By Times Staff and Wire Reports
Published March 16, 2004
A veteran Tampa Bay area political consultant has been named campaign manager for House Speaker Johnnie Byrd's U.S. Senate race.
Wayne Garcia said Monday he is replacing Mike Zolnierowicz, who left to work for U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Sarasota. Harris decided to run for re-election rather than the Senate, but might run for the Senate in 2006.
"He got approached by friends in that effort and felt he couldn't say no," Garcia said of Zolnierowicz. "It's a 2006 campaign with huge national potential."
Garcia, 44, was already working for Byrd as communications director for the campaign. He said Monday he will hold both jobs for the duration of the campaign.
Garcia has worked for Republican legislators, including Byrd's first campaign for the Legislature in 1996.
Notes indicate couple had murder-suicide pact
NORTH MIAMI BEACH - A husband and wife were shot to death Monday in a murder-suicide in the hallway outside an eye doctor's office, police said.
The victims were a 60-year-old man and his wife in her 50s, said North Miami Beach police Cpl. Armando Sotero. Their identities were not released pending notification of relatives.
The couple left notes indicating it was a murder-suicide pact, Sotero said. They were getting a divorce and the husband had financial obligations to relatives, which was causing family problems, according to the notes.
Neither of the victims worked at the office building and it was not clear why the murder-suicide took place there. Sotero said it was possible one of their relatives worked there.
The office building also housed a women's clinic, according to a sign on the building. But Sotero said the shootings took place in the hallway outside an ophthalmologist's office.
