US Senate Candidate Bob Smith Caught on Camera
November 7, 2009 at 4:45 am | Posted in Election News | Leave a commentCoral Springs, Florida – U.S. Senate candidate Bob Smith’s endorsement record was questioned last night at the DC Works for US meeting held at Wings Plus in Coral Springs. Two representatives from the Republican Majority Campaign Political Action Committee(RMCPAC) asked Sen. Smith about his Kerry endorsement during the 2004 Presidential Election. On camera, Smith responds to the activists by admitting to the endorsement of John Kerry over President Bush “because he [Bush] pulled the plug on me and embarrassed me”.
The RMCPAC’s, Florida Project Director Daniel Diaz states: “Bob Smith’s campaign slogan thus far has been ‘principals above politics’ yet when the question about his endorsement came to light, Smith’s response was politics above principals. His response was juvenile and I ask all Floridian’s, ‘Is this who we want to represent the State of Florida?’”
The edited video of the encounter can be viewed on youtube.com. The man behind the camera, Patrick Castronovo has this to say in reference to the endorsement. “The actions that were taken by Senator Bob Smith to endorse liberal John Kerry over President George W. Bush were not only selfish but dangerous. We can’t afford to elect people in Washington that act like children, especially when our children and nation are at stake”.
For more information on the RMCPAC please visit them online at http://www.rmcpacfl.com and to view the video that was taken of Smith please use the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X5XOgPzb9c
Crist, Rubio spar at local Republican fundraiser
November 7, 2009 at 3:16 am | Posted in Election News | Leave a commentBy Nathan Crabbe
Staff writer
Published: Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 10:26 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 10:26 p.m.
NEWBERRY — Radio talk show host Laura Ingraham was the keynote speaker Thursday at the Alachua County Republican Party’s annual fundraiser, but Florida’s U.S. Senate race was the main event.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and his opponent in the Republican Senate primary, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, both spoke at the 7th Annual Ronald Reagan Black Tie and Blue Jeans BBQ. The event, held at Canterbury Equestrian Showplace, typically serves up plenty of red meat for the party faithful.
The high-profile Senate race provided an extra helping this year. Rubio gave the event’s invocation, but first made comments along his campaign theme of being the race’s true conservative.
“It’s very simple: We already have a Democratic Party in America,” he said. “We do not need two Democratic parties in America.”
Crist gave a speech running through a long list of positions to prove his conservative bona fides, from support of gun rights to tax cuts. But he received a less enthusiastic greeting than Rubio from the grassroots activists in attendance, even getting a small smattering of boos.
In comments to reporters before the event, Crist said party members should put aside differences. He invoked Reagan’s old saying that a “person that agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend.”
“I think the message is we need to be unified,” he said.
Ingraham, for her part, said the time was right for the party to fight for its beliefs. She criticized Democrats for “budget-busting” proposals such as health care reform and the climate-change plan.
“What we are seeing now is a full-frontal assault on you,” she said.
Washington has become addicted to “boondoggles and bailouts,” she said. Democrats didn’t like people in the audience, she said, for lifestyle choices such as driving big cars, being too fat or living in suburbia.
“You have all become very inconvenient to those who seek to remake America and I’m here to tell you tonight let’s continue to be inconvenient,” she said.
Earlier in the day, Ingraham was among thousands gathered on Capitol Hill to protest Democratic health care proposals. She mocked U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for saying she didn’t see the crowds.
“Apparently there was a meeting she had to preside over with the manufacturer of Botox cosmetics,” Ingraham said.
The event appeared more crowded and energized than last year, when it was held less than a month before Barack Obama took the White House. This time around, Republicans said they were mobilized by a growing concern over the direction of the country and energized by Tuesday’s gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia.
“You can feel it everywhere you go,” said Florida House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala. “When Republicans gather, there’s a sense of urgency.”
Attendees dismissed the idea that the battle between Crist and Rubio would divide the party. State Sen. Steve Oelrich, a Cross Creek Republican and Rubio supporter, said it was healthy to have a contested primary.
“Politics is a competitive sport,” he said.
