Tag: Florida

Deja Vu in Florida Again

Trish

Can you say, “irony?” I though you could. If you had to pick a district in Florida where voting was most under suspicion,” wouldn’t you pick U.S. House District 13, the seat most recently occupied by — wait for it — Katherine Harris?

Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent couldn’t explain why 8,000 to 10,000 fewer people voted in the congressional race

Republican Vern Buchanan was clinging to a 368-vote edge over Democrat Christine Jennings for the 13th Congressional District early this morning…

The results were loaded with controversy as nearly 13 percent of all ballots cast in Sarasota didn’t include a choice for Congress. That difference, and scattered reports of difficulty finding the race on Sarasota’s touchscreen ballots, raised concerns about under-votes in the race.

Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent couldn’t explain why 8,000 to 10,000 fewer people voted in the congressional race than in other high-profile races for governor, attorney general or U.S. Senate. But she said nothing mechanical went wrong with the county’s $4.7 million touchscreen voting machine system…

Throughout the day voters complained that touchscreen voting machines were not registering votes for Jennings properly.

Wait, it gets better.

Buchanan is an ultra-rich car dealer who defeated Tramm Hudson in the Republican primary. You would have thought Buchanan — despite pumping over $2.1 million of his own money into his campaign — would be at a disadvantage because of pesky fraud allegations in a sealed lawsuit. But Hudson was the guy who said blacks can’t swim. You decide.

Buchanan was also one of the few Republicans desperate enough to welcome heavy support from both Dufus Bush and his popular wife, the Lauratron 4000.

Until campaigning for Buchanan, Pres. Bush’s only other visit to Sarasota was on Sept. 11, 2001, when he read the book, “My Pet Goat,” with Sarasota school children, largely without moving his lips. They were just getting to the good part when the news came about the Twin Towers, which explains why another nine minutes went by before our hero returned to his presidential duties of being shuttled back and forth above flyover country.

But I digress.

We’ll keep you posted on how it all comes out, but something tells us Buchanan will maintain his amazing victory. After all, it’s District 13. Not that we’re superstitious, but we’d call Karl Rove in for one of those cleansing ceremonies with a priest before Buchanan unpacks in Harris’ old office.

I Feel Ill

Trish

Charlie Crist is giving his victory speech, and so far he’s thanked his sisters, which he always does as a way to show himself embracing females on the stage; Jeb Bush, whom he called — and I’m not making this up — “the world’s” greatest governor (note to Crist’s handlers — explain international political systems to the newbie); and mother-frickin’ Pres. Bush, whom he called a brave leader. I can’t stand it.

Florida Governor’s Race Still Pending

Trish

Despite reports giving the Florida governor’s race to Crist-Crossing Charlie (Rep-Closet), there are still some significant counties to be reported. First, Democrat Jim Davis has won in South Florida’s Palm Beach and Miami-Dade — and nearby St. Lucie is still unreported. Beyond that, south-central counties Manatee and Sarasota are also uncounted, and they are near Davis’s home base.

On the other hand, several panhandle counties, which are in a later time zone, have yet to report. You would expect this area of the state, which is made up of military bases, latter-day spring break destinations, and what used to be called “land” but is now “real estate” (thanks, Talking Heads) to go for Crist. However, this is also the area where Crist left the president and his brother, the current governor, waiting at the dance yesterday, much to their chagrin.

You know if W was willing to appear in this area, it goes without saying it is very Republican-friendly. How much umbrage is taken on the president’s behalf is about to be seen.

UPDATE: Still waiting on the panhandle, but Crist won Sarasota County big and lost St. Lucie small so it’s looking like he’s our next governor. For awhile, until he’s enveloped in scandal. I give him 12 months.

$20 Well Spent in Florida

Trish

Former Florida Senator Ron Klein appears to be beating the pants off 25-year plus incumbent freakozoid Clay Shaw. That’s one more Dem on the U.S. House side for Florida. It was probably my last-minute $20 donation that clinched it.

Tampa’s Kathy Castor makes it two pick-ups on the Dem side for Florida, but Jon’s favorite (not) Republican incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has more than two-thirds of the vote, and Joe Negron, for whom voters must select “Mark Foley” on the ballot has 49% to Democrat Tim Mahoney’s 48%.

Closer to home, Democratic State Dist. 27 Rep. Joyce Cusack is holding off rich-boy Republican David Hood for her seat in Tallahassee. Go Rep. Q!

Florida GOP Governor Candidate Ditches Appearance with Bush

Jon Ponder

Charlie Crist, the Republican candidate for governor, bailed on President Bush at a rally in Pensacola, Florida, and Karl Rove is pissed:

“All I know is that yesterday morning they apparently made a decision that, rather than being with the governor and the president and 10,000 people in Pensacola, they made it a last-minute decision to go to Palm Beach,” Rove told reporters.

