Seeking to put the Florida governor’s race in a national context, Republican Bill McCollum invoked Scott Brown and ripped President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a speech at tonight’s Palm Beach County GOP Lincoln Day dinner.

He also blasted Democratic rival Alex Sink as being “in lockstep with liberals in Washington.”

Click here to read about the speech.

And read expanded excerpts of McCollum’s remarks about Sink and the Sink campaign’s response after the jump….

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No word on whether the Republican Senator-elect will come to Florida and campaign for either Rubio or Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida’s GOP U.S. Senate primary. But Rubio supporters are hoping to tap into the momentum from the Massachusetts phenomenon.

Citing Brown’s historic victory on Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint sent a fund-raising letter to supporters today asking to help raise $100k for Rubio by Feb. 10. (The date is an anniversary of sorts.)

“Conservatives across the country recently supported a moneybomb for Senator-elect Scott Brown, which raised $1.3 million for his campaign in just 24 hours. If we can raise just a fraction of that amount for Marco Rubio’s campaign, it will give him the momentum and resources he needs to win,” wrote DeMint, R-S.C.

Republicans aren’t the only one trying to raise money in Brown’s wake. Democratic U.S. House candidate Ted Deutch of Boca Raton penned a similar plea on Wednesday.

That’s about how it went Wednesday among candidates for Florida’s open U.S. Senate seat as each scrambled to point out parallels between his campaign and that of Brown, whose victory Tuesday gave Republicans a Senate seat in Massachusetts for the first time since 1972.

“You’d think these guys were best friends with Scott Brown,” said Wayne Bertsch, whose Tallahassee-based phone bank company dialed 300,000 Massachusetts voters in the final days of the Senate race.

Rest here.

Will Massachusetts Republican superstar Scott Brown help South Florida Democratic congressional hopeful Ted Deutch raise money?

State Sen. Deutch of Boca Raton, heavily favored in a special election to replace Democrat Robert Wexler in Congress, says Brown’s victory in Tuesday’s Massachusetts Senate special election proves he can’t take anything for granted, even in an overwhelmingly Democratic congressional district.

In a fund-raising e-mail titled “Wake Up Call,” Deutch notes that Massachusetts has “a similar electorate to my congressional district” and “based on the results out of Massachusetts, I must work to introduce myself and my commitment to the community to an even wider spectrum of voters. To achieve this result, I must again ask for your help….”

Read Deutch’s entire fund-raising e-mail after the jump….

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Kendick Meek‘s Senate campaign today flatly rejected our question about whether they might have second thoughts about stumping with President Obama after his efforts in the Massachusetts Senate race came up short.

Meanwhile, Meek’s camp suggested the possibility that Meek could be cast in the Scott Brown role if the same scenario plays out in Florida. The logic: Brown was laying much his groundwork while Mass. Dems were locked in a divisive primary. In Florida’s Senate race, that bloodshed is on the Republican side of the campaign.

“We saw last night that there is a strong national mood for change across the country,” said Meek campaign manager Abe Dyk. “Having worked as a skycap for tips, as a Florida State Trooper and having led the Coalition to Reduce Class Size, Kendrick Meek is the candidate best positioned to deliver that change as a U.S. Senator.”

Republican Scott Brown’s epic special election upset victory in liberal Massachusetts has some GOPers dreaming of an upset win in the April special election for “fire-breathing liberal” Robert Wexler’s heavily Democratic congressional seat.

Read about it here.