Fully embracing that idea, Rubio attacked Crist for positions such as his support of the stimulus in comments to reporters before the event. He continued along the same lines in his speech.
“We know that government spending does not stimulate our economy, especially money that is borrowed and printed,” he said.
Crist questioned what Rubio would have done about the stimulus if he had been governor.
“Wouldn’t he have taken it to help the people of Florida?” he said. “Every Republican governor in America did … It saved 20,000 teachers their jobs.”
Rubio crushes Crist in Palm Beach straw poll
October 16, 2009 at 1:18 pm | Posted in 1 | Leave a comment
Former House speaker Marco Rubio is the only major Republican challenger to Gov. Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate seat.
As expected, Marco Rubio has won another county Republican Party straw poll by a huge margin over Gov. Charlie Crist—this one in Palm Beach County by 90-17 — leaving Republicans and others to continue to debate over whether such votes matter.
Rubio has already won straw polls of county Republican parties in Bay, Gilchrist, Hernando, Highlands, Jefferson, Lee and Pasco counties, many by lopsided margins — 75-1 in Highlands, for example.
The vote tonight was different, however. The earlier ones were all in rural or suburban counties. Palm Beach is the first big urban county in which the Republican Party organization has held such a vote. Large, urban counties should be Crist’s strong points.
But Crist will face similar votes soon in other big counties, including Broward and his home county of Pinellas.
Crist had a particular problem in Palm Beach County. In July, he appointed a Democrat, Priscilla Taylor, to fill a vacancy on the board of county commissioners. Local Republicans were angry even though Taylor, who is black, replaced another black Democrat representing the largely black district. Palm Beach county GOP Chairman Sid Dinerstein attributed the vote in part to that appointment.
But Republicans are debating whether such votes reflect only the opinions of the more conservative, activist base of the party—the members of local GOP organizations—or of mainstream Republicans.
Palm Beach party Vice Chairman Beth Kigel, who is also chairman of Crist’s campaign in the county, said the vote doesn’t represent the view of mainstream GOP voters there.
“We believe Gov. Crist resonates with the mainstream voters in Palm Beach County,” she said. “There over more than 240,000 of them, and their voice will be heard” on primary election day in 2010.
Kigel noted that Crist won the county by 2-1 in his 2006 primary for governor, even though most of the party structure backed his opponent, Tom Gallagher.
In the Palm Beach County vote, Bob Smith, who’s also filed as a Senate candidate, got 11 votes and Marion Thorpe got 4.
Rove for Rubio
October 5, 2009 at 10:03 pm | Posted in 1 | Leave a commentROVE FOR RUBIO
Posted: Monday, October 05, 2009 1:40 PM by Chuck Todd
From NBC’s Chuck Todd
 |
Over the past few weeks, Florida GOP Gov. Charlie Crist has found himself being put on the defensive more and more in the primary thanks to the challenge by ex-state House Speaker Marco Rubio. While Crist has financially overwhelmed Rubio to date, there are many Republicans – particularly those in Flordia that are close to former GOP Gov. Jeb Bush — who have publicly become more comfortable airing their skepticism about Crist in public. One of those Republicans with close ties to the Bush family, Karl Rove, has signaled his preference with his wallet. Rove confirms to NBC News that he has contributed a $1000 to Rubio’s campaign, the donation will be made public when Rubio files his next FEC report (due Oct. 15).
This comes on the heels of Jeb Bush’s public signal that he plans to stay neutral in the Crist-Rubio primary; Many believe this is Jeb’s way of quietly telling influential Florida Republicans that he’d prefer Rubio but doesn’t want to alienate Crist since he’s still the heavy favorite in the primary. For Rubio, he needs to show some viability and that begins with his next fundraising report. But the most important fundraising report might actually be by the end of the year when you’ll truly be able to see how Rubio’s been able to use the Jeb neutrality (support?) to his advantage. Remember, Jeb is to Florida Republicans what Reagan is to the party nationally, he’s held in THAT high of regard.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported a Rove donation to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s Texas gubernatorial campaign. Rove has not given Hutchison any money. It was simply an incorrect fact that should not have been included.
