cuts?
“He said tax credits and tax credits are tax cuts,” Sink said in an e-mail from Cruz.
This from McCollum’s campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell.
“It is laughable that Alex Sink, who has made thousands in personal campaign contributions to liberal tax-and-spend Democrats, would try to assert she is a fiscal conservative. Following more political stunts from her official office at taxpayer expense, Alex Sink has resorted to ridiculous attempts to obfuscate the facts.
“Bill McCollum has a bullet-proof record of fighting to cut taxes across the board for families and businesses that speaks for itself,” Campbell said in a press release.
The GOP candidate for governor’s campaign called Sink’s announcement a political publicity stunt by her official state office.
“On the heels of a failed publicity stunt calling for Florida’s first Paperclip Czar, it is clear that Alex Sink is running her political campaign out of the Department of Financial Services at the taxpayers’ expense.
“If Alex Sink is serious about streamlining government, maybe she should begin by cutting back on the bloated political and public relations operation being funded by the tax dollars of hardworking Floridians – one that she disingenuously worked to expand in anticipation of her campaign,” McCollum’s campaign said in a press release issued shortly after Sink’s announcement.
McCollum’s campaign lashed out at Sink for proposing to save the state more than $200,000 by cutting back on office supplies. But McCollum’s own director of administration last week proposed doing exactly the same thing to save taxpayers at least $250,000 by reducing office supply spending, including reusing paper clips.
Sink’s campaign shot back with the following:
“Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office has been criticized for playing politics through his official office numerous times, most notably by granting a $1.4 million dollar no-bid contract to his political consultant that produced a thinly veiled campaign ad with taxpayer dollars.”
McCollum hired his former political consultant last year to produce television ads featuring the attorney general warning parents about cyber predators.
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Democratic gubernatorial candidate says she’s going to shrink state government and save taxpayers up to $10 million a year by trimming middle management in her agency.
State workers don’t have to worry about layoffs, though - the former banker she’s going to leave middle management positions empty when current employees retire or resign. It will take up to 18 months to achieve the savings, long after Sink’s time as CFO has ended.
Sink’s announcement today is a continuation of her emphasis on bringing a business-like approach to government.
She recently caught fire from her GOP Cabinet colleague Attorney General Bill McCollum’s campaign for governor for promoting cost savings by cutting back on office supplies, including paper clips.
Sink set a goal of one supervisor for every seven workers, cutting back from a current ratio of one to five in her agency. She says taxpayers could save about $300 million a year if all state agencies did the same.
Many state agencies are already doing what Sink proposes - leaving vacant positions empty - for the past several years because of budget cuts.
Stay tuned to find out what the ratio of middle managers to workers is in McCollum’s office.
Attorney General Bill McCollum continues to defer to GOP party leaders instead of ordering an investigation into possible criminal conduct regarding credit card abuses at the Republican Party of Florida.
McCollum today said he may ask the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to look into the matter but that he would wait until the new chairman of the RPOF - expected to be Sen. John Thrasher - is elected this weekend.
Also today, Florida Democrats shut down McCollum’s anti-corruption hotline, filling up the 800 number’s voice mail in an effort to draw attention to McCollum’s refusal to investigate the credit card charges even after other top Republicans want the books opened.
McCollum said he won’t ask for inquiry until an audit of the RPOF is complete and he gets direction from the new party chairman to move although Gov. Charlie Crist last week said that party officials should open the books now.
“I’m waiting about what the new chairman might discover. I don’t see any evidence at this point of criminal behavior,” McCollum said today after a speech to the National Federation of Independent Business.
After dissing Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink for gloating about skimping on paper clips, Attorney General Bill McCollum appears to have taken a liking to her cost-cutting measure.
Spending less on office supplies and reusing paper clips and file folders could save taxpayers about $238,000 a year, McCollum’s director of administration John Hamilton told the Senate Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations Committee this morning.
Oops.
Just a few weeks ago, McCollum mocked Sink’s efforts to stop buying non-mission critical office supplies until the end of the fiscal year in June, a savings that she estimates could be $200,000. If all the state followed her lead, taxpayers could save $14 million according to the Democratic candidate for governor.
