It all began Monday for candidates in the 27 congressional and 160 legislative races in Florida -- the ritualistic business of qualifying at the state Capitol in Tallahassee.

A resolution calling for the House to hold U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt has garnered the signatures of 118 House members.

But Rep. Sandy Adams, one of Holder's leading critics, has not signed on. Instead, the Orlando Republican is going her own way.

"The congresswoman reads every bill before co-sponsoring and she had concerns about the language of the personal references in the resolution," Adams' spokeswoman Lisa Boothe told Sunshine State News on Monday.

A coalition of tea party groups is leading an investigation into possible voter fraud in Florida -- and telling the federal government to back off.

"From what we can see, the feds have stonewalled the state by not sharing information about noncitizens in our state," said Billie Tucker, head of the First Coast Tea Party in Jacksonville.

Tea partiers say they will actively resist U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's recent demand that Florida stop purging noncitizens from the voter lists.

Gov. Rick Scott said Monday that the state will work with counties to lessen anticipated fiscal hits as they pay back years of unpaid Medicaid bills.

But for some counties, that may not be enough, resulting in a reduction of county services or an imposition of layoffs.

Scott held a series of business round tables in five rural Panhandle counties Monday, and among the first things he was told was of the pending economic crisis coming from the controversial Medicaid bill, HB 5301, he signed into law.

With all signs indicating that the presidential election will be close in November, the teams behind Barack Obama and Mitt Romney gave notice on Monday that they will both be focusing on the largest battleground state in the nation -- Florida.

Gov. Rick Scott defended the states efforts to remove noncitizens from the list of Floridas registered voters with a deadlined response looming for the U.S. Department of Justice on Monday.

There is no perfect time to do any of these things, we just want fair elections, Scott said following a business round table in the rural Panhandle community of Quincy.

This is not a partisan issue; Republicans want fair elections, Democrats, independents, we all do.

While he may have entered the U.S. Senate contest late, former U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, who is seeking the Republican nomination to challenge Democrat incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, showed this weekend that he retains solid support in his backyard with a win in a straw poll.

Weldon won the Brevard County Hob Nob straw poll in Titusville, which was sponsored by the North Brevard Republican Club, on Saturday but the leading candidate for the Republican nomination -- U.S. Rep. Connie Mack -- was not even on the ballot.

Demographic forecasts generally take the form of predicting more of the same.

Listen to Florida's short-sellers and you'd think the tax system in this state is crumbling like a moldy cracker.

With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, local officials from across Florida sought changes Friday as the state moves forward with new plans for collecting Medicaid payments from counties.

The issue has become highly controversial, after lawmakers in March required that the Agency for Health Care Administration recoup disputed Medicaid charges to the counties going back more than a decade. As of this week, 53 counties had joined a pending lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the Legislature's move.