A good end for what has been a rough week for Attorney General Bill McCollum as the Florida State Firefighters Association endorsed his gubernatorial campaign.

McCollums status as Republican front-runner in the race was upended when a poll came out showing his chief rival, health care executive Rick Scott, was ahead by 13 points. McCollums lawsuit against the federal government over new health care laws backed by President Barack Obama suffered a blow when Gov. Charlie Crist vetoed a measure, HB 1143, on abortion matters.

To nobody's surprise and with little fanfare, Gov. Charlie Crist Friday vetoed HB 1143, a bill that would have required women seeking an abortion to first have an ultrasound and pay for it themselves rather than with taxpayers' money.

The veto, possibly Crist's last, furthered his rift with Republican Party leaders, prompting the furor of many of the bill's supporters.

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Associated Industries of Florida (AIF), a business advocacy group with more than 100,000 members, just announced they are backing former House Speaker Marco Rubio, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate.

The Florida Police Benevolent Association (PBA) has been releasing its endorsements this week and has just made one more -- backing Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, for the Democratic nomination for attorney general. The PBA had already backed Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp for the Republican nod. Aronberg is engaged in a close primary contest with Sen. Dan Gelber, D-North Miami.

Matt Williams, campaign manager for GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum, blasted Rick Scott in an e-mail just sent out to supporters.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce's legislative scorecard for 2010 gave perfect scores of 100 to about 50 of the state's lawmakers, all of them Republican and many of them among the majority leadership.

New Florida resident and former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is coming out swinging at President Barack Obama for his handling of the oil spill in the Gulf. The former Arkansas governor blasted Obama for his lack of leadership and efforts in solving the continuing disaster.

With billionaire rival Jeff Greene catching up to him in a poll, on ABCs Top Line today, Democratic Senate candidate U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek fired away at both Greene and Gov. Charlie Crist who is running as an independent in the race.

"In this race, you have one person in the race with $3,500 in the bank and another who is a billionaire that made his money off of uncovered credit default swaps, betting against Floridians to fail as it relates to their home mortgages," said Meek.

Trailing health care executive Rick Scott in polls for the Republican gubernatorial nomination and under fire from the Democrats for being too passive on the issue, Attorney General Bill McCollum set his sights on British Petroleum and started pushing back against the oil company for the spill in the Gulf.

McCollum sent a letter to BP asking for the company to place $2.5 billion in escrow so that the state knows its there if needed.

U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam, the Republican candidate to be Floridas next commissioner of agriculture and consumer services, just announced that his campaign was being backed by Florida Professional Firefighters, Inc., a group representing more than 22,000 Floridians.