If Bill McCollum can start each day of his bus tour like this, it’s going to be a good road trip for the Republican gubernatorial candidate.

For the second time in as many days, a poll is showing McCollum over GOP primary rival Rick Scott.

The survey today is from the Tarrance Group, paid for by the Florida Medical Association. They phoned 900 likely Republicans from Aug. 10-12 and claim a margin of error of 3.3 percent. 

Scott’s campaign dismissed the poll, noting that the FMA has endorsed McCollum.

“When McCollum’s surrogate groups release polls showing your campaign in a statistical tie, you know you are in trouble,” Scott spokesman Joe Kildea said.

McCollum, meanwhile, is starting the second of his four-day bus tour. He has three events in Jacksonville (after five in the same area Thursday) before stops in Daytona Beach and Cocoa.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum tossed out the first pitch tonight for the Jacksonville Suns, the Double-A affiliate of the Florida Marlins.

No, that’s not his primary opponent, Rick Scott, behind the plate. It’s Suns outfielder Lorenzo Scott.

No relation, just a coincidence that ends up being one of those priceless moments on the campaign trail.

(For the record, McCollum, a serious baseball fan, received a decent little cheer from the sparse crowd. His pitch was low and outside, but he did get it over the plate – a victory for any politician who takes the mound.)

In a sign of how bitter the Republican gubernatorial primary has become, Bill McCollum said today that he would “withhold judgment” over whether to endorse Scott, if Scott won. Polls show the race is neck-and-neck.

“We’ve got an issue with character and trust with this man and I’m holding back judgment,” McCollum said.

Asked if the likely Democratic nominee Alex Sink had any “character and trust” issues, McCollum said, “Not to my knowledge.”

Sounds like Sink, by the way, is going up on TV before the Republican slug-fest is finished. A source said Sink could be on the air as soon as next Friday, but the Sink campaign wouldn’t confirm.”

“Our television ads will begin very soon, and Floridians will hear directly from Alex Sink about her positive commitment to strengthening Florida’s economy, creating jobs and holding politicians accountable,” Sink spokesman Kyra Jennings said.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum kicked off a four-day bus tour this afternoon with an 19-minute speech in which he touched on tax cuts, illegal immigration, job creation and — oh yeah — that poll out this morning showing he’s ahead of his primary opponent, Rick Scott.

McCollum chose to end on the poll, waiting until the 18th minute to mention it.

“That’s the first time in a long time,” McCollum said of his lead in a speech to the Republican Women’s Club of Duval Federated.

Polls since May have shown Scott in the lead.

“And you can feel that surge and that momentum and it’s there for a reason,” he said. “Because people are now beginning to reflect, they’re beginning to look at the records of the two people involved, they’re beginning to peel the onion back and say, ‘Hey, we really don’t know who Rick Scott is. He says a lot of nice things, but we really don’t know who he is. But we know Bill McCollum and we know we need leadership in this state.’”

Story here.

Here’s one way: Give $1.4 million $1.6 million to the committee slamming Rick Scott, Bill McCollum’s Republican gubernatorial rival.

That’s the total so far that Republicans Mike Haridopolos and Dean Cannon, the likely next Senate president and House speaker, have pumped into McCollum’s Florida First Initiative group, which is airing the above TV ad right now. Haridopolos gave the group another $100k on Monday, the same day he and Cannon joined McCollum and former Gov. Jeb Bush on a made-for-TV campaign swing through Miami, Jacksonville and Tampa.

In the good old days before Scott cannon-balled into the deep end of Florida Republican politics, the GOP establishment was successfully mowing down McCollum’s primary challengers. It doesn’t take too much imagination* to think that at that point Haridopolos and Cannon were probably planning to spent their money protecting the GOP majorities in the state House and Senate or maybe even trying pick off a handful of Democratic seats that Republicans need to own veto-proof majorities in both chambers.

Instead, the money is being used to defeat Scott, who is campaigning on all the same issues — reforming Medicaid, cutting taxes, ending teacher tenure, making abortions harder to get — that Cannon and Haridopolos want to pass in the next two years. But instead they’re helping fund a primary fight so nasty that Democrat Alex Sink is virtually tied in the polls with either GOP candidate without having spent a dime on TV and Republican voters are practically begging the campaigns to disarm.

So watch for plenty of second-guessing of the two Orlando area lawmakers if Sink topples the bloodied Republican nominee in November and leaves Haridopolos and Cannon with little more than to recycle the same stinging quotes they used when Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed their bills this year.

