A year until the primary to replace U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in the Senate, the two leading Democratic candidates continue to pound away at each other with both of them trying to pin Wall Street on their opponent. Rubio is running for the Republican presidential nomination and is not expected to run for a second Senate term.
The leaders of Florida spent the week looking for directions, and maps didn't turn out to be much help.
In the case of the state's ongoing congressional redistricting saga, lawmakers and a Leon County judge were looking for directions from the Florida Supreme Court --- and there was no map to follow, because there is no congressional map at all. There also appears to be no roadmap for how to extract the state from the increasingly intricate web of lawsuits, special sessions and political battles sparked by the anti-gerrymandering "Fair Districts" standards.
The special session to hammer out a set of redrawn congressional maps fell flat a week ago, but state lawmakers haven’t necessarily given up on working out a new set of maps.
Gov. Rick Scott named Tom Delacenserie as the interim secretary of the Florida Lottery to replace Cynthia O’Connell. Earlier this week, Politico Florida ran a story focusing on O’Connell racking up almost $30,000 in travel expenses and being excessively absent.
Politicians switching parties to run for office in Florida is nothing new -- generally, they survive the backlash -- and a Jacksonville Republican is the latest political hopeful counting on that survival. The success stories include former Gov. Bob Martinez, who was elected mayor of Tampa as a Democrat before heading to Tallahassee in 1986 as a Republican. Jim Smith was a Democrat when he was elected attorney general, but after losing the 1986 Democratic primary, he joined the GOP and served as secretary of state. Florida State Supreme Court Justice Charles Canady served in the Florida House as a Democrat before winning a U.S. House seat in 1992 as a Republican.
The Democratic primary to replace U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in the Senate heated up this week with the two leading candidates exchanging fire.
U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., the chairman of the U.S. House Agriculture, Energy and Trade Subcommittee under the Small Business Committee’s umbrella, ripped into the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision focused on small businesses and contractors and employees.
Even without Tropical Storm Erika --- which could begin affecting Florida on Sunday and strengthen to a hurricane by Monday --- the churning storms of the Atlantic and Florida's unique place as a peninsula jutting into the water were bound to be a topic of political conversation.
With buzz growing that he could enter the Democratic presidential primaries, Vice President Joe Biden is heading to South Florida next week to make the case for President Barack Obama’s deal with Iran over its nuclear program.
Biden was asked by U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to speak to Jewish leaders in South Florida. The vice president will be speaking to them on Sept. 3 in Miami.
Wasserman Schultz weighed in on Thursday, saying she was excited to hear what Biden had to say.
