Photograph by AP

In this frame grab from video, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio takes a sip of water during his Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, on Feb. 12, 2013,

Sen. Marco Rubio was behind a last-minute change on the final day of Florida’s legislative session to move the state’s presidential primaryelection  into compliance with national party rules.

Rubio, a Republican, might well be on that ballot.

But that’s not the reason Rubio’s team says the change was needed. Instead, it was to ensure the state’s vote is fully counted by the party in the primary.

For the past two presidential elections, Florida has lost delegates at the national conventions because the state violated Republican and Democratic rules with an early primary date. Rubio was state House speaker when the state first jumped the line.

Republicans would have only 12 of their 99 delegates counted in 2016 if they kept an early primary, said Todd Reid, Rubio’s state policy director. The change puts Florida’s election on “the first Tuesday that the rules of the major political parties provide for state delegations to be allocated without penalty.”

Reid thought that would be March 1.

The election bill is on its way to Gov. Rick Scott for his consideration after passing the Florida House and Senate today.

“We pointed out that we needed to make a change,” Reid said. “The juice just wasn’t worth the squeeze any more.”

Original post is Rubio Intervenes in Florida Primary Move by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Charles “Charlie” Crist in Washington.

Charlie Crist, the only Florida governor to willingly decline a second term, looks well positioned if he wants his old job back. The second poll in as many days shows the Republican-turned-independent-turned Democrat leading incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Scott trailing by double digits in a potential race.

In the poll out this morning from Quinnipiac University, Crist leads Scott by a margin of 50 percent to 34 percent. A survey yesterday from  Public Policy Polling showed Crist up by 52 percent to 40 percent.

Scott’s approval rating was 36 percent, according to Quinnipiac, the 15th time the Connecticut college’s pollsters asked registered voters about Scott’s approval since he took office in 2011. Among all those polls, Scott’s approval rose as high as 41 percent and dropped as low as 29 percent.

If you’re a Scott fan looking for good news, it might be his 66 percent approval among Republicans. Granted, that’s nowhere near the 87 percent that U.S. Senator Marco Rubio enjoys within their party in the same poll. But Scott’s rating among GOP voters is up 3 percentage points since the last Q poll in December, and comes after he upset many tea party activists by supporting Medicaid expansion envisioned in President Barack Obama’s health care law and proposed a $74.2 billion budget, the largest in state history.

Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,000 registered voters from March 13-18, with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. PPP surveyed 500 Florida voters March 15-18, with a margin of error is 4.4 percentage points.

Original post is Crist’s Second Chance: Beating Scott by Political Capital.

Photograph by Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Chris Christie, Oz, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, at the conclusion of the closing session of the National Governors Association 2013 Winter Meeting in Washington, on Feb. 25, 2013.

As the star of “The Dr. Oz Show” delivered a half-hour speech today to a majority of the nation’s governors, seated a few feet to his left was his No. 1 pupil: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Well, the potential 2016 presidential candidate was either taking copious notes on Dr. Mehmet Oz’s tips for a healthly heart or not paying attention at all. He looked up only occasionally from his pen and paper as Oz urged governors to carry nuts in their pocket (to avoid hunger pains that lead to gorging) and have more sex (presumably with their spouses).

Christie, 50, ignored a reporter’s questions after Oz’s speech, delivered to the National Governors Association winter meeting in Washington D.C.

Christie’s health made headlines this month when he called a former White House physician who said he was dangerously overweight a “hack” and said she should “shut up” unless she examines him. The doctor, Connie Mariano, said Christie phoned her to yell at her after she said on CNN that Christie “may have a heart attack.”

Original post is Dr. Oz’s Pocket Nuts: Christie Noting? by Political Capital.

Photograph by George Frey/Bloomberg

An attendee holds a rifle at the Rocky Mountain Gun Show in Sandy, Utah, on Jan. 7, 2012.

For two weeks, bullets pierced two dozen cars driven through Detroit’s suburbs as police puzzled over who was firing. Unlike most states, Michigan has a tool that helped lead to an arrest: a pistol registry.

Without that database of buyers and sellers, police said the investigation would have taken longer, more people might have been injured or someone might have been killed, before they arrested an unemployed geologist in connection with the crimes on Nov. 5, Bloomberg News reports.

The story of what worked in Michigan — one of six states that require registration of at least some types of firearms — is also the story of what isn’t happening elsewhere.

The National Rifle Association, the nation’s largest pro-gun lobby, has persuaded federal and state lawmakers over the years to block information that might help prevent crimes, solve them or inform policy making. The Fairfax, Virginia-based group helped convince Congress to make it tougher to study illegal firearm trafficking, stymie scientific research on shooting deaths and create restrictions that force U.S. law enforcement to record gun sales on microfiche.

