Bill Nelson will run for re-election:
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, long rumored to be considering a run for governor of Florida when Gov. Jeb Bush steps down next year, said Wednesday he will not, and instead will seek re-election to the Senate in 2006.In other Florida news, it looks like the Kennedy's are running all over the country. The Miami New Times has the scoop.
"I love the Senate. I have hit my stride," Nelson, a Democrat, said in a meeting with reporters Wednesday evening. "I love the senators; I love having the privilege of representing the people of Florida in the Senate.
"I'm running for re-election, and the good Lord willing and the people willing, I'm going to continue to represent Florida."[...]
Nelson, Florida's senior elected Democrat, also said the state's delegation to the Democratic National Committee acted too hastily in endorsing former presidential candidate Howard Dean as the party's national chairman.
Dean, who says he represents the liberal wing of the party, is fighting several other candidates for the job.
Democratic leaders from several other states are waiting to make their decision closer to the official Feb. 12 vote, and Florida's should have, too, Nelson said.
"I think it was ill-advised for them to step out this early ... because it takes away their leverage" for demanding organizational help from national Democrats, Nelson said.
My whole life I was introduced as someone else," Anthony Kennedy Shriver quipped to the well-heeled crowd before him at a Toronto benefit dinner this past fall for his Best Buddies foundation. "I grew up the nephew of President Kennedy. Then I was the nephew of Senator Kennedy. Then I was the son of Sargent Shriver," he continued wryly. "Now I'm the brother-in-law of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, I have good news for you all: I continue to be a Democrat. I'm not a Republican!"In Kentucky news, there will be a fight in the courtrooms over the state budget.
As comforting as that declaration might be to long-time admirers of the Kennedy clan, it's even more reassuring to Democratic Party officials. Shriver, who has called Miami Beach home since 1992, is increasingly looking like the Democrats' best chance for taking Florida's gubernatorial seat from the term-limited Jeb Bush in 2006. And though that election might still be nearly two years away, party insiders, desperate for some new blood and fresh faces worthy of the national stage, are already trying to persuade Shriver to commit to running.
It's not hard to see the 39-year-old Shriver's appeal. He has his family's trademark cheekbones, white picket-fence teeth, and tall, commanding presence. Yet his life also maintains a distinctly Miami hue, a South Beach recasting of Camelot. Shriver's Cuba-born wife, former ballerina Alina Mojica, may not possess a Hyannis Port pedigree, but for Democrats eager to woo South Florida's crucial Cuban-exile voters -- not to mention the rest of the state's Hispanics -- she's the stuff of crossover dreams.[...]
Are you going to run for governor?
Shriver's eyes light up merrily. "Arnold's doing all the work right now," he shoots back with a hearty laugh. But instead of moving on, he launches into an impassioned soliloquy on holding public office. At times it sounds as if he's thinking aloud.
"I don't want to rule out anything," Shriver insists. "It's obviously a great opportunity to serve in a really important job. At some point in my life, if I felt that being in that position would be extremely effective and helpful to people in this state, I would consider it," he stresses, going on at tortured length about the heavy moral responsibilities such a move would entail. "When you talk to Arnold [Schwarzenegger] about why he ran, he really felt that at that point in California, it would make an enormous difference if he was the guy who took that job."
A simple No, I'm not running would have sufficed nicely. But Shriver is just getting started. There's more, much more, on the conflicts he'd feel over leaving Best Buddies under someone else's stewardship, as well as the vicious personal attacks he observed on both Schwarzenegger and his sister Maria as she hit the hustings with her husband. Yet despite all those impediments, he circles back to the new voices he feels the Democratic Party urgently needs, leadership that must come from younger figures who haven't spent their entire careers shuffling between government agencies and the campaign trail.
It's precisely this sort of Hamlet-esque anguished ambivalence that has Democratic operatives both excited and exasperated, because this isn't the first time Shriver has publicly flirted with a bid for office. In 1997 he weighed a run for Miami Beach mayor, an opportunity he considered again in 2001 at the behest of figures close to then-departing Beach Mayor Neisen Kasdin.[...]
Shriver may want to expand his kitchen cabinet beyond Ratner. This time the stakes are much higher than merely Miami Beach, and it's not only local Democrats who are looking for a savior. Florida remains a swing state, and if the history of George W. Bush is any guide, a linchpin for the presidential battle of 2008. To that end, its gubernatorial field is already crowded with no less than five contenders who've begun amassing funds and securing backers: Betty Castor, who narrowly lost her 2004 U.S. Senate race to Mel Martinez; Lawton "Bud" Chiles III, son of the late governor; Tampa Rep. Jim Davis; Florida Democratic Party chairman Scott Maddox; and Gainesville State Rep. Rod Smith.[...]
"The Kennedy name doesn't have quite the cachet it used to," Duffy argues. "Look at 2002 when Kathleen Kennedy Townsend [Bobby Kennedy's daughter] -- who was lieutenant governor -- got beat in the Maryland gubernatorial race and handed the Republicans the governorship for the first time there in almost three decades. Also in that cycle, Mark Shriver [Anthony's older brother] ran for Congress and got beat in the primary."[...]
Shriver's extended family, at least, is already on board. "I'm pumping up a Shriver card," Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy gushes to Kulchur. "I started at the state level, but he has the experience and the base of political support to jump in at the national level. People are just drawn to him."[...]
Franklin County Circuit Judge Roger Crittenden has ruled that both sides have ignored or exceded their constitutional responsibilities - Fletcher for spending money without a budget and the legislature for failing to perform its one constitutional task.
Crittenden, though, gave everyone what amounts to a free pass until the end of the current fiscal year on June 30. After that time, if there is no enacted budget or some sort of alternative spending plan, Crittenden said the state can spend money only on essential services, though he declined to define those.
Besides Fletcher, Attorney General Greg Stumbo, Treasurer Jonathan Miller, legislators and others have all filed briefs in the case.
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