In a blog post, the Miami Herald's Mary Ellen Klas tosses out a new name in the now eight-month saga of determining who will eventually end up replacing Jennifer Carroll as Florida's Lieutenant Governor, and it's definitely a wild card - House Speaker Will Weatherford.
That's impossible, you say? I mean, why would Weatherford step down from his extremely powerful position in his last year as House Speaker to do....well, whatever Lieutenant Governors do.
But as Klas speculates, perhaps Governor Rick Scott chooses to wait to select Weatherford in early May, right after the 2014 regular legislative session adjourns, and the House Speaker's political juice begins to ebb.
[jump]If that were to play out, that would mean the state had gone without an LG for over a year. We'll refrain from our long standing opinion that this is an absolutely worthless gig, BUT - wouldn't such a selection simply confirm that the only thing a Lieutenant Governor is good for in Florida is as a running mate? To "balance the ticket" as the saying goes when speculation begins about who a presidential candidate will choose as his or VP selection? For everyone's sake, it'd be good if Tom Lee or Sandy Murman or whomever the governor asks to be his partner in the 2014 campaign says yes, and we can then settle down and feel better that we once again have someone sitting in that number two position. Doing what, well again, we're not so sure.
Speaking of running mates, Mitt Romney takes a crack at Dan Quayle in the two-minute trailer for the upcoming Netflix documentary Mitt that will be released next month.
Hillsborough County's Public Transportation Commission is very much alive and kicking today, much to the consternation of St. Pete state Senator Jeff Brandes, who had proposed legislation that ultimately would have terminated the controversial agency. Brandes tells CL that he hasn't given up on the idea completely.
And St. Petersburg City Council-elect Darden Rice gets officially sworn into office two weeks from today. With both her and Amy Foster joining Steve Kornell, St. Pete's board will have three openly gay members on the City Council in 2014. Though all of the candidates down played that interesting fact during the campaign, Rice did acknowledge Monday night that it is significant.