Florida and National Conservatives Continue to Back Marco Rubio Over Charlie Crist
September 28, 2009 at 2:35 pm | Posted in 1 | Leave a commentConservative columnist George Will thinks that conservative Republican former state House Speaker Marco Rubio will pull off an upset and defeat Charlie Crist in the 2010 GOP Senate primary:
In January 2011, one Floridian will leave for the U.S. Senate. He is unlikely to be a former governor at odds with his party’s nominating electorate, or the probable Democratic nominee, Kendrick Meek, a hyper-liberal congressman. Rubio intends to prove that “in the most important swing state, you can run successfully as a principled conservative.” He probably will.
If the straw polls taken around the state by Republican County Committees are any indication, Rubio will indeed defeat Crist. In fact, since my last round-up of FL-GOP straw polls, which included the following rundown:
Pasco County: Rubio wins, 73-9
Lee County: Rubio wins, “7-to-1 margin” [60-9]
Highlands County: Rubio wins, 75-1
Bay County: Rubio wins, 23-2
Volusia County: GOP Committee censures Crist
Palm Beach County: GOP Committee almost censures Crist as motion fails on a 65-65 tie, still a stinging rebuke
Broward County: GOP Committee attempts a straw poll, blocked only by Crist acolyte eager to avoid embarrassment for Crist
we can add Florida’s Hernando County GOP Committee to the list. Fernando County is a “poor (median income- $32,572), very white rural area north of Tampa” whose County GOP just backed Rubio in a straw poll over Crist by a vote of 46-0. Yup, 46-0. To that, we can also add:
Marion County: Rubio 40, Crist 8
Gilchrist County: Rubio 11, Crist 1
GOP Women’s Club of Duval Federated: Rubio 65, Crist 4
Northwest Orange GOP Women Federated: Rubio 49, Crist 3
Jefferson County GOP: Rubio 30, Crist 6
Florida Federation of College Republicans: Rubio 19, Crist 6
If you add up the eleven straw polls conducted, the total is Rubio 491, Crist 49. In other words, among recorded Republican activists in Florida, Rubio is crushing Crist by just over a 10-to-1 margin. But Crist has the support of the Republican “establishment.” To which Rubio says:
“If you are unhappy with the Republican establishment, then let’s get a new establishment.”
Rubio may be well on his way to accomplishing just that in the FL-GOP.
Straw polls show GOP base not with Crist
September 20, 2009 at 11:55 pm | Posted in 1 | Leave a commentStraw polls show GOP base not with Crist
Former House speaker Marco Rubio, left, is the only major Republican challenger to Gov. Charlie Crist for the U.S. Senate seat.
By WILLIAM MARCH
wmarch@tampatrib.com
Tuck is party chairman in rural, conservative Highlands County. In July, his party executive committee held a straw vote between Crist and his primary opponent, Marco Rubio.
Rubio won 75-1.
“I’m not saying (Crist) won’t win the primary, but it won’t be the cakewalk a lot of people say,” Tuck said. “He is not the conservative Republican he needs to be to win this race.”
Across Florida, mainly in conservative, rural areas but also some urban areas where Crist is stronger, Republican Party activists are voicing similar feelings.
Rubio has won party executive committee straw polls in seven counties, including Hernando County on Thursday night, plus a handful of Republican clubs.
State and national conservative activists and bloggers are voicing dissatisfaction with Crist for issues from backing President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan to picking Democrats for appointments.
Are these just noisy activists who don’t represent the broad mass of Republican voters?
Or could the governor face a significant challenge from within his own party as he seeks to move into the Senate?
In polls and fundraising, he is miles ahead of Rubio. A state Republican Party poll last week gave Crist a 67 percent job approval among Republican voters, party officials said.
Party activists – the kind voting for Rubio in the straw polls – “are a different group of people, more ideologically oriented, and they don’t always reflect the mainstream of the party,” said Darryl Paulson, a retired University of South Florida political scientist and a Republican who studies party history.
Nevertheless, Paulson noted, Crist has endured a string of bad news recently, culminating last week with the Hernando vote, a Rubio endorsement by U.S. Rep. Ginnie Brown-Waite of Brooksville, and attacks on Crist for past association with the controversial community organizing group ACORN.
