Senate President-designate Don Gaetz, R-Niceville, has already snagged three big names from inside the capital circle to help run his office through the 2013 and 2014 legislative sessions.

Lisa Vickers, who recently stepped down as director of the Florida Department of Revenue, has been hired to be Gaetzs senior adviser. Carol Gormley, who previously worked for former Gov. Jeb Bush, is coming over from the House where she was staff director for the Health and Human Services Committee.She will serve as senior policy advisory on health care for Gaetz.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Miami, has teamed with Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and others in an unlikely Washington alliance that seeks to expand on the Jobs Act signed into law earlier this year.

The Startup Act 2.0, a proposal by Rubio, Warner, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., and Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., is intended to aid new businesses, with an emphasis on those involving science, technology, engineering and math, as a means to boost the economy.

While he has scaled back operations, essentially conceding the Republican presidential nomination to former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas still has an upcoming primary state that he can build in -- South Dakota.

Supporters of two of the leading Republican candidates looking to challenge Sen. Bill Nelson in November insisted on Tuesday that the race has national implications, as the GOP looks to wrest control of the Senate.

As Americans prepare for Memorial Day weekend -- a time when presidential campaigns keep a lower-than-usual profile -- super-PACs have stepped into the void and are hitting their opponents in new ads and videos.

Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (Crossroads GPS), a conservative super-PAC with ties to many prominent Republicans including strategist Karl Rove, on Tuesday unveiled a new commercial hitting the airwaves in Florida. The ad rips into President Barack Obama for his management of the economy and federal spending.

Following up on calls to raise premiums to match risk, Florida's state-backed property insurer is taking a second look at wind mitigation incentives put in place a decade ago.

For many of its customers, that means higher rates.

Citizens Property Insurance Corp. plans to take a look at 209,000 residential policies by the end of the year to see if granted wind mitigation credits are warranted.

James O'Keefe, the videographer who helped expose and defund ACORN with his viral videos about voter fraud and other government-enabled hijinks, says election scams are continuing bigger than ever.

What's worse, he says the mainstream media's "profound lack of curiosity" is keeping the illicit activity out of the public eye.

The team behind Republican Senate hopeful Connie Mack on Monday continued to drill primary rivalfor his ties to former Gov. Charlie Crist -- and demanded the U.S. Department of Justice launch a criminal investigation that LeMieux used improper influence to get Crist to appoint him to the Senate.

LeMieux and Mack are both angling for the Republican nomination to challenge Democrat incumbent U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in November.

Before heading overseas, Gov. Scott said that he would like to see some people prosecuted if an arranged effort was made to put on the voter rolls non-Floridians and those ineligible to cast a ballot.

Interviewed by BIZPAC Review in Boca Raton last week, Scott said he hoped there would be prosecutions if people purposely register to vote when ineligible.

We have laws, you should comply with the laws of our state. You should not be voting if youre not a registered voter, Scott responded in a BIZPAC interview on May 16.

After all the jousting over who knew what and when they knew it, 41,000 more Florida students could have passed the FCAT writing exam if the state Department of Education had taken one simple step.