After four years of close relations with his predecessor Charlie Crist, most black lawmakers believe they’ll have a much cooler relationship with Gov. Rick Scott.

“I’m not optimistic at all,” said Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, whose district includes a portion of Palm Beach County.

But don’t look for any sit-ins, yet.

After two months on the job, Gov. Rick Scott has yet to appoint a black or Hispanic to a high-level post.

And at a luncheon for black lawmakers at the mansion yesterday, he further alienated some of the members by suggesting he grew up like them – in public housing and with a parent who had a sixth-grade education.

He also told them he wants their help hiring minorities although he also said he insisted he believe in giving preferences to applicants based on race or ethnicity.

Today, black lawmakers set up an e-mail address to help Scott round out his hires.

Blacks and Hispanics interested in getting to work for Scott should send their applications to iamqualified@live.net, caucus leader Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, said at a press conference today. Minority business owners seeking contracts with the state should also send their information, Siplin advised.

The lawmakers want Scott to reconsider his decision to whack money for historically black private colleges – except the financially ailing Edward Waters College near Jacksonville – from his budget.

Siplin said they’ll meet again with Scott and forward the qualified applicants to his office.

Siplin said Scott was simply sharing his background with the black caucus by mentioning the public housing and parents’ lack of education.

“Quite frankly, all black folks are not poor,” Siplin said at a press conference Wednesday.

Smith, whose mother has a master’s degree, said he was shocked at Scott’s comments at yesterday’s lunch and considered walking out.

“He just assumed because he was sitting with a bunch of black people that we had all grown up in public housing,” Smith said.

Scott is “tremendously disconnected” from the realities of being black or Hispanic in Florida, Smith said.

“He doesn’t see the need for diversity or inclusion,” Smith said. “Any diversity that happens (in his administration) is going to happen by happenstance.”

Gov. Jeb Bush started off by alienating blacks when he did away with minority preferences in university admission and state contracting.

Bush’s actions prompted two black lawmakers – then-Sen. Kendrick Meek and Sen. Tony Hill, then a House member – to stage a sit-in in his office.

A heckler interrupted Rick Scott’s stump speech in Melbourne this morning for the first time since the GOP gubernatorial candidate kicked off a week-long sweep of the state leading up to Tuesday’s election.

Joseph Concannon didn’t have far to go to voice his dissatisfaction with Scott. Concannon works at Buz’s Automotive repair shop next door to That Little Restaurant where Scott’s caravan made a brief stop.

Scott ignored the interruption as he introduced one of his two daughters to a small gathering of supporters.

“Does she know you’re a crook? We do,” Concannon yelled.

Concannon said he was referring to the $1.7 billion fine Columbia/HCA paid to the federal government for Medicare and Medicaid fraud shortly after Scott was forced out as CEO of the hospital chain he founded.

Concannon was on a cell phone talking to his wife, Stephanie Hosala, a member of the local Democratic Executive Committee. He said she didn’t ask him to come to Scott’s event but he went over to voice his opinion when he saw Scott’s bus arrive.

Concannon conferred with his wife when asked who he backs in the U.S. Senate race.

“Charlie Crist,” he answered.

When asked why he wasn’t voting for U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, the Democrat vying with independent Crist for his party’s votes, Concannon repeated the answer his spouse apparently gave him.

“Meek is so far behind he doesn’t have a chance,” the Palm Bay resident said.

The League of Women Voters and PBS canceled debates between the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial candidates because GOP candidates Marco Rubio and Rick Scott refused to participate.

The League’s president Deidre MacNab said the debate, scheduled for Oct. 14, would have been the only one to reach all television viewers throughout the state.

The League could not get Gov. Charlie Crist, the independent U.S. Senate candidate, to confirm to appear either, MacNab said, meaning only U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, the Democrat in the three-way U.S. Senate race, had agreed to show up.

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Gov. Charlie Crist believes he’s the only candidate who can “stop the Tea Party mess” and defeat Marco Rubio in the three-way U.S. Senate race and that a vote for the Democrat – U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek – equates to a vote for Rubio.

“It sure looks like it. Yeah. I mean, you know, regrettably, that would be the case. I think Democrats are reaching that conclusion all across Florida. They tell me that,” the Republican-turned-independent told reporters when asked if a vote for Meek would be the same as a vote for Tea Party favorite Rubio.

Crist denied that his campaign has been pressuring Meek, lagging in the polls behind frontrunner Rubio and Crist, to drop out of the race.

“Number one, there’s no pressure. People should do what they feel is right. But I’m clear about this. I’m the only candidate who can win in November and stop the Tea Party and the mess that Mr. Rubio would bring to Washington,” Crist said.