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Here’s the video Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum is airing as Floridians head to the polls this week in advance of the Aug. 24 primary election.

It’s a honed version of the “Who are you really, Rick Scott?” message McCollum has been honing for the past week on the campaign trail.

More here.

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.

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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.

Ok, so you could argue that the best exchange was the question (Listen here) about who their favorite sports team were (Rick Scott and Bill McCollum both mentioned Marco Rubio, which we’re pretty sure is a squad in the English Premier League…)

But in an otherwise freewheeling, action-packed debate on Thursday, moderator John Wilson gave the two Republican gubernatorial candidates the most room to debate a point over taxes and fees.

The question started out about the barrage of negative ads the two have been unleashing on each other, but quickly devolved into the most heated back-and-forth of the evening.

Listen here

For our recap of hour long debate, click here.

To watch the station’s highlights, continue reading.

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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.

Florida will not appeal a federal court ruling that put a temporary hold on a program that offers taxpayer assistance to statewide candidates competing against wealthy, self-funded competitors.

“In analyzing our options and with the desire to have some finality on the issue, we felt it was the best choice not to take any further steps,” Secretary of State spokeswoman Jennifer Krell Davis told The Palm Beach Post.

It sounds like the state sees little chance to win a rehearing from the same judges in the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s other option would be to appeal to a Supreme Court that last year dismantled much of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws.

A couple interesting offshoots:

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Breaking news from the News Service of Florida:

A federal appeals court in Atlanta has reversed a lower court ruling that upheld the state’s public campaign financing system. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of candidate Rick Scott, who had challenged the constitutionality of the matching money system in Florida.

The ruling means publicly financed candidates will still get a dollar-for-dollar match up to $250 from the state for every donation they receive from a Floridian. Candidates will not be able to get money if a non-participating candidate breaks the cap.

Essentially, that means GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott can continue to spend his personal fortune without triggering a windfall of cash for Republican Bill McCollum and possibly Democrat Alex Sink.

Background here. Read the ruling here.

Rick Scott’s Republican gubernatorial campaign has another $3 million from his wife, Anne. The couple have now put at least $33.9 million of their own money into the primary race against Attorney General Bill McCollum, shattering all kinds of money records in the state.

Scott’s political advocacy group, Let’s Get to Work, which he is a 527 group he’s using to avoid triggering a flood of taxpayer matching dollars for McCollum, also picked up a few big contributors in the past week: Robert L. James, Fort Lauderdale, $25,000; Jack Anderson, Vero Beach, $25,000; and the co-founder of Columbia Hospital Corp., Richard Rainwater, Fort Worth, $100,000.

We detailed in this post on Wednesday some big donations McCollum recently picked up.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott, who in June demanded four debates with primary rival Bill McCollum, missed a 5:30 p.m. deadline on Thursday to accept the terms of what would be the rivals’ only meeting to be televised statewide.

“You might conclude as I have that Scott chose not to participate,” Florida Press Association CEO Dean Ridings said. “I’m not sure what the hangup was. The campaign would not officially discuss it.”

Scott and McCollum are scheduled for two debates: one on Monday at the Univision studio in Miami and the other Thursday at WTVT in Tampa. The Univision debate will air at 11 p.m. on the network’s stations in Miami, Orlando and Tampa. It was unclear if the WTVT debate would air anywhere outside of Tampa.

A third debate, hosted by the Florida Press Association and Leadership Florida, was scheduled for Aug. 11 in Orlando, but was moved to Jacksonville at the request of the Scott campaign. Scott’s camp then asked for the debate to be moved out of a TV studio and into a setting that would accommodate a large audience. The two host groups said they did not have the time or resources to grant that wish.

Ridings confirmed the groups were discussing another option, but would not announce anything until at least Monday.

But The Post has learned there are discussions to return the event to Orlando as scheduled. If Scott does not attend, McCollum would still field questions. One option being considered is for the panelists to use information from Scott’s previous interviews with newspaper and TV reporters to portray his position on issues. That raises the question, however, is McCollum would have to debate his own previous statements to the media.

The Freedom First Committee, the political advocacy group run by Merritt Island Republican Mike Haridopolos, collected $100,000 from Progress Energy on Wednesday. Hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones gave another $100,000. In recent weeks, Haridopolos has also taken $50,000 checks from FPL, the Florida Association of Realtors and the Florida Medical Association.

