Haridopolos came to the aid of friend and company on no-bid contract

When a politically connected company was in danger of losing a $9.4 million no-bid contract with the state, Senate President Mike Haridopolos came to the rescue of the outfit — a firm that employs his good friend and political benefactor as a lobbyist.

Haridopolos staved off the threat to the deal with the Department of Juvenile Justice and quietly steered $6 million in additional dollars to the company, despite the vigorous objections of agency leaders and top Republican senators.

The move allowed Evidence Based Associates, a Washington-based probation program, the exclusive contract to handle the state effort to divert at-risk youth from costly prison beds into community programs. The company kept the business despite recent reports that it had failed to comply with key terms of the agreement —– and to the chagrin of a long list of providers who wanted to compete for the work.

The company’s lobbyist, Frank Tsamoutales, is a Brevard County Republican who has been a financial backer of Haridopolos since the Brevard County legislator was first elected to office in 2000. He went to work for EBA in April 2011, earning between $20,000 and $29,000 in the first year, the same year Haridopolos became Senate president.

The investment paid off. Print version here.

Marco Rubio to campaign with George Allen, Virginia Senate candidate

George Allen, the former Virginia senator and governor who's once again running for U.S. Senate, will get some help tomorrow from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

Allen's campaign says the Florida senator will campaign for him Thursday morning at Company Flowers, a family-owned small business in Arlington. Allen, who won his Republican primary Tuesday night, faces former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.

Rubio, Menendez speak to Cuban dissident after his release from jail

 

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., spoke Wednesday about their conversation with Cuban dissident Jorge Luis García Perez, known as Antúnez, after he was released from jail. Antúnez and dissident José Daniel Ferrer testified by video conference last week before a Senate subcommittee. Both were later harassed by Cuban authorities.

Both harshly criticized the Cuban government last week when they testified before a subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.

Antúnez was arrested Saturday, beaten and pepper sprayed in a police lockup in his hometown of Placetas in Villa Clara, according to his wife, Yris Tamara Pérez Aguilera.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., sent a letter to the Cuban Interests Section demanding information about Antúnez's whereabouts. And Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, condemned the Obama administration's approach to Cuba.

"The arrest and beating of Jose Luis Garcia Perez 'Antunez' over the weekend, the recent arbitrary arrests of hundreds of dissidents, and the continued imprisonment of American citizen Alan Gross should be a wake-up call for this Administration," she said. "How much more suffering and abuse must the Cuban people suffer at the hands of the Castro brothers before President Obama takes action?"

Police union newsletter calls gov and his staff 'sh**heads' for shutting them out

Fed up with the closed-door treatment from Gov. Rick Scott, the Police Benevolent Association sent a nasty gram using a word game in its quarterly newsletter, Roll Call.

The sixth page of the March newsletter notes that the union that represents police departments, sheriffs and other law enforcement officers has repeatedly asked Gov. Rick Scott to submit a guest article to the newsletter as part of its practice offered to every statewide elected official.

"While we know he and/or his staff receives our e-mail requests, we have yet to receive any kind of response from him,'' the message said.

It urged members to write and call the governor to urge him to write about how he feels about law enforcement officers then, it added: "If you would like to know what we really think of the Governor and the staff member who refuses our requests, go back to page four and write down the first letter of each paragraph."

A careful reading of Executive Director Matt Puckett's column provides the answer: "S-H-*-*-H-E-A-D-S."

Legal voters may -- or may not -- have been purged from rolls in noncitizen hunt

Gov. Rick Scott often says that no actual citizens have been removed from the voter rolls in his program to make sure noncitizens don’t have the chance to cast ballots.

“Not one person has been taken off the voter rolls that was a resident, a U.S. citizen who has the right to vote,” Scott said Tuesday in Miami.

But that might not be the case.

In two counties — Collier and Lee — at least nine people have been removed from the voter rolls under Scott’s program, and elections officials have no solid proof that those people are noncitizens. More could be purged soon.

It’s that lack of certainty that concerns Democrats, liberals and voting-rights groups, who have sued the state to stop the program. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice also filed suit.

Critics say they worry that the program will spook legitimate voters who are immigrants.

“This affects the immigrant community and the rumor mill is churning,” said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a Miami lawyer representing the Advancement Project and a coalition of other liberal-leaning groups opposed to the program.