“While Alex Sink focuses on rationing paperclips and paper products, Bill McCollum is focused on finding solutions to the severe economic challenges we face,” McCollum’s campaign said in a press release late last month.
McCollum’s campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell had this to say in response to our blog:
“Attorney General McCollum has remained to curbing wasteful spending throughout his tenure in office. Unfortunately, CFO Alex Sink has consistently used her office for political public relations stunts and for attacking her opponent on the taxpayers dime,” Campbell wrote in an e-mail.
And Democratic Party of Florida spokesman Eric Jotkoff had his own snap:
“We’re glad to see that career politician Bill McCollum is finally showing some concern for Florida taxpayers and eating his wrong-headed attacks on Alex Sink, even if it took some coaxing and cajoling, at least the Attorney General is finally following CFO Sink’s leadership in cutting wasteful government spending,” Jotkoff wrote in a press release.
It sounded vaguely familiar when Republican gubernatorial candidate Paula Dockery announced today that she won the endorsement of fellow state Sen. Nancy Detert. Turns out that Detert has endorsed in the governor’s race, just another candidate.
In July, about four months before Dockery entered the race, Republican Bill McCollum announced that Detert, a Venice Republican and head of the Senate K-12 Committee, was part of his extensive “Statewide Campaign Leadership Team”.
A McCollum spokeswoman said Detert told the campaign about her intention to join Dockery’s effort in November, when she accompanied Dockery to the state elections office to file official campaign papers.
UPDATE:Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff: “A 20-year congressman and Washington lobbyist will do nothing - absolutely nothing - to change Florida’s economy for the better. We’ve tried leaving it to career politicians like Bill McCollum to turn Florida’s economy around, and they’ve driven it into a ditch -11.8 percent unemployment.”
Matt Williams, Bill McCollum’s gubernatorial campaign manager, sent this memo to supporters today.
Ignoring that Republicans have controlled state government since 1998, Williams cites Scott Brown’s improbable Republican victory in Massachusetts as proof that soaring unemployment can be pinned on Democrats. He also notes that anxiety in Florida over President Obama’s health care reform is a major opportunity for the GOP.
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 by Michael C. Bender
From Democrat Alex Sink’s gubernatorial campaign manager Paul Dunn:
“Every single Floridian should be deeply troubled about Bill McCollum’s effort to have health care declared unconstitutional because, by McCollum’s logic, programs like Medicare and Social Security could also wind up being labeled unconstitutional. And with Bill McCollum’s track record during his 20 years in Congress, where he voted over 20 times to cut or reduce funding of Medicare by billions of dollars, that may well be McCollum’s objective here.”
On Tuesday, McCollum campaign manager Matt Williams labeled his boss “courageous” for threatening to sue the federal government over a proposal to require Americans buy health insurance and criticized Sink forwhat he said was a “continued refusal to weigh in on critical issues like federal health care reform.”
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 by Michael C. Bender
UPDATE:McCollum’s chief of staff Joe Jacquot called to say the estimate of 200 hours put in on the legal analysis was off. He did not give a new number, but said it was largely the work of two attorneys in the office along with McCollum.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum on Tuesday threatened to sue the federal government if Congress approved a proposal requiring Americans to buy health insurance.
“We’ll be ready if the time comes,” McCollum said. “We would want to file suit very quickly if we could.”
McCollum, a Republican candidate for governor, denied the announcement was a political ploy. But hours after the press conference, his campaign released a statement citing the proposed lawsuit and criticizing the likely Democratic gubernatorial nominee.
“As Florida’s next governor, Bill McCollum isn’t afraid to take a stand on behalf of Floridians,” McCollum campaign manager Matt Williams said.
McCollum acknowledged problems with the health-care system, but told reporters earlier in the day that he had no proposed solutions. McCollum said he recently assembled a health care advisory board for his campaign.
“During the course of the campaign I may well lay out something, I may not. I don’t know yet,” said McCollum, a former chairman of the Healthy Florida Foundation.
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said today a proposed mandate to require Americans buy healthcare coverage was unconstitutional and would sue if the bill passes.
McCollum, a Republican candidate for governor, said his office put in about 200 hours to determine the proposal was unconstitutional.
