Rick Perry’s departure from the GOP presidential race is almost certain to help Newt Gingrich in the Sunshine State’s upcoming primary as many of Perry’s conservative supporters – including the next Florida Senate president – defect to the former Speaker of the House.

But how much that matters depends on how well Gingrich, distrusted by many tea party activists, performs in South Carolina this weekend, Republican legislative leaders say.

Senate President-Designate Don Gaetz, a Perry backer, said he’s leaning towards Gingrich, not because the Texas governor has endorsed his former opponent, but because he, like many others, believes Gingrich would handily outshine President Obama in debates.

“I’ve respected Newt Gingrich for years,” said Gaetz, R-Niceville. Gaetz said he’s read Gingrich’s books and met with the historian on several occasions, “more than just casually.”

But, he said, “I’m happy with either Romney or Gingrich but I’m leaning toward Gingrich,” although “I can support Romney and support him with enthusiasm.”

Gingrich’s performance in South Carolina will influence how relevant Florida will be in determining the Republican candidate, some political insiders, including Gaetz, say.

The outcome of Florida’s winner-take-all-delegates primary could whittle the race down to contest between Romney and Gingrich or crown Romney as the all-but-inevitable nominee.

“It’s important for Florida to be relevant. So for parochial reasons, I hope that the contest goes on through the end of January at least because I want Florida to be important in selecting the Republican nominee,” Gaetz said. “So Gingrich would have to do well in South Carolina to keep hope alive among those who are unsatisfied with Romney.”

Perry dropping out of the race may have little impact on Florida voters, said Sen. John Thrasher, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida and Mitt Romney supporter.

“I don’t think it makes a lot of difference. I think Newt’s where he is. I think Gov. Romney’s where he is. Most people still believe Gov. Romney’s the best choice, particularly in Florida. He’s got an incredible organization. He’s got a lot of troops on the ground all over the state. I think he’s got the resources to really put forth his message by Jan. 31,” Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, said.

Perry made the right decision, Gaetz said.

“There comes a point when you look around and you realize that it’s hopeless. And I think that Gov. Perry has gotten to that point,” he said.

House Redistricting Chairman Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, has reached an accord with Senate counterpart Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, on redrawing political boundaries for the Legislature.

The Senate this week unveiled plans only for the Senate and Congress. And the House next week will follow suit with proposals that rework lines only for Florida’s congressional seats and the House.

 In other words, the House will accept senators’ proposals for redrawing their own boundaries — and the House expects the Senate to accept its proposal for reshaping those districts. Only the state’s congressional lines would be subject to competing plans from the two chambers, under this approach.

Weatherford made the deal known Friday in a letter to members of the House’s redistricting panels. The House proposals are slated to be showcased Tuesday.

A proposed three-month tax holiday in the Panhandle for marine-related goods – including boats – is off the table.

The tax holiday was stripped by Niceville Republican Sen. Don Gaetz, the sponsor of a package (SB 248) aimed at giving an economic boost to the seven Northwest Florida counties hard hit by last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil gusher.

The proposed tax break would have saved taxpayers more than $15 million next year, according to a Senate staff analysis of the measure.

If approved by lawmakers and the governor, the Panhandle will get $10 million next year to help the region diversify its tourism- and military-based economy, with another $20 million over the next two years.

But even that money won’t go as far as the bill originally intended.

At the request of Sen. Bill Montford, a Tallahassee Democrat who was out sick during the meeting, Gaetz offered an amendment to add Wakulla County to the list of seven counties – Bay, Escambia, Franklin, Gulf, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa and Walton – the money is earmarked for.

The measure would also steer three-quarters of any money Florida receives from payments from lawsuits or fines related to the lawsuit – which could amount to billions of dollars – to the same eight counties.

The committee also approved memorials to Congress asking the federal government to give an income tax exemption to those who received payments from BP for losses incurred because of the oil blast.

Sen. Joe Negron wants fat Floridians and smokers to get healthy or else.

Included in Negron’s revamp of the state-federal Medicaid program – which Negron will release tomorrow – is a component aimed at what senators are calling “personal responsibility.”

Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican who helped craft Negron’s bill, said Medicaid patients have to take control of their health care just as he had to do when his doctor told him to lose weight.

“We’re saying that an individual who’s been diagnosed as morbidly obese needs to be on a medically-directed program of weight loss to manage that health care problem that could turn into an increased taxpayer liability. The same thing with smokers,” Gaetz said.

The bill would require smokers and alcoholics and drug addicts to get treatment, Gaetz said.