Crist said it’s up to Meek whether to drop out.
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Who’s a flip-flopper now?

After weeks of taking heat from GOP opponent Marco Rubio (and Democrat candidate U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek) in his quest for the U.S. Senate, independent Gov. Charlie Crist said Rubio can’t seem to make up his mind where he stands on the issue.

Crist said the former House Speaker changed his stand “three or four times in the past four months” about privatizing Social Security.

“It’s hard to keep up. But obviously he’s all over the map as it relates to Social Security,” Crist told reporters this afternoon. “The seniors of our state deserve to have somebody who will protect and will preserve Social Security. I’m the only candidate in the race who is committed to doing so.”

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Univision will host the first debate with Florida’s top three U.S. Senate candidates on Friday, Sept. 17.

The debate with Republican Marco Rubio, Democrat Kendrick Meek and independent Charlie Crist will be taped at 1 p.m. and the hour-long meeting will air at 11 p.m. on the station’s Miami, Orlando, Tampa and Fort Myers/Naples affiliates.

The three have also agreed to an Oct. 24 debate in Tampa.

Democratic operative Steve Schale predicts that independent Gov. Charlie Crist will not win the three-way race for U.S. Senate against Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek. From his blog:

In this political environment, absent some significant and unfortunate event that would thrust [Crist] back into the spotlight, the odds of him finding 15-20 points of political approval in the next nine weeks are slim, at best.

Therefore, for Crist, who after 20 years of being a GOP insider, his only path to victory is to find a way to be Democratic enough to win enough Democrats, Republican enough to win enough Republicans, and to do that in a way where he doesn’t anger Independents. Not exactly the easiest thing to do, when Democrats now have a plausible alternative in Meek and Republicans in Rubio. If Greene had won, it might be a different story.

Democrats who support Crist keep saying to me, “well, we just need Dems to vote for Crist,” but that just isn’t going to happen in the margins he needs to win.

Today, Rubio has the clearest path to victory, but once Democrats figure out that Meek is their only option, his path will get much more clear as well.

Just two weeks after publicly pumping up U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary race against Jeff Greene, state senator-to-be Maria Sachs yesterday pulled a switch and endorsed Meek’s general election rival Gov. Charlie Crist.

Meek said Sachs, a Delray Beach lawyer, signed an endorsement pledge for him in December and called the switcheroo “strange” especially because Palm Beach County Democrats virtually anointed her to fill U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch’s seat when he left the state senate to go to Washington.

“She spoke very passionately two weeks ago of her support of my candidacy, felt that I should be the next U.S. Senator of Florida,” Meek said at a roundtable with reporters this morning.

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From Rasmussen Reports today:

The race to become the next U.S. senator from Florida remains a very close one between Republican Marco Rubio and Independent Charlie Crist as both potential Democratic candidates struggle to gain traction.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Florida finds Rubio earning 35% support and Crist capturing 33% of the vote. Prospective Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek remains a distant third at 20%. However, for Meek, that reflects a five-point gain from earlier in the month. 

With Meek as the Democratic nominee, three percent (3%) say they’d vote for “some other candidate,” and eight percent (4%) remain undecided.

If real estate billionaire Jeff Greene wins the Democratic nomination, the numbers are Crist 36%, Rubio 34% and Greene 19%.

From Public Policy Polling today:

Rick Scott is looking like the frontrunner to be the Republican nominee for Governor of Florida, although both he and Bill McCollum have been badly bruised by their primary fight. Scott leads McCollum 43-29.

Indecision reigns in the Democratic Senate primary. Kendrick Meek leads Jeff Greene by a 28-25 margin that’s pretty inconsequential given the survey’s margin of error. The bigger story is that 37% of voters remain undecided, and that both candidates continue to be relatively unknown even to the party base.

Here are the new productions from the top Democrats running for U.S. Senate in Florida. Palm Beach businessman Jeff Greene showcases his family while state Rep. Kendrick Meek says he’s the real Democrat in the race.

On a related side note, The Hill is reporting that the Democratic National Committee has shifted $333,333 to the Florida Democratic Party as party of the national party’s $50 million get-out-the-vote campaign for the fall.

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Miami Democrat hoping to win his party’s U.S. Senate nomination, announced today that he collected $1 million in contributions during the second quarter this year. That would bring his 18-month total to more than $6.5 million. He reported about $3.7 million in cash on hand as of March 31.

Meek is in a primary battle with Palm Beach businessman Jeff Greene and former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre. The winner is expected to face Republican Marco Rubio and independent Charlie Crist on the November ballot.

About 175 people showed up to see Meek in Delray Beach last night. (story here)

He told the crowd that he was the only “real Democrat” in the race, said he would push to bring troops home from Afghanistan and said the political attacks over his connection to a real estate scandal in Miami has affected him “emotionally.”

