Bill McCollum appears no closer to uniting behind Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott than he was last week.

Some have compared it to the 2004 Republican U.S. Senate primary, when Bill McCollum waited two weeks to endorse fellow Republican Mel Martinez. Back then, McCollum was upset about Martinez’s decision to run an ad calling McCollum “the new darling of the extreme homosexuals.”

But apparently dropping outlandish campaign ads (the attack related to McCollum’s support of a hate crimes bill) is not a reflection of character or integrity.

Here’s what McCollum told WESH in Orlando over the weekend:

“I never had any questions raised either before or after the election about Mel’s integrity or honesty or character, and I’ve had those questions raised about Rick Scott and they were raised very seriously. And it’s not something that would just idle in the campaign.

“There are still questions that are out there, I think unanswered questions that trouble me a great deal from his past, particularly at Columbia/HCA.”

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.

The gubernatorial nominees from the two main parties chatted last night after Democrat Alex Sink phoned Republican Rick Scott to offer her congratulations. Sink’s campaign described it as a “short conversation” in which she expressed hope they could focus on the issues.

Meanwhile, Scott still hasn’t heard from Bill McCollum, his primary rival who refused to say whether he would endorse Scott during their bruising campaign.

McCollum conceded the primary to Scott but has not endorsed the multi-millionaire who spent more than $50 million of his own money to defeat party establishment favorite McCollum.

McCollum’s campaign spokesman said he would endorse every other GOP candidate but failed to include Scott’s name in the list when asked.

“The attorney general is looking forward to being on the campaign trail for campaigns for our Republican slate, including Marco Rubio, Jeff Atwater, Adam Putnam and our new attorney general nominee and Dean Cannon and Mike Haridopolos and our entire legislative slate,” McCollum campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said today.

When asked if McCollum would endorse Scott, Campbell said: “They have not yet spoken.”

When asked again, Campbell repeated her earlier remarks: “I think (Attorney) General McCollum will make comments this week, where he believes the Republican Party needs to focus on in November. I think you could take from that that he’ll make comments today or Thursday he will focus on electing Republican candidates including Marco Rubio and Mike Haridopolos and Jeff Atwater and the entire Republican legislative slate.”

McCollum became the state’s top GOP elected official when Gov. Charlie Crist abandoned the Republican Party to run as an independent in the U.S. Senate race against former House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Republican Party of Florida officials scrapped a unity party planned in Tampa today after the brutal primary season between Scott and McCollum.

It’s been a tough few months for Florida Republicans.

In the GOP gubernatorial primary, Rick Scott turned the scandals of his own party into a campaign issue. Bill McCollum won’t say if he’d support Scott as the party’s nominee.

So it shouldn’t be too surprising that the state party has abandoned plans for a unity event they were attempting to hold tomorrow in Tampa.

“We tossed around the idea for a couple unity events tomorrow, but it never came to fruition,” state party spokeswoman Katie Betta said. “It was too difficult to pull together not knowing what was going to happen tonight and where the candidates were going to be tomorrow.”

Betta stressed that it was a logistical issue and had nothing to do the potential of the bevy of state party leaders having to eat crow if their candidate, McCollum, loses to Scott tonight.

“Our responsibility is to elect Republican candidates,” Betta said. “We’ve opened our Victory offices and have the resources in place to help all of our candidates after the primary. At this point, Scott has chosen to not participate in that.

“But we hope to have a working relationship with whoever the nominee is,” she said.

Instead of a unity event tomorrow, the party will present its slate of statewide candidates at its fund-raising dinner in Sept. 10 in Orlando, where Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour will be the keynote speaker

UPDATE: More of the same ballot mix-ups are being reported in Palm Beach County and in Broward County, according to the state Division of Elections. There have been fewer than 10 instances reported in each county.

Oops. After the millions of dollars spent by GOP gubernatorial opponents Rick Scott and Attorney General Bill McCollum, at least two votes that could have gone their way won’t.

Two Palm Beach County Republican voters received “No Party Affiliation” ballots but reported the mix-up only after they had cast their votes, meaning they did not vote in the heated GOP primary.

The poll workers who handed out the wrong ballots were re-assigned, elections supervisor Susan Bucher said.

“I don’t know how this could happen,” she said.

Turn-out throughout the state appears to be light despite predictions of record-breaking voter participation.

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink wants oil disaster claims czar Ken Feinberg to revamp his process for paying individuals and business owners who say BP’s massive oil disaster caused them to lose revenues or suffer other damages.

