Longtime legislative staffer Kathy Mears, whose most recent government post was as Gov. Charlie Crist’s liaison with the legislature, has gone to work for her former boss Daniel Webster’s campaign for Congress.

Webster, a former House Speaker who also served as Senate Majority Leader before leaving office due to term limits two years ago, is running against U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, the outspoken Orlando Democrat who consistently gets into trouble for his controversial remarks.

“Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly,” was Grayson’s analysis of GOP opposition to Democrats’ health care reforms in Sept. 2009 and likened the current health care system to a holocaust. Grayson also suggested that former VP Dick Cheney was a vampire.

More recently, Grayson got into hot water for running a campaign attack ad calling Webster “Taliban Dan” in which he uses a video clip of Webster saying wives should submit to their husbands and accusing accusing the Christian conservative of wanting to “impose his radical fundamentalism on us.”

Webster was actually instructing husbands not to rely solely on the Bible’s instructions for wives to submit but to pray for husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church.

WRS Compass, the environmental consulting firm that potential Democratic governor candidate Bud Chiles blasted today, issued a “fact check” response this evening saying that its relationship with the state of Florida goes back to the adminstration of Bud Chiles’ father, the late Gov. Lawton Chiles.

The firm got a contract worth up to $250,000 from the state Department of Environmental Protection this month to help counties respond to the gulf oil spill.

Bud Chiles, who’s considering entering the Democratic primary for governor against Alex Sink,issued a statement today noting that the firm’s CEO, Kathleen Shanahan, was chief of staff for Dick Cheney during the 2000 presidential campaign and transition.

Chiles accused the state of delegating basic responsibilities to a private firm and forcing local governments “to work through a firm whose principal was Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.”

DEP Secretary Mike Sole said Chiles’ description of WRS’ role was “fundamentally flawed.”

Read the WRS Compass response after the jump….

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UPDATED with comments by Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole.

Bud Chiles sure sounds like a Democratic candidate for governor, invoking Halliburton and making not one but two references to reliable Democratic target Dick Cheney in a statement today blasting Florida’s hiring of an environmental consulting firm to review and assist county responses to the gulf oil spill.

A Chiles publicist says the son of former Gov. Lawton Chiles “expects to make a decision real soon” on whether to hop into the Democratic gubernatorial primary against CFO Alex Sink.

Chiles’ spill statement — which Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole called “fundamentally flawed” this afternoon — is filled with Democratic red meat.

“This is no time to tie the hands of local government by forcing them to work through a firm whose principal was Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff,” Chiles says.

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney is endorsing Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate bid.

A Cheney statement praises Rubio’s “strength of conviction” and says Gov. Charlie Crist, the onetime GOP frontrunner who’s now flirting with an independent bid, “cannot be trusted in Washington to take on the Obama agenda because on issue after issue he actually supports that agenda.”

Cheney urges Crist to stay in the GOP primary or dop out because “the only winners from an independent bid by Crist would be Barack Obama and Harry Reid.”

Read Cheney’s statement after the jump….

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It isn’t just Republicans who are trying to capitalize on the tea party movement and Scott Brown’s surprise Massachusetts Senate win.

As the April 13 special election approaches to replace former Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler in Palm Beach-Broward congressional District 19, Democrat Ted Deutch’s campaign has sent a mailer to voters in the heavily Democratic district warning that “Republicans & The Tea Party Want To Capture YOUR Congressional Seat!”

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