“People are in fear,” she said. “This is complicated and threatening.”

Once upon a time, LeMieux proudly had a Mack's support

As former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux and U.S. Rep. Connie Mack IV  slug it out in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, a little history is worth recalling. When a younger LeMieux ran for the state House in 1998 -- the only other time he sought public office -- he proudly touted the support of the congressman's father, then-U.S. Sen. Connie Mack III.

"George LeMieux has tremendous respect for Senator Mack," LeMieux spokeswoman Anna Nix said. "George's first experience in public service was interning in Mack III's Washington Senate office in 1989.

LeMieux ran as a moderate Republican in that 1998 House race in Fort Lauderdale, Oakland Park, Wilton Manors and Davie, and lost handily to Democratic Rep. Tracy Stafford of Wilton Manors. Then-Sen. Mack attended a campaign event with LeMieux on an oceanfront Fort Lauderdale condo canyon known as the Galt Ocean Mile. 

In a LeMieux "Campaign Update" flyer, LeMieux also touted the support of then-House Speaker-designate John Thrasher. But Thrasher, now a state senator, is supporting Mack IV for the Senate, like the candidate's father. But considering this bit of Florida political lore, it's only a matter of time before LeMieux uses the line about Jack Kennedy that Lloyd Bentsen used to great effect on Dan Quayle in 1988: ("Connie, I knew your father. I worked for your father. Connie Mack was a friend of mine. And believe me, Congressman, you're no Connie Mack.") 

-- Steve Bousquet

Democrats look to Marco Rubio to corral votes for top Hispanic White House nominee

Senate Democrats are looking to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio today to twist the arms of a few of his fellow GOP senators on a controversial White House nomination.

They're hoping the Florida senator will help corral the 60 votes needed for the Senate to take up the nomination of Mari Carmen Aponte, whose is Puerto Rican, and who had served on an interim basis as the ambassador to El Salvador.

The Senate is expected to vote this afternoon; Democrats say the timing of the vote has nothing to do with President Barack Obama's visit next week to Orlando, home to many of the swing state's Puerto Ricans voters. The president is scheduled next Friday to address the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Democrats in Washington D.C. and Florida have spent the week pressuring Rubio, who originally voted against bringing up her nomination for a vote when it failed 49-37 last year. In a call sponsored by the Florida Democratic Party, Puerto Rico Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock said that Puerto Ricans will be watching Rubio's vote closely. Particularly those who live in Florida and who are represented by Rubio in the Senate, he said.

"A vote against Ambassador Aponte is a vote against those values and against the values and priorities of the Puerto Rican Community and it will be especially unacceptable to see Senator Marco Rubio, who represents many Puerto Ricans in the state of Florida and has called himself ‘the Puerto Rican voice in the Senate,’ be the main obstacle in the confirmation of this great nominee," McClintock said in a prepared statement.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus last week also sent a letter calling on Rubio to help round up votes for the president's nominee.

Rubio has said he would back Aponte this time around -- his previous opposition was more about his disagreement with the Obama administration's policies in Latin America, particularly Nicaragua. the senator agreed to back her after what Rubio's office described as "behind-the-scenes" talks with the administration about Nicaragua. After those talks, he also backed away from his opposition to other Obama administration nominees in the region, including Roberta Jacobson, the assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

"Since Sen. Rubio’s opposition was never based on her personally and the administration has addressed his policy concerns, he looks forward to voting for her whenever Senator Reid brings her up for another vote," Rubio's spokesman Alex Conant said in an e-mail.

Hispanic leaders have also been working to get more Republican votes for her nomination. Aponte is the first Puerto Rican woman to serve as a U.S. ambassador. But she has a complicated past -- a former boyfriend was accused of being a Cuban spy. The FBI cleared Aponte, who later received two top security clearances, but not before the chatter scuttled her 1993 nomination by President Bill Clinton to serve as ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

Other Republican senators also oppose Aponte's nomination, including most notably Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who was critical last year of an op-ed Aponte wrote in a Salvadoran newspaper praising the country for its support of a U.N. declaration that calls for eliminating violence against gays and lesbians.

Jon Stewart mocks Rick Scott's noncitizen voter purge; Scott all smiles

TAMPA -- Gov. Rick Scott said he developed a thick skin since running for office for the first time in 2010.

