Category — Florida

He didn’t get any help from the Democratic Party, but Joe Roberts ran a good, clean campaign in District 1 against a well funded incumbent who even received Presidential visits.

Joe, managed to get 31.5% of the vote, which may not seem like much, but keeping a Republican incumbent below 70% in this area without an indictment involved is a major accomplishment.

I join the Pensacola Beach Blog in thanking you for your work. Maybe next time we can get the Party interested in providing a little support.

Cruella de Harris rise to prominence was because of a suspect election, and now the election to replace her is mired in controversy.

CBS carries the Associated Press report, Deja Vu: Another Florida Recount Likely

The touch-screen voting machines Katherine Harris championed as secretary of state after the 2000 presidential recount may have botched this year’s election to replace her in the U.S. House, and it’s likely going to mean another Florida recount.

More than 18,000 Sarasota County voters who marked other races didn’t have a vote register in the House race, a rate much higher than the rest of the district, elections results show.

Republican Vern Buchanan has a 373-vote lead over Democrat Christine Jennings, less than 0.2%. Anything less than 0.5% generates an automatic recount, which is meaningless with touch screen machines.

More information in the local Herald-Tribune story, and the raw data from the Sarasota County elections office.

My guess is that the race wasn’t visible in the ES&S machines. You may have had to scroll down to find it. That is based on looking at the numbers for absentee ballots [on paper ballots], and comparing it to early and election day voting on the machines.

It would appear a poorly designed ballot can occur on machines as easily as punch cards. “Nothing is foolproof: fools are too ingenious.”

There are 124,257 registered voters in Okaloosa County, 72,557 [58.4%] registered as Republicans.

[Note: it isn’t clear whether absentee ballots are included in the numbers, but early voting should be.]

Only 55,890 [45.0%] made it to the polls, and several hundred of those only voted for governor, based on the vote counts for the other races.

Cruella de Harris received 60.7% of the votes in this county, and the rest of the Republican statewide candidates received better than 70% of the vote.

That clown, Jeff Miller, is still in Congress.

The only good news statewide is that it looks like Alex Sink will be the Chief Financial Officer, even though she lost in Okaloosa County. She is not just a Democrat, she is actually qualified by real-world experience and education to be a CFO.

It looks like all of the ballot measures passed, and all of the upper level judges were retained.

No one is going to have to appear before a local judge named “Dixie Dan,” so we were spared one minor indignity.

Some of you probably thought I was kidding when I talked about this county being blood red.

The MSM don’t seem interested in the robo-calling by the Reptilicons, but they are all atwitter with Charlie Crist’s decision not to come to Pensacola to be with the Shrubbery.

The CNN version from the Associated Press: White House irked after GOP candidate snubs Bush

PENSACOLA, Florida (AP) — The White House did not hide its irritation Monday at Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist for ducking President Bush at a campaign rally in the Republican-friendly Panhandle.

Crist said he considered the Pensacola area so firmly in his camp that it made more sense to campaign elsewhere in the state as the race to replace outgoing Gov. Jeb Bush tightened.

On a tarmac in Texas where the president boarded Air Force One for the trip east, Bush political strategist Karl Rove mockingly questioned what kind of alternate rally Crist could put together that would rival the expected 10,000-person crowd that Bush was expected to draw at the Pensacola Civic Center.

The White House already had distributed schedules saying Crist would introduce Bush at the rally.

Crist’s opponent, Democratic Rep. Jim Davis, seized on the news.

“Now that the president is so unpopular, Charlie refuses to stand side by side with him,” Davis said. “It says when the going gets tough, Charlie won’t stand up.”

Mustang Bobby’s post from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel puts the actual crowd at about 7,000, which isn’t very good for a Republican President in a blood red area. The Civic Center can easily hold 10,000 people.

While Karl is having his conniption about Crist, they managed to leave poor deluded Katherine Harris, the only statewide candidate at the event, in the cheap seats. Katherine is about the only candidate in the state that wanted to be seen with the Shrubbery, and they had her standing next to the kitchen with the volunteers.

In addition to being seen with the Shrubbery this afternoon, the Orlando Sentinel is reporting that Cruella de Harris will also be on the stage with Jeff Miller. I’m not sure even Pensacola is red enough for that.

The word is that Charlie Crist has to resurface his driveway or something, so he’ll be forced to miss this opportunity.

No word as to whether John Ellis will be on stage with his brother, or helping Charlie with the blacktop. I would assume he’ll be on stage, or Thanksgiving dinner could get really tense.

I expect in her book Cruella will cite this appearance with the unpopular pResident as the reason she lost, but she was forced to do it by her incompetent campaign staff and the Republican party.

The Pensacola News Journal, a Gannett purveyor of conventional wisdom and the status quo has endorsed a Democrat for governor.

Citing Charlie Crist’s studied silence over the Terry Schaivo matter while attorney general, and the Republican support for the interests of the insurance companies over policy holders, the PNJ editorial board has endorsed Jim Davis in one of the most blood red parts of the state.

[Note, I alluded to the Bible in a political statement; I didn’t quote it. Okay, so there’s not a penny’s worth of difference between the two methods, but that’s my excuse and sticking with it.]

