Ft. Lauderdale businessman Patrick Murphy, a Democrat, is running against U.S. Rep. Allen West, a tea party favorite who unseated U.S. Rep. Ron Klein in November.
“I love my country. I love South Florida. I’m not going to stand by while right wing extremists like Allen West divide us,” Murphy, vice president of Coastal Environmental Services, said in a press release today announcing his candidacy for District 22, which includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties.
National Democrats have targeted West in next year’s elections.
“South Florida simply deserves better than what it’s now getting out of Washington. If we’re going to actually create jobs and protect families, we need representation that isn’t looking backwards,” Murphy said.
Murphy’s company specializes in disaster relief and environmental cleanup, and last year, the native Floridian spent six months in the Gulf of Mexico doing clean-up work after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. West, who lives in Plantation, supports offshore oil drilling.
The Sierra Club has pumped $800, 000 into last minute television ads for three Democratic Party Congressional campaigns around the country and one of them is the District 22 race in South Florida.
“With ‘Big Oil’ doing everything they can to try to buy back Congress, today the Sierra Club launched three new television ads in key congressional races – Michigan’s 7th District, Arizona’s 8th District, and Florida’s 22nd District,” said a press release by the environmental group.
In District 22, U.S. Rep. Ron Klein,D-BocaRaton, is locked in a tight race with GOP contender Allen West.
The ad being screened in South Florida pictures smoke spewing from British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded April 20 and was finally plugged Sept. 9, not before dumping millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The ad also shows a pelican covered in oil and then superimposes West next to an offshore oil rig.
“For five months BP spewed oil into the gulf – polluting Florida beaches and devastating our economy,” says the narrator. “ But Allen West still supports drilling for oil off the Florida coast. And West says he ‘sees nothing about the situation in the Gulf that will change his mind’”
“No wonder West received thousands in contributions from oil companies,” continues the ad. “Ron Klein has a better way – protect our beaches and develop alternative energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Ron Klein for Congress.”
The Klein/West race is believed to be the most heavily financed Congressional contest in the nation. (more…)
This nugget from a Bloomberg story today that BP’s spending to lobby Congress rose 6.3 percent in the second quarter of the year:
Jennifer Bendall, a former policy adviser to Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Jesse McCollum, a former chief of staff to Rep. Ron Klein, D-Fla., are representing BP within the Eris Group.
Klein’s fundraising e-mail said: “West has raised $2 million from those that would leave our beaches in ruins, end Social Security and Medicare and give corporations free reign.” The donors the Klein campaign cited added up to about $25,000 — only a sliver of his $2 million campaign. The West campaign could cherrypick too and likely find negative headlines about some of Klein’s donors — including BP in previous election cycles. But we don’t think that we can draw conclusions about all of Klein’s donors based on his BP donations. Similarily, there is no way Klein would know the viewpoints of all of West’s donors unless he researched all of their views on these topics — an impossible endeavor. We rate this claim False.
A tax cut on sales of boats worth more than $300,000 was approved by the Florida House tonight on a 79-36 vote that divided the Palm Beach County Democrats.
Supporters argued that the break, which caps sales tax bills on boat purchases at $18,000, is supposed to help boat builders, who Republicans said are increasingly leaving the state. (The bill is entitled the “Florida Maritime Full Employment Act” and a similar Senate bill includes an identical cap on plane purchases.)
Rep. Tom Grady, R-Naples, even disputed that his bill could accurately be called a tax break. “This bill focuses on a tax that’s not being collected because … you can buy boats in other states and not pay a tax.”
But opponents said the bill would do little to help the 1.1 million Floridians suffering from unemployment and thousands more whose home values have collapsed.
“I’d like to re-title the bill the Florida Working Person’s Protection Act and create a sales tax exemption on underwear,” said Rep. Adam Fetterman, D-Port St. Lucie. “At least then we’ll be doing something that will help every Floridian.”
(Just by way of reminder – another Palm Beach County Democrat, U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, pushed to include breaks for the yacht industry in the federal stimulus package.)
U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan will join U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler, Ron Klein and Mario Diaz-Balart tomorrow on a tour of a Boynton Beach doctor’s home contaminated by Chinese drywall.
The entourage, which includes state Sen. Ted Deutch, will visit Steve and Jennifer Robert’s home in Cobblestone Creek. The Roberts’ daughter has been afflicted with frequent respiratory infections possibly caused by the toxic drywall.
