Primary Day - Florida Attorney General

Update: Right now it seems Bondi has won the Republican nomination. She has 38 percent of the vote to Kottkamp's 33. Kottkamp has conceded. A few months ago this seemed a slamdunk for the Lt. Gov, but he never was able to take advantage of the name recognition gained from his office. In the past few weeks, Bondi has surged.

Update: Gelber is outstripping Aronberg about 60-40 right now. I don't know if that can be turned around.

For Republicans, this seems to be between Bondi (now at 39) and Kottkamp (around 34 percent.)

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State Sens. Dan Gelber and Dave Aronberg duke it out on the Democratic side.

For the Republicans, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, former state prosecutor and former HCA secretary Holly Benson fight for the nod.

Oil Driving the Races

Some infighting among the Democrats running for Attorney General shows how much the oil spill in the Gulf will drive every Cabinet race in Florida this year. And it renews a bit of my faith in AG hopeful Dave Aronberg, even if it raises the prospect of the primary getting ugly. Indeed, the episode shows exactly why good primary races can make for better general election candidates regardless who wins.

The matter began earlier this month when it was revealed Attorney General candidate Dan Gelber's law firm took on BP as a client. Gelber told the Daily Business Review in mid-June that any connection between Akerman Senterfitt and BP was a non-issue in the campaign, but by the end of the month he had resigned from the firm over the whole affair.

The timing of the resignation, though, appears tricky. Aronberg on June 28 called for Gelber to resign from the firm. Then Gelber said he already had, and had done it because the firm took BP as a client, but just forget to tell everybody about that. But Aronberg continued to hammer Gelber, noting the North Miami Democrat wasn't exactly high-tailing it out of the office. "The Republican attack machine would have a field day with this," Aronberg notes. I tend to agree.

So finally the AG race gets interesting.

More than a month ago I was expressing some disappointment in Aronberg for not making oil a bigger issue in the campaign this year. As I said then, it is quite possible the next AG will sit on a Cabinet with the power to allow drilling in state waters, 3 to 10 miles from shore, and Gelber at that time was making far more noise about the matter. Since that time, Aronberg has joined Gelber is calling for a special session bannning such drilling, but was woefully late to the party. Now, he is here and fighting hard.

Of course, I am pretty sure Aronberg is wrong about there being any chance Gelber could be disqualified from representing the state as AG because of a connection to Akerman. Even if Gelber could not represent the case in person, he could put one of many attorneys working within the Attorney General's Office on it.

But raising this issue is good for Aronberg, and it is good for Gelber. Already, Aronberg has applied pressure that makes Gelber a better candidate by forcing the state Senator to disassociate himself from BP and Akerman in any way. And it also raises the profile of the race substantially. While nobody in this race is exactly a household name in Florida, Republican Jeff Kottkamp has a higher profile as Lt. Governor than either Gelber has as a state Senator or Aronberg does as a state Representative. And since Aronberg is best known in Southwest Florida, where Kottkamp also lives, upping the profile of the Democrats in this race is vitally important for him.

I think oil will be the most important factor in this race come fall. After all, Kottmamp's great contribution to the oil effort has been to organize a prayer. The Democrats, meanwhile, are engaged in a fiesty debate over who is best prepared to hold BP to task for threatening our coastline with the worth environmental screw-up in American history. You tell me who sounds more serious about serving the public? The AG office serves as the ultimate prosecutor working on behalf of the state, and holding companies accountable who threaten the public welfare is what its lead official should care about more than prayer circles.

Oil is already hitting Florida shores. Once our sands are infected with sludge, we should expect the mudslinging to have more sticking power.

Make Oil the Issue

It is hard to believe how close Florida was to approving near-shore drilling before the BP disaster in the Gulf. Barely more than a year ago, the House passed a measure that would have allowed the Cabinet to lease out areas to drill as close as three miles from the beach. Lawmakers as recently as March seemed poised to pass such a measure next year.

So in the wake of the spill, it was no surprise to me when Scott Maddox, the lead Dem in the Agriculture Commissioner race, began challenging Republican Adam Putnam to sign a pledge not to allow drilling in state waters. At this point, this is pretty much the entire Maddox platform. That makes sense. This is undoubtedly the top issue on the mind of every Florida voter right now, and candidates for this less-than-sexy job have a lot of trouble getting press. I don't know how well this is polling because nobody polls the agriculture race five months out, but it has certainly changed the conversation.

So I was disappointed reading the site for Dave Aronberg, one of the Dems seeking the nod for Attorney General. There is no mention of his stance on drilling on the page, other than links to stories demanding BP pay more to clean the mess and get Florida a larger share. All that is fine, but a real concern for voters when they choose a new Attorney General should be how they might vote on the Cabinet regarding drilling off our beaches. Aronberg's positions appear no different than Jeff Kottkamp, the likely GOP nominee, which is that they don't state a firm position at all.

In contrast, Democrat Den Gelber is taking an aggressive stance when it comes to drilling, challenging legislative leaders to ban it outright through a statewide referendum. But he acknowledged that eventually, the Legislature will allow drilling and toss this to the Cabinet From his blog:

The legislature should be involved, but it is too political, too partisan, too cumbersome and too prone to regional favoritism to lead.

This should be a winning issue for Democrats. None of the significant Republicans running for statewide office have come out in favor of a drilling ban. To be fair, Bill McCollum and Jeff Atwater have both fought offshore drilling here for years, so this won't be as stronge a wedge in the Governor's race, though there are other issues, and the Chief Financial Officer race, which despite behind the only Cabinet post held by Dems now seems all but lost this year.

But in the AG race, where Kottkamp has kept a disturbing distance from statements on near-shore drilling, I don't know why every Dem hasn't made this a central issue to the campaign. And that makes me worry about Aronberg's strength as a candidate compared to Gelber.

The primary is still a couple months away, and things could change. I have always liked Dave Aronberg and I don't want to write him off yet. But if he continues to stay mum on how he would handle oil drilling as a member of the Cabinet, then my decision who to vote for in August gets a lot easier.