Less than a week after filing papers to run, former North Miami Mayor Kevin Burns announced at Wednesdays Democracy for America meeting in Coral Gables that he is ending his campaign for the U.S. Senate and will instead run for the state Senate seat that Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, is vacating to run for attorney general.
WASHINGTON -- No one doubts the sincerity or power of the tea party movement anymore. We get it: free market principles, limited government and individual liberty.
Those are the three fundaments of the tea party's "Contract from America," to which any serious Republican must subscribe, nay, sign in blood. Make it real red.
Handing Florida Hometown Democracy a potentially potent political weapon, the state House refused to re-enact the Department of Community Affairs.
The agency that reviews growth plans in Florida was up for sunset review this session, and its prospects looked good after the Senate voted 38-0 to renew the DCA.
But in the waning hours, the House decided not to hear the bill.
While Republican Congressman Jeff Miller has supported expanded offshore oil drilling in the past, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has changed his mind.
With the session over, Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, wants to focus on his responsibilities as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida as well as his legislative ones.
Having taken over the RPOF after a number of financial scandals under previous chairman Jim Greer, Thrasher now heads the party as it responds to Gov. Charlie Crist leaving Republican ranks to continue his bid for the U.S. Senate as an independent.
Gov. Charlie Crist -- like his buddy, Arizona "Maverick" John McCain -- is a media confection. He has been the kind of Republican the NAACP and St. Pete Times editorial board get equally tingly about.
An explosion on a BP oil rig last month that has resulted in the biggest oil spill in recent history has spurred at least eight lawsuits in federal court from Panhandle residents whose livelihoods could be upended by the spill.
Commercial fishermen, real estate executives, beach front property owners and restaurateurs have all filed suit against BP, in addition to rig owner TransOcean and contractor Haliburton Energy Services.
Under fire from both Democrats and Republicans, the ever-sunny Gov. Charlie Crist is turning into the most ridiculed man in the state Capitol.
But he also remains the most powerful. As long as Crist is in the governors office, he commands the states biggest political stage and can, as late Gov. Lawton Chiles once said, put the ball in play every day..
Blaming "past decisions to end the Space Shuttle program," President Barack Obama followed through with his pledge to create a task force to bolster Florida's sagging Space Coast.
The White House's announcement was alternately welcomed and derided by the region's congressional delegation.