“We want to be ready if the time comes,” McCollum said.
*Updated at 2:47 p.m. to include Democratic response.
Florida Attorney General and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum said today that it was a mistake to oppose making a Martin Luther King Day a federal holiday. He said his 1983 vote was based on giving goverment workers a paid holiday.
“It was adding to the cost of the budget,” McCollum said. “At that time I was very concerned and probably a little naïve, because I think Martin Luther King was a great leader. And I’ve said numerous times at town hall meetings and other places as I was a Congressman that was a mistake.”
McCollum, a Republican candidate for governor, was forced to answer the question after the Florida Democratic Party blasted him on Monday. And Democrats have been getting some mileage out this 27-year-old vote.
Democrats questioned his spokeswoman’s claim that McCollum has “said in the past” that the vote was a mistake. McCollum said today that he realized it was a mistake “in the ’80s after the vote.”
“Shortly after the vote. I couldn’t tell you the exact year, but this is what? Twenty-five years later?,” McCollum said. “It was very apparent to me upon reflection soon after that that it was not a good vote even though it does cost a lot of money.”
But now Democrats question that timing, pointing to a 1989 vote McCollum cast to oppose a commission to promote the observance of MLK Day. The bill, which gave the commission a five-year budget of $1.5 million, passed by large margins in the House and Senate.
UPDATE:Quick response on Twitter from state Sen. Dan Gelber, a Democratic candidate for attorney general: “I wish McCollum was as concerned about solving Florida’s health care crisis as he was about stopping the solving of the health care crisis.”
From Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum says he will review the federal health care bill because he has “grave concerns” about whether it violates the federal and state constitution.
“The mandate is especially troubling to Floridians who are guaranteed through the Florida Constitution to have ‘the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into [their] private life,” McCollum wrote in a statement today.
McCollum specifically refers to a provision that would require Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a fine.
“Such a ‘living tax’ is worrisome because it would be levied on a person who does nothing, a person who simply wishes not to be forced to buy health insurance coverage. Upon initial review, this appears to be contrary to the freedoms we, as Americans, have enjoyed for the past 233 years,” McCollum said.
McCollum, the leading Republican candidate for governor next year, has also written a letter to other state attorneys general asking them to review the bill in regards to the Commerce Clause and taxing power in the U.S. Constitution.
McCollum is also joining several attorneys general who are evaluating the constitutionality of a U.S. Senate bill provision that provides 100 percent federal Medicaid funding to only one state, Nebraska.
State Sen. Dan Gelber and attorney general candidate nailed down another big-name Democratic endorsement, this time from Buddy McKay, who served as lieutenant governor under the late Gov. Lawton Chiles and briefly served as governor after Chiles’ death.
Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat and former House member, is trying to trade up for the Cabinet post just a year after he won election to the Senate.
He and colleague Dave Aronberg, a Democratic senator from Greenacres, are in a battle-of-the-endorsements.
Post On Politics had erroneously reported that the sheriffs were split on the candidates.
They are not.
Aronberg has the support of 10 Democratic sheriffs, including Palm Beach County’s own law enforcement rock star Ric Bradshaw.
Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, former state education commissioner Betty Castor and former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis have all thrown their support behind Gelber.
Republicans have lined up Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp and Holly Benson, a former House member who also served as secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration, in a GOP primary race that’s been virtually silent compared to the Aronberg/Gelber contest.
They’re all vying to replace Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican who is running for governor in a primary against another senator - Paula Dockery.
Gelber’s latest political aspiration has opened up the door for yet another former senator, Gwen Margolis, to return to the chamber.
Margolis, a former Senate President, left office before being termed out to make room for Gelber. If she wins, it would be the Miami Beach-area Democrat’s second return trip to the Senate. After serving in the state House, she switched to the Senate from 1981-1992 before making a losing bid for Congress. Margolis was reelected to the Senate in 2002.
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Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum is bringing buddy Rudy Giuliani back to Florida for a breakfast fundraiser in West Palm Beach on March 12. 
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.
Sentenced to die for crimes judged heinous and cruel, inmates await execution in a 9 feet by 6 feet cell.