“I’d be getting a little nervous if I was Charlie Crist,” said Paulson, who backed Crist in 2006 in his primary against Tom Gallagher.
Crist, Paulson said, “is extraordinarily popular, but not with the base of his party – with independents and moderate Republicans and Democrats. They either don’t vote in the primary or can’t.”
Potential bad news
Crist could see more bad news.
•Pinellas County Republicans will hold a straw poll, likely in December. Coming in Crist’s home county, it will have huge symbolic significance.
•In Volusia County, the party executive committee voted last month to censure Crist for choosing Democrats for appointive offices and also for supporting the president’s stimulus program.
•A censure move in Palm Beach County failed in a tie; party leaders staved it off by promising a straw vote in October.
•In Broward County, party leaders held off a straw vote by promising personal appearances by Crist and Rubio.
Broward Chairman Chip Lamarca said he thinks Crist would win a straw vote in his county, but Palm Beach Chairman Sid Dinerstein expects Rubio to win his easily.
Besides Hernando, Rubio has won straw polls in Bay, Jefferson, Gilchrist, Highlands, Lee and Pasco counties. The Hernando vote was 46-0.
Pasco’s 73-9 vote in June was a painful reversal – next door to Crist’s home county, it and Broward broke party rules to endorse Crist in his 2006 primary for governor against Gallagher. Party organizations normally stay neutral in primaries.
The organizations holding these votes are county Republican executive committees, made up of representatives from each precinct.
The largest, such as Hillsborough’s, may have 400 or more members who swear party loyalty oaths, attend monthly meetings and volunteer.
Importance downplayed
State Sen. Mike Fasano of New Port Richey, a Crist backer, downplayed their importance to Crist.
“I haven’t been to a Republican executive committee meeting in years, and many other elected Republicans in Pasco haven’t either,” he said. “The silent majority doesn’t go to party meetings or read blogs.”
State Party Chairman Jim Greer, a Crist ally, said regardless of the straw votes, polls such as last week’s consistently show Crist with strong support among likely GOP voters.
Asked to explain conservative dissatisfaction with Crist, he said, “There is a segment of the party that believes that there should be no flexibility whatsoever in their governing principles and that have very little taste for any bipartisanship.”
Paulson and GOP insiders noted that Crist has never depended heavily on the party structure.
Nonetheless, the governor has been moving right to counter the bad news.
He canceled his plans for a summit on climate change and dropped his opposition to Gulf oil drilling.
Greer, who is closely associated with Crist, has engaged in strident rhetoric attacking Obama on health insurance reform and other issues.
Rubio disagrees about the importance of the party activists.
“These are highly involved Republicans, who are definitely voting and will influence others on how to vote,” he said. “They will definitely work on campaigns.
“At a minimum, it shows that among those Republicans highly informed and highly active, we have significant support,” he said.
In a low-turnout election such as next year’s non-presidential year primary, Rubio said, those conservatives will matter.
His calculation: About a quarter of Florida’s 4 million Republicans will go to the polls on primary day, so 600,000 votes could win the Senate nomination.
“No one in the world can convince me that there aren’t 600,000 or 700,000 conservative Republicans in Florida,” he recently said in a speech in Hillsborough County. “No one in the world can convince me it costs $15 million to reach them.”
Rubio seeks support at town hall
September 6, 2009 at 3:24 pm | Posted in 1 | Leave a commentRubio seeks support at town hall
| By Bill Cotterell |
Marco Rubio needs 600,000 Republican voters, and he thinks he can find a lot of them at the tea-party tax protests and raucous town-hall meetings on national health care.
For an under-funded underdog, running for the U.S. Senate against a popular governor with a track record of three easy statewide wins, Rubio’s task is daunting. But experienced political observers see his challenge to Gov. Charlie Crist as the most serious fight either party has had in 40 years — since Gov. Claude Kirk was forced into a runoff and ultimately defeated in 1970.
“I’m running to do something, not to be something,” Rubio told about 100 members of Capital Conservatives, a non-partisan Tallahassee group. “There are easier things for me to run for — there are easier things to do in life than run against the sitting governor of your state and your own party.”