Palm Beach County officials, including Wexler and Klein, have pushed Congress to do something about the tainted building product, as has U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson.
s had on the lives of the Roberts family, who own a home in the community of Cobblestone Creek. Dr. Steve Roberts and his wife Jennifer Roberts have struggled with their 16 month-old daughter’s frequent respiratory infections, and the fact that their home has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in value as a result of this toxic product.
WHO:
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan
Congressman Robert Wexler
Congressman Mario-Diaz Balart
Congressman Ron Klein
State Senator Ted Deutch
WHAT:
Press Availability Following Tour of Home
WHERE:
The home of Dr. Steve Roberts and Jennifer Roberts
10013 Cobblestone Creek Drive, Boynton Beach, FL
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 by Michael C. Bender
President Obama addresses a joint session of Congress in February. He focused on economic issues then, but will talk about his health care agenda tonight at 8 p.m.
Heading into tonight’s address from President Obama, several of Florida’s U.S. House members say the dramatic moments from the August recess (here and here for just a couple examples) have served only to reinforce their positions heading into the break.
Wexler
But the month off seems to have swayed at least two Florida Democrats.
U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Delray Beach, says his pledge to oppose a bill that does not include a so-called public insurance option (essentially a new government health care program that would compete with the private market), isn’t so iron-clad. More on that shift here.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Ron Klein seems to moving in the other direction.
Allen West, the Republican challenger to U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, said the government needs to fix its current health care programs before rolling out a new one.
West will host his own town hall meeting on health care tonight at 7 p.m. at South Florida Bible College in Deerfield Beach.
West says reform efforts should begin by properly identifying what inflates costs in the current system. He said reforms should reduce lawsuits, encourage employers to offer coverage to workers and address coverage for illegal immigrants, whose trips to emergency rooms incur costs that are ultimately passed on to the rest of us.
“When people talk about a public option, we already have a public option – in Medicare, Medicaid and the SCHIP option,” said West. “The federal government needs to show that it can effectively run those programs.”
Floridians so far have received less federal stimulus money than any of their fellow Americans, despite an unemployment rate here that ranks among the highest in the country and a budget crisis that few states can match.
Calabro
“It just shows how inept Florida’s government officials are,” Florida TaxWatch President Dominic Calabro said. “Relying on Washington has always been a bad deal for Florida.”
Florida has received more total dollars than all but three other states from a stimulus pot of about $198 billion so far for infrastructure projects and social services, according to figures reported this week by The Wall Street Journal.1 That total includes money Congress left for states to divide among themselves and other dollars that federal departments have already disbursed.
But Florida received just $505 per person, which ranks last among the 50 states, all U.S. territories combined and Washington, D.C., according to a Palm Beach Post analysis of the Journal’s data.
The numbers raise significant questions about the stimulus program, which President Obama said during a February stop in Fort Myers would help curtail the state’s rising unemployment rate.2
The U.S. House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee will hold a hearing in West Palm Beach on Thursday at 10 a.m. in the city commission chambers to review the availability and affordability of homeowners insurance in the country.
The subcommittee will examine insurance industry coverage of catastrophic natural disasters, the withdrawal of insurance companies from offering policies in coastal areas, rising homeowners’ insurance premiums and the resulting economic impact on state and local governments, as well as possible solutions to the homeowners’ insurance crisis.
U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, will also participate in the hearing.
U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, who flirted for a few months with a 2010 U.S. Senate bid, today endorsed fellow Democratic U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami for Senate. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, also endorsed Meek today.
Said Klein: “I am proud to support Kendrick Meek for U.S. Senate. His hard work helped Democrats take back the majority in Congress in 2006. As a U.S. Senator, Kendrick will fight for our entire state and help pass critical legislation like the Homeowners’ Defense Act. He has my full support, and I look forward to seeing Kendrick working on the other side of the Capitol Rotunda soon.”
West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel, a Democrat and former (and future?) congressional hopeful, has also endorsed Meek.
Minutes after she announced her candidacy for governor, Florida Democratic Party leader Karen Thurman and former governor and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham endorsed Alex Sink.
Sink, with U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson one of only two Democrats elected to statewide office, ended speculation about her run the day after Gov. Charlie Crist announced he would not seek reelection but would run to replace retiring GOP U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez.