"The newspapers don't always agree with everything you do," Scott told about 270 attendees of a conference for the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants at the Tampa Convention Center this morning.

But it wasn't a newspaper that compared the governor to Peter Garrett, the former lead singer to the Austrailian rock band Midnight Oil. Or noted his likeness to Carel Struycken, the actor who played the mysterious giant in David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

That would have been Jon Stewart on the Daily Show in a piece that aired Tuesday night lampooning Scott's efforts to purge the voter rolls of non-citizens. It was the same show that challenged Scott to give a urine sample after Scott announced he wanted welfare recipients to take a drug test.

“Every now and again, a politician comes along who is just truly terrible and really deserving of more scorn than even we can dole out in our nightly 21-minute, 30-second wise-ass-athon,” Stewart said.

After his speech, Scott said he didn't watch the show.

"Somebody said there was something about me on there," he said.

He then joked that the show "completely supported my position that non-U.S. citizens shouldn't vote in our races."

Not exactly. But Scott did enough of that during his talk Wednesday to the CPAs. Two days after Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said the Department of Justice will sue Florida over its noncitizen voter purge, Scott said the legal costs will be justified.

"People have died for the right to vote," Scott said. "We have fought wars for the right to vote. It's very important that your vote doesn't get diluted...I have to defend the rights of voters. I have no choice."

He said a small sample from a state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles database showed that 100 people registered to vote weren't citizens, and that 50 of those voted. On Tuesday, Florida's former secretary of state, Kurt Browning, told the Miami Herald, that he believed that database had too many errors and refused to release it.

Scott, however, stands by the veracity of the database and said he will fight the federal government in court.

"I got elected to hold government accountable and defend your right," Scott said.

-- Michael Van Sickler, Times staff writer

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After getting mocked on the Daily Show, Gov. Scott all smiles

Gov. Rick Scott said it was out of necessity that he developed a thick skin since running for office for the first time in 2010.

"The newspapers don't always agree with everything you do," Scott told about 270 attendees of a conference for the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants at the Tampa Convention Center this morning.

But it wasn't a newspaper that compared the governor to Peter Garrett, the former lead singer to the Austrailian rock band Midnight Oil. Or noted his likeness to Carel Struycken, the actor who played the mysterious giant in David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

That would have been Jon Stewart on the Daily Show in a piece that aired Tuesday night lampooning Scott's efforts to purge the voter rolls of non-citizens. It was the same show that challenged Scott to give a urine sample after Scott announced he wanted welfare recipients to take a drug test.

After his speech, Scott said he didn't watch the show.

"Somebody said there was something about me on there," he said.

He then joked that the show "completely supported my position that non-U.S. citizens shouldn't vote in our races."

Not exactly. But Scott did enough of that during his talk Wednesday to the CPAs. Two days after Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said the Department of Justice will sue Florida over its noncitizen voter purge, Scott said the legal costs will be justified.

"People have died for the right to vote," Scott said. "We have fought wars for the right to vote. It's very important that your vote doesn't get diluted...I have to defend the rights of voters. I have no choice."

He said a small sample from a state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles database showed that 100 people registered to vote weren't citizens, and that 50 of those voted. On Tuesday, Florida's former secretary of state, Kurt Browning, told the Miami Herald, that he believed that database had too many errors and refused to release it.

Scott, however, stands by the veracity of the database and said he will fight the federal government in court.

"I got elected to hold government accountable and defend your right," Scott said.

-- Michael Van Sickler, Times staff writer

Florida firefighters back Barack Obama

So a union endorsed a Democrat. So what, right?

Well, the Florida Professional Firefighters were the only firefighter affiliate union in the country that refused to back John Kerry in 2004, partly because then Gov. Jeb Bush had helped them with pensions and his brother was on the ballot.

Now they're behind President Obama, whom they supported in 2008. The firefighters, like the police union, have historically been more likely than other government-sector unions to back Republicans. But amid Republican-led budget cuts and criticisms about pensions, the unions have little choice but to stampede to Democrats.

Also, the firefighters aren't as disorganized and feckless as, say SEIU. The question: Will the firefighters  actually put in the man hours to help with the Democrats' ground game in Florida?