Negron said his bill would include incentives for Medicaid patients to lose weight, quit smoking and stop drinking but did not give details about what they would be.

If they don’t get thinner and put down the smokes, Negron said their coverage could be cut off.

“It’s possible,” Negron, R-Stuart, said.

He said the Medicaid program currently includes a seldom-used provision that would allow the state to boot patients out.

“If you are non-compliant with your appointments, if you reject medical advice, there is a system in place under current law, which is rarely used but it has been used, …where someone would no longer receive services,” Negron said.

Healthier Medicaid patients will save the state money, Gaetz and Negron said.

“They not only compromise the quality of that person’s life they compromise the efficacy of any medical care that might be rendered but they drive up costs that are then shifted to the friends and neighbors who are actually paying the health care bill for the individual who is smoking,” Gaetz said.

The system can no longer tolerate someone “who is an alcoholic and wants to offload the medical consequences of alcoholism to the taxpayers of Florida,” Gaetz said.

Gov. Rick Scott, a few of his closest aides and three of the Senate’s most powerful lawmakers broke bread at the governor’s mansion last night, covering a variety of topics ranging from Ironman triathlons to Scott’s $65 billion budget. The dinner took place just a few hours after Scott released his first-ever budget to the public earlier in the day.

But questions about whether the dinner violated the spirit of Florida’s open government laws – if not the laws themselves – have Scott’s office reconsidering future soirees.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander and Senate Majority Leader Andy Gardiner and Sen. Don Gaetz – two probable future senate presidents – also discussed major league baseball and the use of psychotropic drugs on children at the hour-long dinner with Scott, his wife Ann, and Scott’s chief of staff Mike Prendergast, special advisor Mary Ann “Mac” Carter, special counsel Hayden Dempsey and communications director Brian Burgess. Two reporters also attended at Scott’s invitation.

The governor and Senate trio discussed in broad terms his request that lawmakers give him $800 million to attract new businesses to the state and help existing ones expand. Scott said he was told that the current process – requiring approval from a legislative committee before the economic development grants or tax credits can be spent – is too lengthy and has caused the state to lose some deals because other states swooped in.

Whether the lawmakers’ chat was a violation of state Sunshine Laws is unclear.

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House and Senate leaders will hold at least 20 public hearings throughout the state regarding the drawing of Florida’s legislative and Congressional seats, Senate Reapportionment Committee Chairman Don Gaetz announced today.

House Speaker Dean Cannon, who yesterday asked to join the lawsuit challenging one of the amendments approved by voters barring lawmakers from drawing districts that favor incumbents or parties, has yet to appoint his members to the House’s redistricting committee.

But Gaetz said that should happen soon and that the House and Senate will hold joint meetings around the state to get the public’s input on the new districts.

Florida lawmakers should be able to begin drawing new districts as early as the end of March when the block-by-block census data is scheduled to be released.

Lawmakers draw the new districts for legislative and Congressional seats every 10 years.

But they’ll have to do it differently this year based on two amendments overwhelmingly approved by voters in November that bar lawmakers from drawing districts that favor incumbents or parties.

Days after he took office, Gov. Rick Scott withdrew the state’s request to the feds to sign off on the amendments. Florida is one of several states that require U.S. Department of Justice approval before any changes are made to voting rights and elections.

Lawmakers fiercely opposed the amendments last year and tried to put their own redistricting amendment on the ballot to counteract Amendments 5 and 6, or the “Fair Districts” amendments, placed on the ballot through the petition initiative process. But the Florida Supreme Court threw out the legislature’s amendment, ruling it was misleading to voters.

UPDATE: Haridopolos’ spokesman said the notice announcing the informal meeting was a favor to the media to give the press a heads-up. Look for the list of invited speakers later. Because committees are not yet assigned, the Senate is not required to notice the meetings yet.

Leaders in the Florida Senate will begin Medicaid reform meetings tomorrow while in town for the organizational session/special session to override a smorgasbord of Gov. Charlie Crist’s vetoes.

Sen. Don Gaetz, a Niceville Republican who once owned the state’s first private hospice care chain, will head the day-long meeting.

A press release issued by Senate President-designate Mike Haridopolos (who’ll lose the “designate” shortly after 10 a.m. today) says Senate will “receive testimony and hear presentations from invited speakers and the public on the issue of Medicaid.”

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, has made a big deal out of being open and transparent and took down the doors to his office’s inner sanctum inside the president’s suite as a symbolic gesture yesterday to demonstrate his availability to his members.

