Notes For Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Short Lived Site Redesign - The overwhelming response to our site redesign was negative (indeed, we were required to respond to the e-mails with an impersonal form e-mail message; sorry about that). For tose that care, you can see what it looked like here.

With the redesign, we were attempting to make the newswire more prominent and easier to read, but many readers disliked the way this caused notes were displayed. Rather than call for a re-vote, we reverted to the old design, with a few tweaks. In the future, we will make changes in a more incremental fashion. In any event, we appreciate the feedback and thank you for your patronage.

While on the subject, we will shortly be moving to our own url (without the annoying popups). In the meantime, we would appreciate any suggestions for improvements. 6:21 PM [Go to current Florida Politics site (no popup ads)]

The Hand of Karl Rove. Yesterday we discussed Ron Littlepage's thoughts about how national politics influenced the selection of the Lt. Governor. In short, Littlepage speculated that central Floridian Jennings was selected over Jax mayor Delaney because she would be helpful in 2004 to Dubya's reelection effort in the critical I-4 corridor; because the corridor is a swing area (with Gore carrying Orange county in 2000), and with Democrat Buddy Dyer winning the Orlando mayoral contest by a wide margin over the Republican candidate, Jennings was thought to be more beneficial to "president" Bush's reelection effort than Delaney (Jax is solidly Repub territory). Whatever the merits of the strategy - we believe Jennings will have little effect on presidential voters in 2004 - it does suggest the influence of Karl Rove in Florida politics.

Today, the Washington Post, gives us "Cornering the Political Market in Florida, Rove-Style". In this must read story: "President Bush's political architect, Karl Rove, is trying to talk Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel R. Martinez into running for the Senate against veteran Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida. . . . The White House is eager to have a strong Senate candidate on the ticket with Bush in 2004 in Florida, which gave new meaning to the term "swing state" in the 2000 election."

This would be a godsend for the Dems - Martinez is an unimpressive man (one of those horrible "trial lawyers", like John Edwards, except neither good looking nor articulate), who has the sum total of one political victory under his belt - he won the chairmanship of Orabge County over a right-wing zealot. His appointment to HUD was purely politics, and he has spent the bulk of his time as HUD secretary in partisan political endeavors. In the event Graham does not win the Dem Prez nomination, he would easily defeat Martinez. 6:43 AM [Go to current Florida Politics site (no popup ads)]