The debate over firearms-related data is intensifying as President Barack
Obama seeks new gun-control laws following the Dec. 14 shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The president’s plan calls for using firearms information in new ways, including a proposed law requiring background checks before gun sales and a directive to research causes and prevention of violence.

Read the full story here.

Original post is Gun Lobby Helps Block Data Collection by Crimefighters by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Charles “Charlie” Crist, governor of Florida, waits for President Barack Obama to speak in Washington.

Updated at 3:45 pm EST

Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott, a former chief executive officer at HCA Holdings, could lose his 2014 re-election bid to several hypothetical opponents, including former Gov. Charlie Crist, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Tea Party supporter Allen West, according to poll results today from Public Policy Polling.

The survey showed Crist leading Scott by the largest margin: 53 percent to 39 percent.

Crist hasn’t denied rumors that he’s interested in winning back the seat he gave up in 2010, when he ran for U.S. Senate and became the first Florida governor to decline a chance for a second term. Crist, who ran for Senate as an independent after polling predicted him losing a Republican primary to now-Senator Marco Rubio, signed paperwork at a White House Christmas party last month to register as a Democrat.  He spoke at the Democratic National Convention that nominated President Barack Obama for re-election. (Obama carried Florida last year, as he did in 2008.) Crist had  served as governor, attorney general, education commissioner and a state legislator as a Republican.

The poll also showed Crist leading a primary field of potential Democratic candidates. He drew 52 percent support among Democratic voters. The next closest contender was the party’s 2010 nominee, former state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, with 18 percent support.

Wasserman-Schultz, a five-term congresswoman from South Florida, wasn’t included in a hypothetical primary. Her spokesman, Jonathan Beeton, has said she has no intention of running for governor.

Sink hasn’t announced her plans for next year.

West, a Republican who lost his re-election to the U.S. House in November, led Scott by 38 to 37 percent among primary voters in the survey. West announced yesterday that he’ll host a co-host a new Web show called Next Generation.

Today, West said he has no plans to challenge Scott.

“That’s one of the most asinine things I’ve ever heard,” West said.

Scott, who has acknowledged that the yellow Labrador he adopted during his 2010 race was returned to the rescue shelter after the campaign, has a 33 percent approval rating, according to the poll. He’s struggled with low approval ratings since taking office.

Still, the poll suggests Scott would win re-election against two potential Democrats: state Senator Nan Rich, who has announced a campaign for the seat, and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who hasn’t said he’ll run.

PPP conducted automated telephone interviews with 501 Florida voters, including an over-sample of 401 usual Democratic primary voters and 436 Republican primary voters, from Jan. 11-13. The margin of error for the overall sample is 4.4 percent, 4.9 percent for the Democratic portion and 4.7 for the Republican portion.

Original post is Florida’s Scott Hears Footsteps — Loudest Coming from Charlie Crist by Political Capital.

Photograph by Michael C. Bender/Bloomberg

Albert Gomez talks on the phone at his office in Miami, Florida.

Abelardo and Lucy Gomez, like many of their generation who fled Cuba, have voted for every Republican U.S. presidential candidate for the past 40 years.

Their son is another story.

Albert Gomez, 39, who works in the family business in South Florida, has a bobble-head doll of President Barack Obama perched on his desk. A self-described pacifist who campaigned against offshore oil drilling as a teenager, he has voted for a Republican presidential candidate just once.

“I’m very upset with my son,” said Lucy Gomez, 65, interviewed at her $2 million home in a gated Coral Gables neighborhood along a canal near Biscayne Bay. “He’s my son and he has a big heart. But Albert is a Democrat.”

Like Albert Gomez, the children of Cuban-American immigrants are increasingly likely to buck their parents’ Republican allegiance and vote for Democrats, according to polling data. This change helped President Barack Obama become the first Democrat in 68 years to win Florida twice and creates new hurdles for Republicans, who are searching for ways to win favor among Hispanic voters after losing four of the last six presidential contests.

Cuban-Americans account for just 3.3 percent of the 54 million Hispanics in the U.S., Census data show. Yet two-thirds of the nation’s 1.8 million Cubans-Americans live in Florida, creating a powerful voice in what has been the largest electoral prize for more than a decade among states considered competitive by both political parties.

Obama won 48 percent of the Cuban-American vote in Florida this year, nearly twice as much as Al Gore, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2000, according to exit polls from Miami-based Bendixen & Amandi International, a polling firm specializing in Hispanic community surveys. The change is due to a generational shift in political views, according to the firm.

