Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
The lobbying firm of Smith & Ballard is expanding.
Mary Kay Cariseo, veteran lobbyist for the Florida Association of Counties, will join the firm in February.
Jim Smith, Florida's former secretary of state and attorney general, and his son-in-law Brian Ballard head the firm that has more clients than any other in Tallahassee. Also on the roster are Greg Turbeville, former policy director for Gov. Jeb Bush, Joe McCann and Amy Young.
Cariseo has worked for the counties since 1994. She previously worked for Florida State University, the Florida Association of School Administrators and the Florida House Minority Office, back when the GOP was a minority.
Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, operates a successful "crystal ball" for elections. This year he correctly forecast 525 of 530 nationwide contests - a 99 percent accuracy rating.
That makes his early predictions for 2006 of interest to Floridians because at the top of his list of vulnerable Democrats is U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida.
"The GOP tide in the Sunshine state cannot be ignored," Sabato wrote this week.
Is state Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Treasure Island, in line to get a job at the new Florida State University School of Chiropractic?
FSU president T.K. Wetherell says he hasn't hired Jones but is advertising "a few positions" and will interview whoever applies.
Jones, 63, owns a Seminole chiropractic clinic and has spent years pushing to get the chiropractic school at FSU. It will be the first chiropractic school housed at a public university.
"At the present time, I am practicing here," Jones said this week. "But once the program is in place and sets up distance-learning opportunities, I hope to get one of those sites in St. Petersburg."
Jones says he's already talked to St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker about the possibility.
Having post-election withdrawal? Need one more blast of political conjecture and analysis?
Here's a chance to ruminate over the big picture, as experts on Florida and southern politics examine the state's transformation from a solidly Democratic state to the Republican phenomenon it has become, and ponder what the future holds. The conference is scheduled for Saturday at the Florida Center for Teachers, Room 118, on USF's St. Petersburg campus. The discussion begins at 9 a.m. and will focus on the first ripple of the electoral sea change that has swept over the Sunshine State - the 1954 election of Bill Cramer, the first Republican to be elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction.
Titled "William C. Cramer and the Emergence of the Modern Republican Party in Florida," the conference is organized by USF political scientist Darryl Paulson and historian Gary Mormino.
It features a panel discussion by friends, family and associates of the late congressman, who was instrumental in developing the Pinellas and state Republican Party.
The keynote address will be delivered by Earl and Merle Black, political scientists and authors of The Rise of Southern Republicans.
The conference is free and closes with a panel discussion by local Democrat and Republican party officials, who will consider the results of the last election and what they signify for the future of both parties in Tampa Bay and Florida.
For information call Paulson at (727) 553-4582 or Mormino at (727) 553-4855.