Sink, who traveled frequently to the Panhandle to meet with Feinberg and business owners who’s claims languished in BP’s hands, and fellow Cabinet member Attorney General Bill McCollum both accuse Feinberg of creating a process that’s less friendly to oil spill victims than federal law.

Feinberg has “taken an extremely restrictive view as to who is eligible for recovery,” Sink, a Democrat who is the presumptive nominee for governor, wrote to Feinberg today, the kick-off of his Gulf Coast Claims Facility that will handle the claims.

“In my opinion, the GCCF rules must be rewritten in favor of those who were harmed by this catastrophe, as opposed to those who caused it,” Sink wrote.

(more…)

UPDATE: McCollum canceled his WPB event because of weather and headed to Orlando. But he flew into a different hangar than Scott. In the meantime, Herald reporter Marc Caputo put together the video above for what marks the first Post-Herald-Times video project…

“Oh Jesus,” Ingrid McCollum laughed when she saw her husband’s primary rival, Rick Scott, pull up to Tampa International Jet Center moments ago.

Scott is headed to Orlando – the McCollums’ hometown – while Bill McCollum was headed to West Palm Beach.

Scott blew by McCollum in the airport while McCollum joked that he would attempt to delay his rival from making his next stop.

Rick Scott’s campaign is crying foul over our story this morning that reported his primary rival, Bill McCollum, opposes abortions even in cases of rape and incest. Scott does not.

We got that detail from a controversial voters guide prepared by a triumvirate of Christian groups. Presumably, McCollum’s campaign filled out their own questionnaire. We’ll update this blog when we get their response.

Meanwhile, Scott’s campaign is calling it a “last-minute flip-flop” comparing it to McCollum’s reversal on embryonic stem cell research, which he no longer supports. (Here’s our opus on that and other life issues in this race.)

Scott’s staff has sent out quotes from the Orlando Sentinel political blog this summer in which McCollum said he does not support taxpayer funding of abortions except “in circumstances where the mother’s life or health is at risk or in cases of rape or incest.”

(more…)

It’s unclear who cast the first stone in the volatile Republican race for governor, but neither Bill McCollum nor Rick Scott was willing to set aside their differences Sunday as they brought their campaigns to mega-churches on opposite ends of the state.

In Miami, Scott stood at the pulpit of the 7,000-seat El Rey Jesus church and questioned McCollum’s honesty, a tactic he said church leaders encouraged him to use.

In Jacksonville, meanwhile, McCollum used the preacher’s sermon about “unwholesome words” at the 10,000-seat First Baptist Church to launch his own criticisms of Scott.

With neither candidate willing to turn the other cheek, it was clear the continued attacks have hurt both.

Story here.

Ken Feinberg, who’s’ taking over BP’s troubled claims system at midnight, rejects Attorney General Bill McCollum’s contention that the new claims czar’s expedited emergency payment system is worse than BP’s.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Feinberg said today on a conference call with reporters when asked about McCollum’s critique.

Feinberg said he expects a flood of applications when the Gulf Coast Claims Facility goes online at 12:01 a.m. Monday.

The lawyer, hired by BP and President Barack Obama, received high marks for his handling of the compensation fund for victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks but is under fire for vague guidelines about how he will dole out the $20 billion BP has pledged for Gulf Coast individuals and businesses who’ve lost money and jobs since the April 20th Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

Feinberg has yet to reveal how much money he’s being paid to take over the claims system and won’t release internal documents detailing how BP’s adjusters have been retrained to handle claims.

Some Panhandle business owners waited for months without getting any payment from the oil giant for their losses and those who did receive checks had no idea how the amount was derived or what time period it covered.

Feinberg is using “proximity,” or how close claimants are in relation to where oil washed up on the beach, as one factor in deciding who gets paid. That’s more onerous than federal law, McCollum complained in a letter on Friday.

Feinberg says his system gives claimants a free review of how they would fare in court.

“It’s truly a free preview. Nobody is obligated to come into this program and accept the award unless they voluntarily reach a conclusion that it’s in their interest,” Feinberg said.

Republican candidate Rick Scott took a shot this morning at his primary opponent, Bill McCollum, during a service at the El Rey Jesus mega-church in Miami. Ironically, it was over McCollum’s illegal immigration bill, a proposal that Scott says he would largely implement as governor.

Arizona-style immigration reform is unpopular among Florida Hispanics and Scott says McCollum misled Miami Republicans about the bill. (See end of this previous post.)

“My opponent came here two or three weeks ago and was very disrespectful in my mind. He was not honest with your leadership about his beliefs,” Scott said to thousands of people packed into the church.

