A new poll of the likely 2018 U.S. Senate race finds Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and likely challenger Gov. Rick Scott virtually tied. The Florida Atlantic University poll, scheduled for release Tuesday, shows Nelson with 42 percent support compared to 40 percent for Scott.
Republican candidate for governor Jack Latvala, who’s been aggressive in saying that Florida needs to do more to deal with the exploding opioid epidemic, on Monday called on Gov. Rick Scott to fund another $20 million to address the problem. Latvala, a Clearwater state senator and Appropriations Committee chair, also is calling on Scott to immediately extend the executive order he originally signed in May, declaring the opioid crisis to be a public health emergency in Florida.
The Florida Supreme Court said Friday it will hear arguments this fall in a case that could help shape the future of the court. The Supreme Court scheduled arguments for Nov. 1 in a battle about whether Gov. Rick Scott will have the authority to appoint as many as three new justices as he leaves office in January 2019.
On Friday, Gov. Rick Scott announced 12 appointments to a variety of state boards.
Some of the biggest school districts in Florida, including Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Volusia and Orange counties, have filed legal challenges to House Bill 7069, the controversial education legislation that critics say will undermine local control of schools and expand the charter school system. Hillsborough County is not one of them, but it may be more inspired to after receiving a letter from U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, whobelieves the law runs afoul of federal law, specifically Title I provisions of the…
For the first time in state history, Florida is expecting to execute a white man Thursday for killing a black person — and it plans to do so with the help of a drug that has never been used before in any U.S. execution. Barring a stay, Mark Asay, 53, is scheduled to die by lethal injection after 6 p.m. Asay was convicted by a jury of two racially motivated, premeditated murders in Jacksonville in 1987.
House Speaker and presumptive Republican candidate for governor Richard Corcoran, who declared war on “corporate welfare” last Legislative Session, now wants to end “welfare for politicians.” On Wednesday, he asked the Constitution Revision Commission—of which he appointed nine of its 37 members—to consider an proposal to repeal a section of the state Constitution that provides for public financing of statewide political campaigns. The Legislature, however, placed a similar amendment on the ballot for statewide approval in 2010. It flunked at…