The party wasted no time anointing Crist as its best chance of keeping retiring U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez’s seat in the red column. Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer, whom Crist put in that job, immediately endorsed him, and the Republican National Senate Campaign Committee followed suit minutes after Crist formally announced his candidacy in May.
But Rubio, who announced his candidacy on YouTube and boasts relatively second-tier endorsements like those of South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint and the son of ex-Gov. Jeb Bush, has travelled the state constantly to meet with grassroots conservatives who are frankly unhappy with Crist’s embrace of President Obama’s fiscal stimulus package and appointment of his former top aide, George LeMieux, to fill Martinez’s seat.
“My campaign strategy is not very complicated. There are 4 million Republicans, about 25-28 percent will vote, so that means if I can find 600,000 people to vote for me in the Republican primary, I’ll be the nominee,” Rubio explained. “That’s the goal — identify and turn out 600,000 voters in the primary.”
‘More of a race’
Modern political history bears him out. Martinez won an eight-candidate primary with 522,000 votes in 2004, but that was a presidential year with higher turnout. And the last man to top 600,000 in an off-year GOP primary was Charlie Crist, in 2006.
But Rubio said Florida’s political winds have shifted in the Obama era.
“This has been a real shock but a great awakening,” he said. “People say, ‘You’re not going to win with just tea-party people and town-hall people, there’s not enough of them.’ I think they’re wrong.”
He scored lopsided victories in straw polls by GOP committees in Pasco, Lee, Highlands, Bay and Duval Counties. The Volusia County Republican committee voted to censure Crist Aug. 3 while a censure vote in Palm Beach County failed in a 65-65 vote — as committee member Steven Ledewitz called Crist “Arlen Specter with a suntan.”
But Crist has some numbers on his side that count more. He raised $4.3 million in less than two months after announcing and polls have consistently shown him trouncing Rubio, who raised only $340,000.
Brad Coker, state director of the Mason Dixon Poll, said that may be a factor of name identification. Among voters who recognized both men’s names, the GOP vote was a virtual tie in Coker’s latest poll.
“In state after state, we’ve seen that the sort of genial candidate with cross-party appeal can raise a lot of money but then get beaten by the more conservative candidate in a Republican primary,” said Coker. “I think Crist is joined at the hip a little too much with Obama, in the minds of too many Republicans.”
Coker said straw ballots and censure votes, along with the outpouring of public anger at health care town-hall meetings and the tea-party protests, are “strong signs of an undercurrent out there, but how strong it is and whether it can sustain itself until next Aug. 24 will determine whether Rubio can make a run of it.”
Republican political consultant Roger Austin of Gainesville said “this thing is definitely do-able for Marco” if he can raise money for TV ads and get Crist into some debates. Rubio has called for 10 meetings with Crist, who has brushed him off.
“This is going to be a lot more of a race than many people think,” said Austin. “The Democrats have definitely tried to marginalize the tea-party people and the town-hall meetings, but I don’t know to what extent the Republican leadership has done so. Appealing to them is a smart move on his (Rubio’s) part.”
‘Real people’
In his standard stump speech, Rubio says he’s running on principle. He doesn’t accuse Crist of compromising or waffling, but it’s impossible not to know whom he’s talking about when he says “Republicans have had too many people run like Ronald Reagan and govern like Jimmy Carter.”
Rubio, 38, is a West Miami attorney who was elected to the House in 2000 and became the first Hispanic speaker 2007-08. His parents fled Castro’s Cuba, and Rubio opens many speeches by stressing that he grew up knowing what it means “when government picks the winners and losers” in an economy.
“I’m willing to lose elections over my principles,” he says. Although casino gambling polls about 68 percent in his district, Rubio said, he is adamantly against it — just as he opposes abortion, “even if 100 percent of my constituents were for it.”
Rubio said his party’s leaders are badly under estimating the tea party protestors and town hall meeting critics. He sees them as his base.
“They don’t think that these are real people,” he said of Greer, Crist and the congressional leadership. “They’re so insulated. Never has our political class been more insulated from the real lives of real people.”
