State Sen. President Tom Lee, R-Brandon, has hired a former executive director of the state GOP to lead his campaign for chief financial officer. Stephen Shiver, who until a week ago worked at the lobbying firm Tew Cardenas , will be campaign manager. He used to work for former state House Speaker Tom Feeney and for former Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan.

Shiver joins another former state Republican party executive director, David Johnson, who is general consultant to Lee's CFO campaign. Adam Goodman of Tampa will be Lee's media consultant.

Mississippi, where veteran lobbyist Haley Barbour is governor, does a better job regulating lobbyists than Florida, says a report compiled by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative research group.

Georgia does better too. So does South Carolina. While Florida enjoys a national reputation for open government, its regulation of lobbyists is tied with Louisiana, a state with a notoriously corrupt political past.

Florida's failing grade: 55 out of a possible 100. No state scored higher than 80, a score achieved by Washington. Scores below 60 are considered failing. Mississippi, 14th, passed with a score of 65, while Georgia, 18th, earned a 63.

"We just want to say thank you for stopping the madness in 2000. We love you for that," Kay Durden said from the back of a crowd of 60 at the Duval County Republican Party headquarters.

Commissioner McCarty never should have turned to developers to help her out of legal troubles caused by bad judgment and ambition. After the 2000 election, she agreed to head a committee that aimed to oust three Florida Supreme Court justices who issued rulings that Republicans didn't like. When that committee violated election law, Commissioner McCarty spent $50,000 on attorneys to defend herself. Rather than pay her bill, she passed it on to those who appear before her. Commissioner McCarty says she personally solicited no contributions — the state ethics probe agreed — but her legal defense woes were publicized on a Republican Party Web site. Did she seek the party's help? The investigator doesn't answer that question. Although forewarned about the $100 limit by her attorney, Commissioner McCarty ignored it.

Jack Abramoff, a key figure in investigations involving House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on fraud charges arising from a deal to buy casino boats.

collected more than $100,000 for President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign and raised thousands of dollars for DeLay and other Republican members of Congress. He also was friends with former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, now a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia.

Before making headlines as Katherine Harris' Senate campaign consultant, Adam Goodman earned some unwanted headlines for his behind-the-scenes work for then-Secretary of State Harris during the Florida recount.

Goodman and fellow Republican strategist J.M. ""Mac'' Stipanovich were supposedly volunteers helping Harris out with communications during that frenzied period. But public records later revealed that Goodman had tried unsuccessfully to get paid. Harris wanted to pay him $12,000 from the state treasury rather than from her campaign account, but ultimately, the idea died.

A federal audit to be released today raps Florida's Medicaid program for paying out an estimated $11.6 million for medical treatments that could not have been supplied because the beneficiaries were dead at the time.

Graham cited four ingredients of a Democratic comeback in Florida - two that the party can influence to some extent, and two that will take a little luck. Luck has not been a plentiful commodity for Democrats since Graham went to Washington in 1986, but this guy is a permanent, practical optimist.

Gallagher, who is making his third attempt at the governor's office, told a crowd of about 60 people at The Flagler Grill that there are serious differences between he and Crist.

He pointed out he is the only non-attorney among the five Democrats and Republicans considered strong candidates for governor.

Gallagher also criticized Crist's reaction to a recent Supreme Court decision that broadly defined eminent domain power for local governments.

Crist opined in several Florida newspapers that state laws already protect landowners and said local governments may only force the sale of blighted property that is needed to serve a public purpose.

Charlie Crist announced his official irritation with gasoline prices in April 2004, when drivers were paying about $1.80 a gallon. The next month, he began issuing subpoenas to oil company executives. Two months ago, with motorists paying about $2.25 a gallon, Florida's attorney general delivered the news that his investigation had found no evidence of oil price manipulation. The average price statewide is now about $2.35 per gallon.

We bring this up to quiet any enthusiasm Floridians might have now that Mr. Crist has announced his intention to oppose Florida Power & Light's third rate request in less than a year. ...

