A state committee tasked with selecting a date for the presidential preference primary will meet Sept. 23, setting up a potential confrontation between Florida Republicans and the national party.

Members of the committee are expected to be named beginning Friday. A spokeswoman for House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, said he would announce his appointments then, while a spokeswoman for Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, said his selections would be made "in the next few days." Gov. Rick Scott will also appoint members to the panel.

With senior-rich Florida shaping up as a critical state in the 2012 Republican primary, two of the leading candidates are battling over the future of Social Security and whether one front-runner's inflammatory comments about the program could harm the party in a general election.

At stake are the 29 electoral votes up for grabs in Florida and perhaps more in other states where retirees have flocked in recent decades. The scuffle also shows where tea-party rhetoric could collide with electoral realities in the largest of swing states.

A state battle over climate-change legislation in 2008 is leaving former House Majority Leader Adam Hasner to explain to the GOP base why he voted for a measure that appeared to bring the state closer to a cap-and-trade system -- a policy that is anathema to most conservatives.

Hasner responds that the bill was actually an attempt to fight a climate-change proposal being pushed by one of his opponents.

With the fight largely over and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down a similar law in Arizona, a federal judge on Wednesday quietly set aside a portion of Floridas campaign finance law increasing payments to publiclyfinanced candidates who face challenges from privately backed candidates willing to bust state spending caps.

Even as Democrats pledged at their annual Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner this past weekend to fight for President Barack Obama and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelsons re-elections in 2012, some were already beginning to size up contenders for the partys gubernatorial nod in 2014.

Gov. Rick Scotts popularity has sagged to 29 percent. And some Democrats are already looking at a rematch of the 2010 election a few months after a Democratic-leaning polling firm found former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink would win the election by 19 points if it had been held in March.

When it comes to the effort to re-elect President Barack Obama, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick had a simple message to Florida Democrats at their annual Jefferson-Jackson fundraising dinner Saturday night: Get involved.

Im in for 2012, Patrick told the crowd.

Some are also wondering if Patrick, who has traveled to three swing states in recent months, might be in the race for 2016 in a different role. And his appearance in perhaps the largest swing state in presidential politics served as something of a rehearsal if he were to make that transition.