“My commitment to you is that I will always be respectful of the diversity of this state and this country,” Scott said. “And I will always make sure that I have leadership from this community involved in anything I do as governor.”

But in the audience was Anthony Verdugo, head of the Florida Christian Family Coalition, a group that has endorsed McCollum. Verdugo said Scott committed to his group’s forum in Boca Raton earlier this month and then skipped it without reason.

Verdugo said Scott’s speech was “highly inappropriate in a house of worship”

“If you’re going to run for office and you’re going to talk about honesty, you gotta put yourself out there first,” Verdugo said. “There’s stuff that is out there that people don’t know about him that he refuses to address. And I think it’s a little ironic.”

UPDATE: The church has pulled the voter guides after Scott’s campaign complained.

That’s the note in the voter’s guide the Florida Family Policy Council and other Christian groups are disseminating at the 10,000-member El Rey Jesus church in Miami today.

The guide runs through candidates positions in seven races. But the only “note” is included in the GOP governor’s race between Rick Scott and Bill McCollum. The note happens to be a talking point for McCollum, who has been endorsed by the family policy group’s director, John Stemberger.

Note: Mr. Scott was the CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare hospitals while they performed elective abortions.

We should note that a tiny fraction of elective abortions happen in hospitals. And we should also note that several GOP operatives have said this is a low blow againt Scott.. Remember Florida GOP icon Jeb Bush is a board member of a hospital where abortions happen, too. (Even McCollum has stopped repeating it in his stump speeches.)

One of the positions not included in voters guide: illegal immigration.

(more…)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott poured $12 million into his campaign from Aug. 9-18, according to final primary campaign finance reports filed last night. That brings he and his wife’s total investment in the campaign effort to $49.9 million.

Scott’s primary rival, Bill McCollum, is not anywhere near that kind of money. But the state’s Attorney General hardly running a mom-and-pop operation. McCollum’s team expects they and their supports will spend more than $20 million.

While Scott writing checks to his own campaign, the electioneering committee directly tied to McCollum took $1.6 million from a host of special interests during the same time. The Florida First Initiative, has raised nearly $6 million this cycle. McCollum’s own campaign committee raised $7.7 million.

From Aug 9-18, McCollum’s 527 committee took money from insurers, real estate companies and health care interests, including $500,000 from the secretive League of American Voters, $256,000 from Florida Senate Republican Mike Haridopolos’ fund-raising committee, $250,000 from The Villages holding company $10,000 from the Gunster Yoakley law firm and $10,000 from Continental Motorcars of Merritt Island.

UPDATE: McCollum said he received a tip about the deposition from a “a rather prominent attorney in the central part of Florida” who heard about it from a law firm involved in the case. McCollum stressed that the document itself did not come from the firm. McCollum, however, said it was fair to make it a political issue.

“I’ve never taken the fifth amendment. People don’t take the fifth amendment unless they’re involved in a case that might involve their criminal, potential, criminal liability. That’s why you take the fifth. Otherwise you just answer the questions.”

Bill McCollum’s Republican gubernatorial campaign has unearthed what was supposed to be a destroyed deposition Rick Scott gave during a legal fight in 2000 between his former health care company, Columbia/HCA, and the Nevada Communications Corp.

Four days out from the Tuesday primary, McCollum’s folks — who brazenly declared that Scott “barely escaped imprisonment” despite never being questioned as part of a historic Medicare fraud investigation settled in 2001 — say the deposition is important because Scott pled the fifth 75 times. Scott had resigned from Columbia in 1997 and the deposition shows Scott pled the fifth at the advice of his attorney, who cited the “number of criminal investigations” pending against Columbia around the country at the time.

Pleading the fifth, of course, is not an assertion of guilt. The U.S. Supreme Court has said the privilege serves to protect the innocent.

Scott’s campaign says it’s a flimsy argument from Florida’s attorney general, the state’s top law enforcement official.

“Just when you think Bill McCollum and the political insiders can’t get any sleazier they call on a campaign contributor to do their dirty work. It is disgusting and it is what people hate about politics,” Scott spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said.

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For the last full week before the primary Tuesday, Naples businessman Rick Scott has paid for a mind-blowing $5.1 million in TV ads for his Republican gubernatorial primary, according to a report from a competing campaign. Here’s what that means:

On average, Scott bought an average of 2,300 points across the state’s 10 broadcast TV markets this week, which generally means the average viewer in Florida saw 23 Scott ads during that time. Campaigns usually target their ads to a specific demographic, so if you’re a FOX News fan, for example, you’ve probably seen more.