“It does affect me emotionally when someone attacks my character when I know otherwise,” Meek said.

From Rasmussen Reports:

Regardless of which Democrat is in the race, Rubio carries roughly 60% of the GOP vote, while Crist earns 29% support from voters in his former party. It will be interesting to see if Crist can hang on to this level of support from Republicans as the campaign wears on.

Democrats are narrowly divided between Crist and the candidate from their own party. Voters not affiliated with either party give a slight edge to Crist. But nearly one-out-of-five Democrats and unaffiliateds remain undecided.

Rubio runs stronger among voters over 40, while Crist earns his best numbers among voters ages 18 to 39. Most conservatives like Rubio. Moderates and liberals give the edge to the governor.

The statewide telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters in Florida was conducted on July 6, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/-4.5 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.

Here’s the second web video from the Kendrick Meek campaign following his debate with Democratic U.S. Senate primary opponent Jeff Greene. The debate was hosted by The Palm Beach Post at the paper’s auditorium on Tuesday.

The latest video hits Greene for avoiding questions about the fortune he made from the meltdown of the housing market. Greene will not say exactly how much he earned or how much he invested. He also literally turns his back on reporters when CBS 4 Miami reporter Jim DeFede asks if any banks Greene invested with accepted federal stimulus money.

However, Meek’s accusation that Greene fled after the debate is a bit misleading. The clip of WPLG reporter Michael Putney saying, “Jeff Greene has left,” comes after Putney spent several minutes asking Greene questions. Viewers will notice that just about everybody else had left the room by then, too.

Meek’s campaign released the first post-debate video on Wednesday.

All of this took place before our esteemed panelists got to the third question of the debate.

For a recap of the entire debate (eventually there was some talk about policy for those interested in that kind of thing), click here.

And if you’d like to relive all 90 minutes, click over here.

Now that the debate is over, weigh in with your thoughts.

Read a recap here. And watch the video of the entire 90-minute event, hosted by The Palm Beach Post, to be published on by clicking here.

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The candidates are here and we’re about to get started.

You can watch the live stream and live tweets by clicking on here.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Greene’s campaign spokesman Luis Vizcaino responds to the Kendrick Meek campaign memo this morning:

“Kendrick Meek led the people of Florida over a cliff when he sponsored homeownership fairs entitled Ten Weeks to Homeownership that targeted first-time home buyers essentially persuading people to take-on risky loans that they could not afford. And now, in a desperate attempt to save his failing campaign, Meek tries to place blame elsewhere for the thousands of people that lost their homes, when he should be looking in the mirror.

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Those are the odds from Florida pollster Tom Eldon on the Democratic U.S. Senate primary between Palm Beach real estate tycoon Jeff Greene and U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami. Eldon helped us handicap the race in preparation for tomorrow’s debate at The Palm Beach Post‘s world headquarters in West Palm Beach.

Eldon gives Greene the edge based on money. Greene, along with Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott, has the rare combination in Florida politics of “outsider” status and deep pockets.

But for all of Greene’s money, Eldon isn’t too impressed with Greene’s television ads. “I don’t know why he’s spending so much face time with the camera,” Eldon says. “He might not be the right messenger to sell his campaign. He’s just not that good on camera.”

Eldon also warns that Greene could be more susceptible in a Democratic primary to political attacks about how he earned his money (he bet heavy on the real estate meltdown with credit default swaps). Conversely, Scott might not face the same degree of criticism among GOP voters about the $1.7 billion in Medicare and Medicaid fines his company racked up.

“I’m close to taking the McCollum-Scott race off the board,” Eldon said. “There’s a word for what McCollum’s doing right now. And it’s flailing.”

Gov. Charlie Crist, now an independent U.S. Senate candidate, said he doesn’t think not getting the AFL-CIO’s endorsement will hurt him, but “it would have been nice.”

The AFL-CIO, the state’s largest labor union, endorsed U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Democrat, this weekend although Florida’s teachers’ union broke with tradition and co-endorsed Meek and Crist.

Big labor’s snub won’t hobble his campaign, Crist said this morning.

“I don’t think at all. It would have been nice, obviously, that’s why I went there. But I was awfully proud and pleased to get the teachers’ support. It’s all about getting the support of the people,” Crist said, repeating his ubiquitous “people” mantra.

Crist, who wooed the unions at their annual meeting this weekend, said he’d welcome the support of other groups, including environmentalists such as the Sierra Club, of which he said he is a member.

“You know my style. I’ll take help from anyone who’s willing to give it and cares about Florida like we do. That’s what it’s about,” Crist said.