After 10 Glorious Years, Sunshine State News and I Are Passing the Baton

How could we have missed him? Yesterday's blog enumerating potential replacements for Florida Democratic Party Chair Karen Thurman failed to mention Rod Smith. Now reports are surfacing that the ex-state senator has an inside track for the job. One Miami Herald blogger plumped Smith's candidacy this way today:

In the latest line of attack in his battle with U.S. Rep. Tom Price of Georgia to become Republican Policy Committee chairman, U.S. Rep. Connie Mack of Florida -- fifth in line in the congressional Republican leadership -- weighed in to support extending the tax cuts initiated by then-President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003. Mack sent a memo to all his Republican colleagues explaining the need for keeping the cuts.

More than a week after losing the gubernatorial race, state CFO Alex Sink unveiled an effort to better connect veterans in Florida to the benefits they are entitled to. With more than 1.6 million veterans living in the Sunshine State, the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs (FDVA) has information on only 700,000 of them -- something Sink hopes will change with the new program.

Our story about Supreme Court Justices Jorge Labarga and James Perry dodging the bullet at the ballot box this year confused at least one reader. In an online comment about the article, the poster assumed that the tea party effort to unseat Labarga and Perry was the work of the Florida TEA (Taxed Enought Already) Party. In fact, the campaign was waged by mainstream, generic tea partiers and other conservative groups. The TEA Party, headed by Orlando attorney Fred O'Neal, opposed the effort and recommended retention of Labarga and Perry.