FLORIDA POLITICS
Since 2002, daily Florida political news and commentary

 

UPDATE: Every morning we review and individually digest Florida political news articles, editorials and punditry. Our sister site, FLA Politics was selected by Campaigns & Elections as one of only ten state blogs in the nation
"every political insider should be reading right now."

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Welcome To Florida Politics

Thanks for visiting. On a semi-daily basis we scan Florida's major daily newspapers for significant Florida political news and punditry. We also review the editorial pages and political columnists/pundits for Florida political commentary. The papers we review include: the Miami Herald, Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Naples News, Sarasota Herald Tribune, St Pete Times, Tampa Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, Tallahassee Democrat, and, occasionally, the Florida Times Union; we also review the political news blogs associated with these newspapers.

For each story, column, article or editorial we deem significant, we post at least the headline and link to the piece; the linked headline always appears in quotes. We quote the headline for two reasons: first, to allow researchers looking for the cited piece to find it (if the link has expired) by searching for the original title/headline via a commercial research service. Second, quotation of the original headline permits readers to appreciate the spin from the original piece, as opposed to our spin.

Not that we don't provide spin; we do, and plenty of it. Our perspective appears in post headlines, the subtitles within the post (in bold), and the excerpts from the linked stories we select to quote; we also occasionally provide other links and commentary about certain stories. While our bias should be immediately apparent to any reader, we nevertheless attempt to link to every article, column or editorial about Florida politics in every major online Florida newspaper.

 

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The Blog for Thursday, January 06, 2005

Political Payback

    How nice of "Jeb!" to reward his political friends:
    Republican Bev Kilmer, who gave up a safe legislative seat for a long-shot congressional race that helped President Bush win Florida's key electoral votes, has landed a $42,000-a-year policy-making job with the Department of Education.
    "Kilmer takes position at DOE". And what did Bev do for "Jeb!"?
    Kilmer was elected to the Florida House from Gadsden County in 1998, representing a conservative Panhandle district that was heavily Democratic. She could have run for a fourth term last year but opted to challenge U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Monticello, in a long-shot bid for Congress.

    Boyd won with about 62 percent of the vote, but Kilmer's heated and well-financed campaign - which featured fund-raising appearances by House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois and first lady Laura Bush - increased voter turnout in the 2nd Congressional District by about 99,000 over the 2000 election. Although she had little chance of unseating the noncontroversial incumbent, Kilmer carried the GOP strongholds of Walton and Okaloosa counties and split Bay County with Boyd, who kept his distance from the national Democratic ticket.

    The combination of energized Republican turnout for Kilmer and conservative Democratic support for Boyd was a political windfall for Bush, who carried Florida by about 381,000 votes.
    Hence the reward.

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