“In just a short period of time, Alex has already cut wasteful spending, cracked down on financial fraud and scams, reformed government contracting and provided our state with a fresh approach to solving problems and restoring Florida’s economy,” Graham said in a statement.
“Floridians are cheering today now that Alex Sink has announced her candidacy for governor. As a businesswoman who delivers real results for the people of Florida, CFO Alex Sink is not only the Democrats’ strongest candidate but she’s the very best candidate for the job,” Thurman’s release said.
Although Sink has been mum about her plans, her attention from national Democrats has not gone unnoticed.
Recently, one of Boca Raton U.S. Rep. Ron Klein’s aides, Stephanie Grutman, came to work for Sink. Sink hired spokeswoman Kyra Jennings, a veteran of several Democratic congressional campaigns, about three months ago.
House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, R-Boca Raton, said today that he won’t challenge U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, for Congress in 2010:
“This is the right decision for me and my wife at this time,” Hasner said. “Representing the people of Florida and serving as House majority leader remains the greatest honor, and I will continue to be an advocate for the policies and principles that will get our state and our country moving again.”
After appealing to Warren Buffett to bankroll potential hurricane-related losses last year, Gov. Charlie Crist and other state officials will look to the federal government to help cover costs from a major storm this year.
“From the federal government’s standpoint, it would be one of the least risky things they’ve embarked on here in the last few months,” said John Forney, Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund financial adviser.
Crist, Attorney General Bill McCollum and state CFO Alex Sink all agreed Tuesday to push for a federal line of credit in case a major storm hits the state.
U.S. Reps. Ron Klein (left) and Tim Mahoney (right) join Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., in calling for oil companies to drill on existing leases. Photo by Larry Lipman
With the Capitol dome in the background making for a splendid photo op, freshmen Democrats in Congress lined up to endorse a plan that would force oil companies to drill for oil in gas on leases they currently own.
Citing administration reports, the Democrats say there are nearly 68 million acres of federal land under lease to petroleum companies that not being drilled.
The Democrats say only 20 percent of the acres leased offshore are being used for production and about 30 percent of the onshore territory.
U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney was ranked as the most effective freshman representative in Congress by Congress.org, a non-partisan organization that monitors Capitol Hill.
The same organization ranked fellow Palm Beach County Democratic Rep. Ron Klein as third on the list of 57 freshmen.
Meanwhile, as Q reported last month, National Journal, a longtime non-partisan publication that covers the federal government and national issues, ranked Mahoney as the “man-in-the-middle” in the House of Representatives with 214 members ranked as more conservative and 214 ranked as more liberal than the Palm Beach Gardens Democrat. The magazine has just come out.
Here are statements from local members of the Florida congressional delegation:
U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., said: “The president delivered an uplifting assessment of where America stands in the world today, and where we are headed in the future. We clearly have much work to do – most pressing today are the areas of the economy, housing, health care, and the war on terror.
“The president talked about our economy and stressed the need for a quick, clean and bipartisan stimulus package. Families are counting on us to do what is right and to do it soon. There’s simply no place in this debate for partisan squabbling or localized and unrelated earmarks. As the president emphasized, federal lawmakers need to exercise fiscal restraint.
Gov. Charlie Crist threw a reception for the Florida congressional delegation Thursday evening and received a verbal bouquet from one of the state’s most partisan Democrats: Rep. Robert Wexler.
Rep. Robert Wexler, Sen. Mel Martinez, Gov. Charlie Crist, Rep. Vern Buchanan
Noting that both Democratic and Republican members of Congress had turned out for the reception, Wexler told Crist, a Republican, that “this is an extraordinary testament to you.
“We’re here from all parts of the state of Florida, Republicans and Democrats alike, we’re all here; we’re all smiling. No reflection on anybody else, but that hasn’t been done before.
“No governor, in my estimation, has brought us together as Floridians as you have,” Wexler went on.
Thursday, January 18th, 2007 by llipman@coxnews.com
“Don’t get messed up in anybody else’s campaign within the congressional area.”
That’s the advice former Rep. Sam Gibbons, a Democrat from Tampa, gave the current members of the Florida congressional delegation at their organizational meeting today.
“If you want to keep the peace, you’ve got to make peace,” Gibbons told the members.
Where's the money? Use The Post's interactive database of who wants and who's getting federal dollars.
Use these interactive graphics to find and contact Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast legislators.
