Here’s something you don’t see every day; a politician running for office who wants the post to have less authority. But that’s exactly what state Senator Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, is advocating.
State Rep. Pat Patterson, R-DeLand, is running for the state CFO post.
Really.
Sure, Patterson had no presence at the Republican convention in Orlando last weekend. Never mind that Patterson’s rival for the GOP nomination state Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, has $1.6 million as opposed to the $64,135.17 that Patterson raised (of which $40,000 came from Patterson’s previous campaigns). Ignore the fact that the Patterson for CFO website’s “latest news” is that he launched the campaign back on July 1. Pat Patterson insists that he is running for CFO.
George LeMieux might only be a recent addition to the U.S. Senate but he is already acting like a veteran of the Beltway.
On February 22, LeMieux joined a majority of his fellow Republicans in voting against cloture for the Obama administration jobs bill, trying to keep it off the Senate floor. The measure passed due to a number of Republicans, most notably new U.S. Senator Scott Brown, R-Mass, voting with the Democrats. Having voted to keep the bill off the floor, LeMieux then supported the jobs package as it passed the Senate on February 24.
The St. Petersburg Times “broke” the story that Julie Hauserman has been named as campaign manager for the “Florida Hometown Democracy” measure on the ballot in November. Of course as Hauserman used to serve as a reporter covering environmental and political issues for the
Times, they may have had an exclusive. The measure, listed on the November ballot as Amendment 4, would require direct voter approval of any local land-use changes instead of leaving it in the hands of city and county commissioners.
At the Republican convention in Orlando last weekend, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp revealed that he has been talking to Gov. Charlie Crist about aggressively weighing in on President Obama’s plan to scrap NASA’s plans for manned flights to the moon.
Kottkamp stressed that the budget cuts would mean the loss of at least 7,000 jobs directly on the Space Coast with 13,000 jobs being lost indirectly. As one of his duties in the Crist administration, Kottkamp serves as Chairman of the Space Florida Board of Directors.
Earlier this afternoon, state Rep. Eric Fresen, R-Miami, pulled out of the contest to be the leader of the Republican House conference for the 2014-2016 legislative session. This means that state Rep. Chris Dorworth, R-Lake Mary, is going to be state House Speaker in four years.
Yes, you read that right. Florida now has a House Speaker waiting in the wings for four years down the road.