Scott bought the most points in West Palm Beach, where the average viewer saw 34 ads from Scott this week. Since Scott jumped into the race in April, no one has watched more of his ads than the average Orlando TV viewer, who has watched nearly 200 spots since then.

Numbers from/for Bill McCollum’s campaign are a little more difficult to parse because he’s got several outside groups helping. McCollum’s own campaign paid for about $1.6 million in ads over the last three weeks, while the Florida First Initiative and Florida Chamber of Commerce combined to spend about $800,000 on behalf of McCollum in the final week.

If Republican bosses are upset about Rick Scott’s TV ad that attempts to tie his Republican gubernatorial primary rival Bill McCollum to former state party chairman Jim Greer, they’re not going to be too happy with this mailer.

We’re told it was dropped in the mail on Monday and sent to about 800,000 households.

The Republican Governor’s Association and the Republican Party of Florida are asking Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott to pull a TV ad that accuses primary rival Bill McCollum of helping former state party chairman Jim Greer “hide financial irregularities.”

There is no evidence linking McCollum to the corruption charges that landed Greer in jail earlier this summer. But McCollum did play a role in the secret negotiations to force Greer’s resignation and publicly said afterward that the party should not disclose the internal financial records in question.

McCollum now says he will support releasing the forensic audit of the party.

Here are the statements from state Sen. John Thrasher, the state party chairman, and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the RGA chairman.

(more…)

In a state of 4 million Republicans, it almost seemed futile for Bill McCollum to be waving a sign on the side of a road in an attempt to sway drivers to vote for him instead of Rick Scott in their party’s primary for governor.

But McCollum wasn’t alone. He stood with about a dozen volunteers, the kind of supporters he expects will play a vital role in the Tuesday election.

“This is what my opponent just doesn’t have,” McCollum told his backers. “We’ve got the grassroots behind us.”

Scott, however, argues his campaign is a direct product of a grassroots movement.

Scott founded a group, Conservatives for Patients Rights, that fought the federal health-care changes last summer and helped whip up the flurry of conservative activism now known as the tea party movement.

“I finally said to myself that I could either continue to fund things from an advocacy standpoint … or run for office,” Scott said.

Scott and McCollum have traded the lead in a serious of polls during the past week, including two more released Wednesday. The competing polls suggest a neck-and-neck race that will be won by whichever candidate executes the best ground game and pushes the most supporters to the polls.

Story here.

Escambia County Republican Chairwoman Susan Moore was joined on Friday by 32 other county chairmen and state party committeemen and women — generally referred to as the grassroots of the party — in a letter demanding GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott release a sealed deposition he gave as part of a settled lawsuit against Solantic, his chain of health care clinics.

“As a leading Republican candidate for governor, you should not ignore our demand for you to be open and transparent regarding your involvement in the case,” according to the letter, which includes many supporters of the other GOP candidate in the race, Attorney General Bill McCollum

“This election means a great deal to Florida Republicans, and the charges against you appear quite serious. Nominating a Republican candidate without full transparency will mean doom for our party if you win the primary and there are lingering doubts or as yet unrevealed charges.”

The letter does not include Sarasota County Republican Chairman Joe Gruters, who warned his colleagues a few hours later that their gambit was no different than the complaints many of them made months ago. At that time, Republicans lambasted state party Chairman Jim Greer for attempting to clear the primary field for candidates like Charlie Crist and Bill McCollum.

“Reflecting on last year’s example, we must ensure that our Republican Party organizations not take sides and stay out what has turned into a very divisive campaign for Governor,” Gruters wrote.

“No one office or candidate should be above our Republican organization, thus we must not allow ourselves to risk alienating our members (both current and potential) by using our organization to promote one candidate’s agenda over another. I believe that an action like the one being proposed does just that and further promotes divisiveness within the party. I ask that you reconsider.”

As the GOP primary race turns from an air attack with TV ads into a battle to turnout voters, many see McCollum with a distinct advantage over Scott. After three decades in office, McCollum has cultivated a loyalty among the grassroots Republicans (like the signatories above) who are skilled at pushing their voters to the polls.

And while Scott is enjoying his status as a political outsider in this year of anti-incumbency, it also means he’s had just the past few months to build much of the volunteer effort he’ll need on Aug. 24.

“I don’t think he has the reach that we do by any stretch,” McCollum said. “The regular Republicans, the women’s clubs, the precinct committeemen and women, those who are the activists that go out and make the telephone calls, talk to their friends and neighbors and do the e-mailing, they’re all principally behind me.

“They have a few, but I’ve got most of them out there working everyday.”