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 Sunday, February 13, 2005

Instant-Runoff Primaries

    Dyckman:
    There comes a time in a political campaign when the candidate realizes that there's no tomorrow. Mel Martinez met that moment by deciding he would rather be a U.S. senator than protect his reputation as a good guy.

    He aired an ad accusing Bill McCollum, his more conservative rival, of co-sponsoring a bill "granting homosexuals special rights." It was a hate-crime bill that also applied to other vulnerable minorities, for which McCollum deserved praise, not blame. Notably, Martinez did not accuse him of "granting blacks special rights," as the demagogues of the 1950s would have.

    Dirt works better than ever these days. The irony is that Martinez probably could have won without disgracing himself.

    But try to imagine Martinez trashing McCollum if, at the same time, he needed to ask McCollum supporters for their second-choice votes.

    Cleaner campaigning is the intangible bonus to the instant-runoff primary that Florida sorely needs to adopt.
    "The benefits of instant-runoff voting".

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