“The trend shows a real danger for Republicans,” said Dario Moreno, a Florida International University political science professor and adviser to Marco Rubio, the state’s Republican and Cuban-American U.S. senator. “They’re losing support among one of their strongest bases.”

See the full report at Bloomberg.com

Original post is Cuban-Americans: Generational Shift Helped Elect, Re-Elect Obama by Political Capital.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott expressed his disappointment about the Supreme Court's decision upholding the core of the president's health care bill. Photograph by Steve Cannon/AP Photo

President Barack Obama has been Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s biggest political foil.

Scott launched his political career from Tea Party rallies in 2009 opposing the president’s 2010 health care law. On the campaign trail in 2010, many of his TV ads tied his Democratic opponent to Obama. Once in office, Scott used terms like “Obamacrats,” “Obamamath” and “Obama rail” to ridicule the the president’s agenda.

Now, Scott is rethinking his opposition to “Obama-care” after Florida voters last week supported Obama’s re-election and struck down a proposed constitutional amendment that would have made it tougher to implement the health insurance law.

Read more here.

Original post is After Obama-Vote, Scott Drops Opposition to ‘Obama-care’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images

Placards supporting President Barack Obama and his Republican rival Mitt Romney are seen near Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, on Oct. 20, 2012

Florida Democrats will celebrate a campaign milestone today: getting their one-millionth voter to request a mail ballot for the first time.

That’s a threshold Republicans crossed in 2008.  Still, it’s already 160,000 more than Democrats requested four years ago and a bigger gain than Republicans expected. (Read more on that here.)

Throwing some water on the Democrats’ mark: Figures from the Romney campaign show 218,000 of the Democrats’ gains in requests are from voters who  previously cast a ballot at polling places that opened before Election Day, an implication that the Republican lead in early voting is wider than numbers suggest. Democrats insist they’ve made up ground with sporadic voters, but we’ve yet to see those numbers.

What matter most so far are absentee returns. Among the 755,300 ballots that have  been returned to county election supervisors through Sunday, about 40 percent are from registered Democrats and 45 percent from Republicans. Four years ago, there was a total of 1.9 million absentee ballots cast: 47 percent from  Republicans, 36 percent from Democrats.

Romney’s camp says Democrats had a 7 percentage point lead among all early ballots cast heading into Election Day in 2008. Right now, five days before early voting polls open on Oct. 27, it’s a 5 point advantage for Republicans. If Romney’s team can  maintain that edge after a week of early voting, as they say they can, it will be their turn to celebrate.

Original post is Florida Democrats Request One Million Mail Ballots by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jonathan Alcorn/Bloomberg

T. Boone Pickens, founder of BP Capital LLC.

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens says he’s “fed up” with Washington.He recalls one of his greatest victories as once getting Republican Senator Tom Coburn to sign off on an energy proposal that included a natural gas user-fee.

“He wouldn’t pay a dime to see a piss-ant eat a bale of hay,” Pickens said of the Oklahoma Republican during an energy discussion at the Bloomberg Link site at the Republican National Convention. “He won’t pay for a damn thing.”

Pickens bemoaned the fact that several years ago he could get just six of 51 Senate Republicans to support his natural gas amendment — “after all the money I’ve spent on the Republican Party.”

“But it sure fixed it,” Pickens said. “I quit spending money on those guys.”

Pickens said he’s staying away from D.C.

“I’ve got other things to do and I’m running out of time,” said Pickens, 84.

Original post is Pickens: Money Misspent on Senate by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

John Kasich, governor of Ohio, at the Republican National Convention.

Florida’s delegation has great seats for the Republican National Convention. If they could only get there.

As punishment for defying the national party’s calendar and scheduling an early presidential primary, the host state’s delegates were given hotel rooms 30 miles away from the site of the gathering, the Tampa Bay Times Forum. The party also took half of Florida’s delegates and stripped all of the guest passes, which are a valuable way to reward top donors or recruit new ones.

Yet the biggest trouble could be the shuttle back and forth from the convention.

The 50-minute drive to the convention took two-and-a-half hours on Tuesday, the first full day of activities, when the bus was a half-hour late arriving and then got lost heading into Tampa and ended up circling the city for an hour.

Some returned after 1 a.m., when more delays caused another two-and-a-half hour drive.

“Somebody is really trying to punish us,” Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putman said on Wednesday.

Original post is Florida’s 2 1/2 Hour Drive to the Tampa Convention by Political Capital.