But there’s no list of tomorrow’s invited speakers in the press release.

When asked, Haridopolos’ spokesman David Bishop said in an e-mail the guests will be “stakeholders.”

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Senate President-designate Mike Haridopolos tapped John Thrasher, head of the Republican Party of Florida, as chairman of the powerful Senate Rules committee and is keeping J.D. Alexander as budget chief.

Haridopolos, who officially takes over the helm on Tuesday, also assigned Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, to lead the chamber’s reapportionment efforts.

Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, called Gaetz’s assignment perhaps “the most challenging committee chairmanship of all” because he’ll have to operate under the new reapportionment system approved by voters on Election Day that prohibits drawing districts that favor incumbents or political parties. One of the two constitutional amendments revamping reapportionment is now being challenged in federal court.

Thrasher, a St. Augustine lawyer and lobbyist who also served as House Speaker, took over the troubled state GOP earlier this year but has said he would step down as chairman after the November elections.

Alexander, R-Lake Wales, has been in charge of the Senate’s budget for the past two years.

Alexander’s task isn’t an easy one either. He’s expected to have a $2.9 billion spending gap to manage, a new governor – Rick Scott – who wants to slash spending on state government and prisons, and no more federal stimulus funds to help plug the budget hole as he has for the past two years.

Senate President-to-be Mike Haridopolos wrapped up a three-day tour of Florida highlighting one of his priorities when he takes over the chamber in November: a total overhaul of the state Medicaid system, which he calls broken.

Haridopolos toured cities from Miami to Tallahassee by bus, flanked by GOP Senate leaders Don Gaetz of Niceville and Joe Negron of Stuart, as well as Haridopolos’ wife Stephanie, a family practice doctor in their Melbourne hometown.

It’s not unusual for new chamber leaders to travel around the state to pump themselves up before taking the helm.

Former Senate President Ken Pruitt made a sweep of Florida in a little yellow school bus championing the Bright Futures scholarship for two years before taking over the chamber in 2006.

Haridopolos wants the federal government to approve a Medicaid waiver for Florida that would allow the state to place all of the state’s 2.7 million Medicaid recipients into managed care. It’s unlikely that Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration would approve such a maneuver, especially given Haridopolos’ and crew’s repeated bashing of federal health care reforms and their support for Attorney General Bill McCollum’s lawsuit against the White House regarding the new health care law.

Expect a major component of Haridopolos’ Medicaid revamp to include tort reform.

He told reporters today that a major problem for Medicaid providers such as hospitals is the high cost of medical malpractice insurance.

“What we’ve consistently heard during these round table discussions is that doctors who have protections against malpractice lawsuits have the ability to deliver a higher quality of care to their patients,” Haridopolos said.

A state select committee on the economy will look into the financial fall-out from the Deepwater Horizon on the Panhandle.

The Senate Select Committee on the Economy will hold its first meeting in Pensacola on July 12.

The committee, headed by Sen. Don Gaetz, wants to hear from local property owners and business owners, among others, to see what if anything state lawmakers can do to help ease the financial strain on the tourism-dependent region.

Gov. Charlie Crist has been pushing lawmakers to hold a special session on oil to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot letting voters decide whether to ban drilling off Florida’s coast. Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, said last week he would support a special session on oil sooner rather than later, but GOP House leaders indicated they would rather postpone a special session until after the November general election.

Among the items Gaetz siad his committee will consider: possible tax relief for property owners whose businesses have been struck by revenue shortfalls, the drawn-out claims process, and possible relaxation of environmental regulations to speed up economic recovery.

“This catastrophe is metastasizing daily,” Gaetz, R-Niceville, said in a press release. “Floridians are losing their jobs, business income is slumping and local governments are rapidly burning through their scant reserves. Every barrel of oil that pumps into the Gulf of Mexico poisons the economy of Florida.”

The committee will also review “barriers to an aggressive response” by government officials and BP regarding the economic impact of the oil disaster, the press release said.

GOP Senate leader Don Gaetz blasted Gov. Charlie Crist at this morning’s Cabinet meeting for failing to adequately respond to a possible economic crisis in the Panhandle caused by the thousands of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico each day.

“It’s in days like this that I miss Jeb Bush,” Gaetz, R-Destin, told reporters after criticizing the governor during an impromptu Cabinet appearance.

Gaetz demanded that Crist do something with the $25 million British Petroleum gave the state to advertise that the state’s beaches are clean and the fishing season is in full swing.

