Reaction to Jeb announcement

U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez: “I understand his decision. Jeb would have been a great candidate and senator. The good news is that Republicans still hold the advantage with a deep field of potential candidates.”

Florida Democratic Chairwoman Karen Thurman: ""It is clear that Florida will be a central battleground in the 2010 election. Over the past several years, Democrats have made major gains in Florida winning three of the six statewide elections. On November 2, 2010, Florida will be electing another strong Democrat to the U.S. Senate, who will work to implement President-elect Barack Obama's vision of change and join Sen. Bill Nelson in representing the Sunshine State in the tradition of Bob Graham and Lawton Chiles."

State GOP Chairman Jim Greer: “While we are disappointed in former Governor Bush’s decision not to seek this U.S. Senate seat, Florida Republicans can rest assured that we have a number of outstanding potential candidates. Under the leadership of Republicans like Senator Mel Martinez, former Governor Bush, and Governor Charlie Crist, the Republican Party of Florida has created a formidable cadre of qualified candidates for higher office, and we look forward to seeing their ideas for the future—including lowering taxes on families and businesses and reigning in government spending—in action during a spirited campaign.”

Former House Speaker Marco Rubio: "Obviously, I'm disappointed. (But) I trust his decision-making process and his ability to make the right decision for him and his family...The U.S. Senate is an opportunity that I'm going to seriously explore and will make a decision within the next two weeks."

Former Florida House Speaker John Thrasher: "When Mel made his announcement it seemed like at the time like a great opportunity to give back. And then I think (Jeb) took a step back and evaluated his life and his family and where he is. It just wasn't the right time to do it...Bill McCollum's a formidable guy."

GOP bundler Mark Guzzetta: " I take solace in knowing that Jeb is smarter than I so there must be bigger and better plan. Jeb will stay relevent by the power of his ideas...There's no doubt in my mind he would have won. without him in the race i think it's still very competitive for us."

Comments

[Abe Lincoln]

Sorry Charlie!:-)Looks Charlie is going home to St. Pete in 2012. -)

[Abe Lincoln]

Sorry Charlie. . .looks like you are going home to St. Pete in 2012. Four years of you is all that we can take.

[Abe Lincoln]

2010

CC will win re-electionn easily. With few exceptions, he has stuck to his credo of less government, less taxes and more freedom. The economy will recover by then notwithstanding the goofs running things in D.C.

[jb]

best news I've heard in a while

Real smart guy that Abe!! Great communicator uh?

[Sir Slam]

Considering the fact that Jeb would have been running against his record as governor of this state, his announcement should not come as nay suprise. Jeb was attempting to run on the basis that most of Florida's voters were blind lemmings who would continue to ignore his legislative and fiscal arrogance. SORRY JEB, THE LEMMINGS CAN FEEL.

The 2010 U S. Senate seat is not the best timing for Jeb.

Bill Nelson's 2012 seat is perfect.

Jeb for U.S. Senate 2012!

Sir Slam, If Jeb wanted the 2010 seat, he would have won in a landslide.

The timing is not right especially if there is another opening in 2012.

"formidable cadre of qualified candidates" - Greer must have had the thesaurus out today when he wrote that.

Some free advise Jim -
Trying to impress all the RNC members with big words won't help you get elected Chair. Remember they liked Sarah Palin not John McCain....

Who does Jubilee Jim think he is? Dr. Seuss?

[Kay]

I would be estatic if I never heard of another Bush OR Kennedy running for or seeking appointment to any elective office!! Anyone who thinks that Jeb was a good governor should re-read his record!

[jb]

keep dreaming 5:34,He'll be lucky if could get a job in the Gov.wash room.
The Bush name is MUD

Clears the way for Allen Boyd!

Florida needs Bense

[Pearl]

I like how Jeb said it was because of family considerations. It is entirely about family considerations ... he's a Bush, and his family name is dog$hit about now. Thanks, Dubya. Thanks, Neil. Thanks, Pappy.

[Jim Donelon,President-St. Petersburg Democratic Club]

What a loss!! We will now miss an opportunity to put an end to Bushism.

[surfdog]

ding dong the wicked whitches are dead!
good ridance!!! get outa our lives already fer god sakes ..GO! LEAVE US ALONE! VAMOOS!
I think Jeb is too busy with his "shadow govt" what a pompous a-hole
and Jeb would not beat Nelson he is a right to moderate Dem which is o.k. in formally RED but slightly BLUE FLA
and florida loves its spacemen

Jeb ruined the state - out of control taxes, out of control insurance premiums, out of control legilsature, out of control local governments. Very wise decision Jeb.

7:20, your micro-screed reveals you to have a complete lack of comprehension about the role of the governor. probably a broad theme in your life, that complete lack of understanding....

[Sentinel]

Our current governor ruined this state. He needs to be voted out asap. Over 400000 dollars of taxpayers money for a trip overseas that returned nothing. Better yet impeach him.

7:20

FL History for the memory challenged.

Jeb Bush was the best man who ever governed the state of Florida.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/293ppytu.asp

[Outta luck]

Jeb is a neo fascist and needs to move to Ga to run for office.The truth is he never lived with his wife and had numerous friends..Coupled with the greaT FAMILY NAME .He ruined this state leaving CC to finish us off ..No more Bushes please

7:35 Bleat! -$5.00
7:39 Bleat! -$5.00
7:42 and MORE Bleat! -$5.00

Here's $15 and a little extra something for the Cheetos.

Keep it up, McToady!

[Cody Towaga]

May top bipartisan business leaders have asked former CIS director Colonel Emilio Gonzalez to run but he has declined to do so.

The Jeb legacy...

Last in Education; First in Corruption!

8:31 The Jeb Legacy

Excellence

St. Petersburg Times - St. Petersburg, Fla.