It's a pattern. Two years ago, consumer groups opposed to the proposed record local phone-rate increase asked Mr. Crist to help them fight it in the Legislature. The attorney general responded that he would "monitor" the bill. Once it had become law, written in a way that made the increase almost impossible to deny, Mr. Crist jumped in. He did not prevent the PSC from approving it, or the Florida Supreme Court from upholding it.

But Mr. Crist wants to ride his record into the Governor's Mansion, so he must appear to be standing up for consumers. The question is why it takes him so long to stand up.

He denies he's even interested, and a long list of political analysts have already written him off with the belief that the appearance of political nepotism would be too unseemly for voters to put the brother of the current president in the Oval Office. But in politics timing is everything, and as the clock advances towards 2008, things are starting to fall into place to give Jeb Bush the momentum he needs to win the White House. And this isn't contingent on Hillary Clinton emerging as the Democrats' nominee--though if she does, the path will be all the smoother for another Bush. ...

With a strong string of electoral victories, why would Republicans now turn their backs on the Bushes? It certainly wouldn't be because of Jeb's record in Florida. He's been steadily amassing an antitax, bedrock conservative record over the past seven years. There's not much there that the party's base is going to hate. Indeed, before he lost in 1994, the scuttlebutt on Jeb was that he was "the conservative Bush."

Political symmetry also favors Jeb Bush. Even if President Bush manages to get some sort of private Social Security account this year, it's now becoming clear that the bulk of the reform is unlikely to come until after 2008. Bush 43 may succeed in establishing the principle of private accounts within the Social Security system, but it will likely be the next president (perhaps Bush 44) who will have the opportunity to steer the bulk of our payroll taxes into such accounts. Voters gave FDR four back-to-back terms. They may now conclude that replacing the New Deal with an Ownership Deal will take sending a Bush to the White House in three or four successive elections.

Remaking New Deal entitlements into assets individual Americans can own may become a powerful political philosophy that nudges into oblivion FDR's already dwindling coalition of union members and entitlement beneficiaries. Jeb Bush's close association to George W. would be an asset if voters embrace the Ownership Society. By 2008 we'll also likely have a national consensus on how well the democratic experiment is working in Iraq. If Americans continue to support spreading democracy as our best defense against international terrorism, Jeb's last name will also be an asset here as well.

Without focusing on the 2000 presidential election that made her famous, U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, Florida's former secretary of state, declared she wants to replace U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson.

Harris declared her candidacy in early June, but her higher-profile campaign kickoff Tuesday appeared likely to quell efforts by Republican leaders to recruit an alternate to take on incumbent Democratic Sen. Nelson.

"My job is done," said Gov. Jeb Bush, who had unsuccessfully encouraged Republican state House Speaker Allan Bense to run, even after Harris announced her candidacy. "I hope that Congressman Harris runs a strong race and she'll be a good candidate. Bill Nelson is very vulnerable."

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is still talking to prospective Republican candidates, spokesman Brian Nick said, but "the window's closing."

U-S Representative Katherine Harris a "good candidate" for the U-S Senate.

established in 2001 to support Bush's "agenda for America." PFA Voter Fund, which was set up in 2004, raised $38 million in support of Bush's 2004 election bid.

When politicians such as the Bush brothers declaim against the "immoral" means of stem-cell research, they are not pointing to an existing moral dilemma. They are not even pointing to potentially immoral abuses, since frozen embryos are routinely discarded. They are inventing a moral straw man and brandishing it for political gain.

State Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla spent three hours in a Tallahassee courtroom on Monday, continuing to insist he cannot afford to pay up to $17,000 for election law violations that occurred during a 1999 campaign.

The state senator has been tangling with the Florida Elections Commission for more than four years and has been able to whittle down 311 charges to 17 remaining violations. ...

The senator has insisted that he should pay nothing for what he calls ''technical'' violations and that his only source of income is the roughly $30,000 he makes as an elected official.