Haridopolos has been sending the money to other so-called 527 groups. Since the beginning of the month, he’s given $190,000 to the Florida First Initiative, a group run by GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum. Haridopolos has also given $50,000 each to Floridians for Conservative Values, a stealthy political attack group that operates out of a West Palm Beach, and Truth Matters, Inc.

Truth Matters appears to be operated by Richard S. Cole of Miami. In June, the group took $73,000 from a state Senate leadership committee known as Alliance for a Strong Economy (it’s managed by Palm Beach Gardens council candidate Howard Rosenkranz) and sent nearly all of it — $69,800 — to Citizens Speaking Out Committee, another group run by Alachua County Republican Chairman Stafford Jones that is aiding McCollum.

Haridopolos’s House counterpart, Dean Cannon, withdrew $70,000 from the Florida Republican Party on Monday and tucked it into his Florida Liberty Fund. The same day, Cannon used the fund to send $65,000 to Florida Citizens for Change, a 527 run by Harold Wise of Miami.

Don’t look now, but Attorney General Bill McCollum is doing a decent job collecting money for his Republican gubernatorial race.

Nearly all of the money-related headlines have gone to Naples businessman Rick Scott, who, along with his wife, have poured at least $31 million of their personal fortune into the Republican gubernatorial primary.

But by spending his own money, Scott has given McCollum the entire field of the traditional Republican donors, who helped Charlie Crist and Tom Gallagher raise nearly $30 million in 2006.

McCollum and his allies have spent nearly $14 million so far, about $1 million more than Crist spent in the 2006 primary.

On the collection side, McCollum has received $1.3 million from Florida taxpayers as part of the state’s public campaign financing program, which Scott is trying to get a court to dismantle.

And we reported Tuesday that McCollum’s political advocacy group, a 527 known as Florida First Initiative, brought in $500,000 from the U.S. Chamber (the Florida Chamber endorsed him today). McCollum has helped his 527 collect $1.5 million since July 8. Broken down that’s an average donation of $45,000. Or about $77,000 per day.

Meanwhile, McCollum’s campaign has made another big TV purchase, peppering $1 million across the state for the next month. The buy is mostly — if not all — on Fox News and focuses on Orlando, Tampa and Jacksonville TV markets.

Scott, however, continues outspend McCollum about 3-to-1 on TV. A report from ad buyers show’s Scott’s 527 group, Let’s Get to Work, will spend another $1.8 million in the next week. Most of that money is spent in Tampa, Orlando and Miami markets.

UPDATE: Here’s the official memo on the poll.

Those will be the official numbers released in the coming days from a poll commissioned by the Florida Medical Association, Bill McCollum supporter Mac Stipanovich tells us.

The poll of 600 likely Republican voters was taken July 25-26 by McLaughlin & Associates and has a 4 point margin of error. The pollsters are also working for McCollum and the numbers are almost identical to this survey for the campaign that Politico reported on today.

Most voters have a negative opinions of Scott and McCollum, but the poll will show McCollum has a better chance to win the 30 percent still undecided.

“The story here is not that McCollum isn’t winning. It’s that Scott has not got the separation he was hoping for after outspending McCollum four-to-one,” Stipanovich said. “When you live on momentum and expectations, you have to keep them going. When you disappoint, you deflate quickly sometimes.”

Former House Speaker Allan Bense called us back this afternoon after he said his e-mail inbox filled up with messages about our post earlier today that reported he held a private meeting late Sunday with GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott. Bense is a top fundraiser for the other guy in the primary: Attorney General Bill McCollum.

“I’m a strong Bill McCollum supporter,” said Bense.

Bense provided proof that Scott’s campaign requested the meeting and said he accepted to be polite.

“I guess in today’s hardball politics that’s not the way to be,” he said

Bense, the chairman-elect of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, said he doesn’t have any inside knowledge on who the chamber might endorse and that he’s not pushing for either candidate. The group is conducting some candidate interviews for other races today in Miami today and could make their announcement in the governor’s race this week.

We’ve heard the race has caused some hand-wringing within the chamber.

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Rick Scott supports it until drilling can be determined to be safe. His Republican gubernatorial primary opponent, Bill McCollum, says its unnecessary.

But McCollum also said he would have voted to put a constitutional ban on near-shore oil exploration on the statewide ballot. Scott opposes the ban.

Story here.