“Let’s see how many people show up in Palm Beach on 24 hours notice versus eight or nine thousand people in Pensacola,” Rove said.

Schadenfreude — you’re soaking in it!

Scandals Render Partisan Voting Key to Republican Victories

Trish

Never has it been more important for Republicans to vote partisan than this year. In race after race, Candidate A has resigned in shame and been replaced by Candidate B, but Candidate A’s name is still on the ballot.

Democrats tend to actually pay attention when voting so if a ballot read, say, “Mark Foley,” we might flinch from touching the corresponding grimy spot on the screen. But Republicans don’t read the names anyway.

If this were happening to Democrats, we’d have a problem. Democrats tend to actually pay attention when voting so if a ballot read, say, “Mark Foley,” we might flinch from touching the corresponding grimy spot on the screen. But Republicans don’t read the names anyway. They just look for the little “R” that follows, and viola!

This quality will be especially handy in these races:

    Texas U.S. House District 22 – Voters will need to overlook the “Tom DeLay” part and write in another Repug instead.

    Florida U.S House District 16 – Rebooblicans will need to steel themselves to ignore the name “Mark Foley,” relying on the “R” to supply them with Joe Negron.

    Ohio U.S. House District 18 – Remember Ohioans, it’s not really Bob Ney, who plead guilty to conspiracy charges in the Jack Abramoff case too recently to be replaced on the ballot. C’mon, you can do it! Vote Ney!

    Florida House Dist. 102 – Ralph Arza, though released from the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Facility in Miami on felony charges of interfering with a witness – specifically by calling his house in a drunken tirade and calling him a “nigger” and a “bitch” – won’t be up for re-election after all. It will be Arza’s name on the ballot but his votes will go to Eduardo Gonzalez.

Don’t let the names fool you, voters. Just look for the “R” on the label, and we can almost guarantee you’ll get exactly what you’re expecting.

Did I miss one? Leave a comment if there’s a similar race in your area.

Florida Prosecutors Might Help Ann Coulter on Her Mission to Go to Jail

Trish

Ann Coulter must want go to jail. She’s cutting off any options for Florida prosecutors but to pursue a felony conviction for her voting fraud in a Palm Beach election earlier this year.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the state attorney’s office by Friday…

Anderson’s office received a complaint in February that Coulter allegedly voted in the wrong precinct during a Feb. 7 Palm Beach town council election. Since then, Anderson said he has made repeated attempts to resolve the matter with Coulter and her attorney but has been rebuffed.

Anderson, a Democrat, said an initial letter was sent to Coulter on March 27…

Three more letters were sent to Coulter and her attorney over the next several months, but she has yet to respond with the information requested, Anderson said.

As you may or may not recall, Coulter said at the time that she can’t reveal her true address for fear she’ll be killed by the people she tries to destroy in her books. “Should we get my stalkers on the line with my address and apartment number?” she asked on the Sean Hannity show.

The problem is that the law doesn’t actually make exceptions for hateful harpy skanks that need to be protected from their own hateful harpy skankiness. Covering up your address to vote in a different precinct, or more than once, or where you like best is still a third degree felony that’ll get you up to five years in prison.

Katherine Harris Planning Revenge With Tell-All Book

Trish

Look out, Republicans. Katherine Harris, abandoned by almost every office-holding GOoPer at the state and national level in her race for the U.S. Senate, plans to get the last laugh. Evidently she’s been filling the hours left unexpectedly free by the all no-shows at campaign stops with a more productive activity: cackling gleefully, frothing at the mouth, and making notes.

In blood, for all we know.

“I’ve been writing it all year,” she says. She smiles and cocks her head as if she’s letting you in on a secret. “It’s going to be a great book.”

Katherine Harris, who is trying to become a U.S. senator, says she is writing a tell-all about the many people who have wronged her. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to: the Republican leaders who didn’t want her to run, the press that has covered her troubled campaign, and the many staffers who have quit her employ, whom she accuses of colluding with her opponent.

“I’ve been writing it all year,” she says. She smiles and cocks her head as if she’s letting you in on a secret. “It’s going to be a great book.”

Is anyone besides me somehow flashing back on Kathy Bates in the movie “Misery?”

It’s doubtful the book will contain memories from former Harris staffers, such as this classic from strategist Ed Rollins, one of the earliest to recognize Harris is looney.

Rollins said Harris, who has compared herself to the biblical Esther, once told him that God wanted her to become a senator. ”Maybe God wants you to run because he wants Bill Nelson to be senator,” Rollins said he told her.

Or this lol tidbit:

Before Jim Dornan became the first of three campaign managers to quit, he programmed his cellphone to play the theme song from The Exorcist when Harris called.