But during a hearing in January and again on Monday, he was confronted with records of his financial dealings and asked to explain them.

Part of Monday's hearing focused on what Diaz de la Portilla did with the proceeds of a $384,000 mortgage refinancing the Miami Republican and his wife signed on May 5, the next-to-last day of the annual legislative session for his home in Miami.

who was in Washington on Friday, said he is still hoping for a deal that would expand the current moratorium on drilling to cover a 100-mile buffer all the way around Florida.

The operator of a Florida nuclear plant appears to have shipped radioactive waste to ordinary landfills, municipal sewage treatment plants and some unknown locations in the 1970's and early 80's, according to internal documents and government records obtained in lawsuits.

The company has concealed the shipments from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the lawsuits.

Florida Power & Light Co. said that in 1982 it had mistakenly made a shipment to a landfill, but the documents appear to show numerous shipments to multiple locations. In addition, while the company conducted a survey and cleanup in the one known location, it found only one kind of radioactive material, and nuclear experts involved in the lawsuits say there must have been other isotopes for which no tests were conducted. The overall level of contamination is difficult to determine.

A Census Bureau survey of people's reported voting behavior in the 2004 general election found that 65.9 percent of all people 18 and older in the United States said they were registered to vote and that 58.3 percent said they voted in the November election. Of black voters, 64.3 percent were registered and 56.1 actually voted.

The discrepancy was greater in Florida. Only 62.6 percent of Floridians of voting age said they were registered, with 56.1 percent saying they voted. For blacks in Florida, registration dropped to 53.1 percent, with only 44.9 percent voting.

Last year, at a rally for President Bush in her Gulf Coast congressional district, Rep. Harris told the audience that the Bush administration had prevented "more than 100" terrorist attacks against the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. Rep. Harris learned this startling information, she said, from documents that were "classified... obviously not classified to me... but things I can't go into details about." Among those thwarted attacks, according to Rep. Harris, was an attempt to blow up the power grid of Carmel, Ind., an Indianapolis suburb of about 40,000. Carmel's mayor, Rep. Harris explained, had told her about a man "of Middle Eastern heritage" who had been found with explosives.

In fact, there had been no such plot. In fact, a spokesman said the mayor hadn't talked with Rep. Harris. "Maybe I said too much," said the woman who opens her Senate campaign this week.

Now that Florida House Speaker Allan Bense has chosen to stay out of the U.S. Senate race, will Republicans continue to look for others to get in the race over Katherine Harris?

"Absolutely," said Brian Nick, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

But who they turn to next is a mystery. U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Jupiter, continues to be a frequent mention for pollsters and the media. Others that could have been candidates have all declared for other races now. Senate President Tom Lee, R-Brandon, tells Lucy Morgan at the St. Petersburg Times that he's staying in the Chief Financial Officers race (http://www.sptimes.com).

There's a good chance the next candidate that emerges as a White House favorite may be someone that has flown under everyone's radar, one political insider says.

Katherine Harris, the Sarasota congresswoman who wants to be Florida's next Republican senator, blamed her image problems on newspapers last week. Specifically, she said they have doctored her photos to make it look like she was wearing more makeup than she actually does. ...

Now, ignoring the fact that such a move would involve an awful lot of colorization, Harris and her staff have subsequently not been able to cite a single example of an altered photo. ...

She may have valid points that people unfairly hit her for her image (though let's be honest: her critics have a laundry list of other complaints). But this is specifically about Harris making an accusation that would get most any newspaper person fired if proven true. Yet, with thousands of pictures of her that have run in hundreds of newspapers, she can't cite a single one that proves her point.

Apparently, this wasn't the first time Harris made such allegations. In a January interview with The Associated Press, she said: "The jokes about my appearance -- it's the computer-enhanced photos. It was like in a comic strip. They actually had blue eye shadow on front pages of newspapers and I haven't had blue eye shadow since Girl Scouts in seventh grade."