“I’ve been getting confusing answers out of the governor’s office for days. There’s been no response to President Atwater’s letters asking for specificity. Where’s this money? How’s it being deployed?
We’ve not seen a timely response. We’ve not seen an effective response. And jobs are being lost as a consequence,” a frustrated Gaetz said.
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A race for an open Panhandle state Senate seat may stymie success of a jobs package.

State Rep. Dave Murzin, House Economic Development and Community Affairs committee chairman, took a swipe at the Senate’s jobs package sponsored by Sen. Don Gaetz.

Murzin, a Panhandle Republican who is running for a Senate seat neighboring Gaetz’s district, was asked about the Gaetz proposal at an Associated Industries of Florida event in Tallahassee yesterday.

“It’s a great package. If I had a $150 million it might be some good ideas. But quite frankly I don’t have $150 million. I think I stopped counting at about $150 million,” Murzin, R-Pensacola, told the crowd of business lobbyists.

Gaetz’ bill includes a $1,000 tax break for businesses that hire an out of work Floridian and a variety of other corporate tax breaks or incentives to induce them to put the unemployed back on the job and to get them off Medicaid and other state benefits.

Murzin said his package will be more realistic.

“So yeah, we’ll take a look at some stuff but quite frankly we’ll roll out a jobs package, an economic incentives package, an economy package that actually works, doesn’t necessarily cost a lot of money because …an economic package that Floridians can afford,” Murzin said. “I’m not really into it for the is still trying to figure out exactly how much it will cost and how much it could save).headlines. I’m actually into it to put Floridians back to work.”

Gaetz, who is backing Murzin’s opponent Rep. Greg Evers in the Senate race, expressed tongue-in-cheek surprise at Murzin’s inability to come up with the money to pay for the package. (Gaetz says his staff

“Well, Rep. Murzin is welcome to his opinions. I wish him well this session. And in his future. I wish him well in everything except his aspirations to be a senator. In all other cases I wish him well,” Gaetz, R-Destin, said.

Florida Republican leaders bristled at the suggestion Wednesday from Palm Beach County schools Superintendent Art Johnson that the conservative, anti-spending tea party movement could force the district to cut 1,600 jobs in 2011-12.

“If the common-sense approach of reducing government spending and cutting taxes makes me part of the tea party movement, then pass me some sugar,” House Republican Leader Adam Hasner of Boca Raton said.

Senate budget chief J.D. Alexander said his spending decisions will be driven by the state’s 11.8 percent unemployment rate, not by a particular political message.

But in a page from the “All Politics is Local” chapter of Florida government, the Republican leader has a tea party activist living next door to his Lake Wales home. Alexander said he’s attended two of his neighbor’s meetings.

“He walks my dog from time to time and I have to go over and say hello to everybody,” Alexander said. “They’re very reasonable people. They are concerned about the course of the country. I welcome everybody’s involvement in the discussion of how we move the state forward.”

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Legislative leaders-in-waiting Sen. Don Gaetz and Rep. Will Weatherford are heading up a GOP initiative to water down constitutional class size limits approved by voters.

Gaetz, R-Destin, and Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, sponsored a constitutional amendment lawmakers are expected to put on the ballot this year that would undo some of the class size restrictions voters approved in 2002.

Floridians have already spent $16 billion to shrink class sizes but plummeting property tax collections – which pay for public schools – have sent lawmakers scrambling to foot the $22 billion-a-year tab for education.

Gaetz and Weatherford, who are expected to lead their chambers in 2012, will reveal details of their proposal at a press conference tomorrow morning.

Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for U.S. Senate, recently said that he supports undoing the class size restrictions, which have been been introduced gradually and which school officials say costs too much and doesn’t benefit student achievement.

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Democrat is also running for the U.S. Senate seat Crist seeks, was the force behind the class size amendment in 2002 while he was in the state Senate.

He isn’t backing down from the limits, which are set to go into full effect by the end of this year.

“Eight years later, Tallahassee officials have not relented in trying to water down hard-fought class size limits while refusing to tackle the special interest bidding that is alive and well in the state capital, ” said Kendrick Meek, who served as Chairman of Florida’s Coalition to Reduce Class Size in 2002.

“Florida families cannot be shortchanged. They simply ask that their children not be packed into overcrowded classrooms. Instead of focusing on misguided priorities, Florida needs a long-term perspective to secure a better future for our children. Implementing the class size limits without delay is critical so our teachers can teach in classrooms where our students can learn. Moreover, it is important to note that our state needs to invest now in its human capital in order to reverse the tide of joblessness for tomorrow’s workers,” Meek said in press release.