Marco Rubio Criticizes Governor
September 3, 2009 at 7:44 am | Posted in 1 | Leave a comment
Marco Rubio Criticizes Governor
Ex-speaker of Florida House addresses Lakeland Republicans.
Ledger POLITICAL EDITOR
Last Modified: Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 10:00 p.m.
LAKELAND | If Marco Rubio’s appearance in Lakeland on Wednesday is any indication of his support in his campaign for the U.S. Senate then Gov. Charlie Crist had better take notice.
Rubio, the former speaker of the Florida House who is challenging Crist for the Republican nomination, addressed a Lakeland Republican Club luncheon at Cleveland Heights Golf Course. The crowd that was expected to be about 160 grew to a little more than 190 and gave him three standing ovations.
His main message, to the audience and during an interview with The Ledger, was that Republicans should elect members of Congress who will stand up uncompromisingly to the “radical” economic policies of the administration of President Barack Obama. He implied that Crist wouldn’t do that.
Rubio, 38, said the state and national Republican hierarchy’s endorsement of Crist means little in the primary race.
“That has no negative impact. I am not new to politics,” he said. “We are showing the voters the choice they have.”
“Republicans are looking for someone to stand up to the most radical voice in Washington in American history, someone who is credible to Republican principles, and someone who understands that the Republicans of Florida are the natural home of alternative policies that are closer to what the country wants,” he said in his Ledger interview.
Rubio said he was disappointed in Crist’s choice of George Lemieux, the governor’s former chief of staff, to fill out the unexpired term of U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez. He questioned whether “the governor’s best friend” was the best choice out of 4 million Florida Republicans.
He said he wants a debate with Crist, but said a year before the Republican primary, the Crist campaign is saying the governor doesn’t have the time for a debate.
Rubio cited Crist’s support for Obama’s stimulus package, his support for ”cap-and-trade” energy policy and his appointment to the Florida Supreme Court of James E.C. Perry, who Rubio called a radical. He said those stands show Crist doesn’t deserve Republican votes.
He also criticized Crist for what he said was a violation of his no-tax pledge by supporting large fee increases including the new, larger driver license fee.
“I think there has never been a bigger disconnect between the rank-and-file Republicans and the party leaders at the state and national level,” Rubio said.
He referred to radical policies of the Democratic Congress and administration, but explained to the audience that he was speaking of the economy.
“Let me be clear, this is not going to become Cuba or Angola. The American people will never allow that, but what makes America unique among nations is being lost,” he said.
And Republicans are to blame as well as Democrats, he said.
“Republicans in Washington are guilty. By 2001 Republicans were in control, but no tax reform, no fair tax. I say to them, you ran as Ronald Reagan and you governed as Lyndon Johnson,” he said to claps of approval from the audience.
He took issue with Crist’s support of the Obama stimulus plan and the governor’s statement that the stimulus money is Floridian’s tax money coming back home.
“I’ve got news for you,” Rubio said. “That’s not our tax money; they spent that 10 years ago.
“That’s Chinese money,” he said referring to loans from Chinese banks to the U.S. government. “More importantly that’s my 9-year-old daughter’s money.”
The program has gone much farther than most Americans had expected, he said.
“America accepted government spending because it was scared. It now has become a radical attempt to change the economy. Our (Republicans) only chance of success is to have alternatives not just to be the opposition,” he said.
One of those important alternatives, he said, is the fair or flat tax on income.
Rubio told his audience that health care reform may come in increments and that Republicans cannot take pride that they may stop half of the program this year.
“If they just set up the architecture this year, they will then come back each time until they achieve what I believe is their ultimate goal, a single-payer health insurance system,” he said.
Backers of health care reforms in the Senate Finance Committee have said that they do not intend to create a single-payer system, but to protect choices within the reform bill.
In his interview with The Ledger, Rubio said some straw polls of county Republican executive committees, which are being pushed by conservative organizations, have shown him winning handily over Crist.
He said he hopes to raise funds and campaign in many of the traditional areas and also make use of You Tube and Twitter to get his message across to younger voters.
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