Yes, folks, I get to use my tag line for the latest campaign move by the Shrubbery.

The Pensacola Beach Blog alerted me to this development yesterday with his post, Protesting Bush’s Visit.

I went looking for the Pensacola News Journal articles and found the Friday announcement of the visit:

“This is a God-fearing, flag-waving, military-loving congressional district,” said U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Chumuckla, who faces opposition from Democratic challenger Joe Roberts. “The president obviously wants to show the Republican base is not depressed as the national media would portray it.”

Bush is expected to stump for Miller and gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist, who is running against Democrat Jim Davis. Crist and Davis are battling to replace Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, who will be ousted by term limits.

Gov. Bush likely will attend, as will Crist, Miller said. There was no indication whether U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, who is battling for Democrat Bill Nelson’s U.S. Senate seat, would attend.

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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

[Editor: Okay, I cheated. This is not the next plate in order, but I was not going to put that plate up the Sunday before an election. Come back next week to see why.]

Most of Florida’s supervisors of elections [one per county] are non-partisan. They have to be elected [except for Miami-Dade], but they are usually people who started in the office as clerks and worked their way up to the top and then waited for the old supervisor to retire. They aren’t interested in talking to the media about controversy, they want to avoid any. They need the media for voter outreach for elections, but they want to talk to feature reporters, not the people on the police beat, or the political reporters.

Knowingly voting in the wrong precinct is a felony in Florida, but no one, especially in an area like West Palm Beach wants to get carried away with a criminal case if they can avoid it. They want to keep their records in order, produce election results in a timely fashion, finish all of their paperwork, and hope for more money in the next county budget. After the 2000 election, Palm Beach County does not want any election problems.

That is what make this Associated Press report, Ann Coulter Says She Won’t Cooperate in Voting Probe, so stupid. The woman goes to the office, corrects the paperwork, says “oops, sorry”, Dr. Anderson says “naughty, naughty, don’t do it again”, and the problem goes away.

By stonewalling, the supervisor of elections is being forced to refer this to the state attorney. He doesn’t have a choice, the woman was recognized and a complaint was filed. The man operates a bureaucracy and there is a blank that needs filling. Until it is filled, it is an open sore in the filing system.

As Terry at Nitpicker notes, this could be Coulter’s last chance to vote in Florida if she keeps messing around.

Florida GOP Lawmaker Resigns After Scandal

A state lawmaker under fire for leaving a message filled with obscenities and a racial slur on a colleague’s voice mail resigned Wednesday from the Florida Legislature.

State Rep. Ralph Arza had been urged to step down by fellow House Republicans and by Gov. Jeb Bush.

In a news conference Wednesday, Arza apologized for his actions and said he didn’t want to distract from the work of the Republican-led Legislature.

Family values strikes again.

There was once a vetting process for candidates, now they don’t even submit a resumé. This is no way to run anything, waiting for opponents to do the background checks.

At first glance it might appear that the state of Florida was making it easier to eliminate problem alligators in this AP report, Florida considers letting homeowners battle gators:

The changes would downgrade gators from a species of special concern to a game animal within five years and then remove them altogether from the state’s list of imperiled animals.

That could lift restrictions that now make it illegal for homeowners to kill nuisance alligators on their property. Currently, they must contact the commission, which contracts with a trapper to remove the gator.

Too bad, but what is really going on is a shift in the cost of dealing with them. The state has been dealing with them because they were protected, but now the homeowner has to deal with them.

I am just going to be thrilled with some retired guy from Newark blazing away at what he thinks is an alligator in the bayou. If you shoot one, what do you do with the body? You have to wonder who thought this was a good idea?

The Pensacola Beach Blog has a piece on the Pensacola News Journal article comparing the two candidates for the First District Congressional race.

As I said in comments: Jeff Miller is running as a “Republican” because that’s his total claim on the office.

He hasn’t done anything on his own; he hasn’t pushed anything; he’s not an expert on anything.

He’s wrong on Veterans’ issues; wrong on oil drilling; wrong on disaster preparedness.

Where was he after Katrina, because that sucker could have swung into the Florida Panhandle and we could look like the Mississippi coast?

He is a Republican vote, not a vote for the First District of Florida.

Joe Roberts would be new to Congress, but it looks like he would be in the majority caucus and might get a chance to do something. It’s about time we had a Congresscritter that represented us, not the Republican Party.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

People are generally unaware of how bad things can get if the insurance companies decide to play games with your life. You buy a house and you automatically buy insurance. You may not even notice that you are required to have insurance if you have a mortgage, just like getting a car loan. If you can’t get insurance, you can’t have a house with a mortgage.

If you have a business you need insurance. Many jurisdictions require proof of insurance to get a business license. Again, if there’s a bank involved, they want insurance.

Even though they have been making record profits, insurance companies are looking at global warming and the probability of another 2005 hurricane season and deciding that they don’t want to be in the home insurance market in coastal zones. Apparently insurance companies are no longer interested in risk.

Florida is caught in a bind, and the politicians are not willing to come to grips with the problem.

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