Author: STEVE BOUSQUET
Date: Dec 29, 2006

THE BUSH LEGACY

People in Florida had never seen a leader like Jeb Bush, and they are not likely to see one like him again.

The first Republican governor to win re-election in Florida history will leave office Tuesday.

During his eight-year tenure, he rewrote the job description of governor and raised expectations of how elected officials should lead, especially in times of crisis.

John Ellis Bush governed the nation's fourth-largest state with a determination that leaves behind two contrasting images: the principled leader guided by his inner compass and the hardheaded ideologue indifferent to opposing views.

To syndicated columnist Fred Barnes, Bush was "the best governor in America."

To state Sen. Frederica Wilson, a Miami Democrat, he was an arrogant monarch: "King Jeb," she called him.

Bush steered Florida through eight hurricanes, the most contentious presidential election in more than a century, the creation and dismantling by the courts of a school voucher program, a sustained real estate and employment boom, record tax cuts, revamping of Medicaid, restoration of the Everglades, a highly emotional fight over the death of Terri Schiavo and the dawn of a post-9/11 world.

He leaves behind an office that has been transformed, invested with more power, both politically and structurally, than it has ever had.

"He'll go down as one of the most consequential governors in Florida history," said political scientist Aubrey Jewett at the University of Central Florida. "He was a strong leader, he had a vision for the state, and he had big ideas that he articulated to the public and to the Legislature."

* * *

At 6-4, Bush towered over Florida's political scene, both literally and figuratively. The son of a past president and brother of the sitting one, he brought a sense of dynastic royalty to the office.

Across a wide policy arc, Bush also brought a sense of mission to his work that had not been in evidence since Democrat Reubin Askew's two terms in the 1970s.

"I think people would say that we're doing things," Bush said of his record. "They may not agree with everything we're doing, but there's stuff being done. I think people like that. They like government to be focused on their issues, and activist."

A string of high-profile controversies, and his tendency to appear high-handed in his activist governing style, made him the most marched-on governor in the state's history. But he departs with his popularity intact: Nearly six of 10 Floridians rated Bush as a "good" or "great" governor in one recent poll.

"If I had a horrible grade, the joy of this time in service would be no different," Bush said. "It's a nice validation, but it's not the motivation of service."

Bush didn't redraw the job of governor by himself. His iron will and natural boldness meshed fortuitously with good timing and good luck.

He entered office in 1999, soon after Republicans gained control of both houses of the Legislature, and just as the first effects of term limits were being felt.

Term limits largely emptied Tallahassee of seasoned lawmakers, many of whom saw themselves as equals of the governor. They were replaced by less experienced politicians, mostly Republicans who gladly deferred to Bush.

Voters also downsized the Cabinet from six elected members to three, combining two offices into one, and eliminating statewide officeholders of secretary of state and education commissioner. Both became appointees of the governor.

The Legislature went further by abolishing the Board of Regents for higher education at Bush's urging and replacing it at all 11 state universities with boards of trustees, who are appointed by the governor.

The Legislature revamped the judicial selection system by eliminating the Florida Bar's power to appoint members to 26 judicial nominating panels. Those picks became the governor's.

Bush appointed more than 250 judges during his eight years in office.

* * *

State Rep. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat, said that through sheer persistence, Bush was able to push through an agenda more conservative than most Floridians.

"His ideas were farther to the right than the people he represented," Gelber said.

One of the lasting contradictions of Bush's record is that he cut state taxes by more than $19-billion, far more than any governor in the state's history, but as he exits, many Floridians feel overwhelmed by the crushing weight of local property taxes.

Bush faults cities and counties for being unwilling to control spending, but local officials say they have been forced to pick up the slack left by Bush and his fellow tax-cutters in Tallahassee, especially on education, where the state's contribution to local school funding has shrunk.

* * *

The Jeb Bush legacy is likely to include a redefined sense of what it means to demonstrate effective leadership in a crisis, such as a Category 4 hurricane.

Nature's wrath challenged Bush to reassure Floridians that better times were ahead. From the state's emergency operations center in Tallahassee, Bush exuded calm and confidence in the face of multiple- hurricane summers, then flew to the damaged regions to meet with the displaced and to hand out supplies.

For a time during his tenure, terrorism, too, posed a grave threat to Florida tourism, a cornerstone of the state's economy.

Two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, with many Americans fearful of flying, Bush boarded commercial flights to Boston and Chicago in a gesture aimed at restoring confidence in air travel.

Working as a crisis manager emphasized Bush's hands-on approach to problems and his ability to inspire others.

But the same CEO-style qualities that served Bush so well in moments of peril abandoned him at other times. His hiring decisions at some agencies proved disastrous.

His second-term corrections secretary, James Crosby, is likely headed to prison after admitting he took kickbacks from vendors.

The second of three Bush secretaries in the beleaguered Department of Children and Families, Jerry Regier, was forced to quit in 2004 after he and two subordinates accepted favors from contractors or lobbyists in violation of Bush's ethics policy.

In eight years, Bush appointed six secretaries at the Department of Management Services, which acts as the state's landlord and oversees a vast array of outsourcing ventures.

"It's a never-ending supply of secretaries and directors who had to leave under bad circumstances," said state Sen. Nancy Argenziano, R-Dunnellon.

* * *

Bush's hard-charging style generated mixed results in his dealings with the other two branches of government, the Legislature and the courts.

The most significant defeat of his tenure was handed to Bush by the courts: In 2005, a unanimous state Supreme Court struck down school vouchers as unconstitutional. Two justices who joined in the decision were Bush appointees.

His controversial and fruitless efforts to force a state judge to reconnect Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was seen by many critics as a direct assault on the independence of the judiciary.

In the state capital, Bush repeatedly fought with the moderate state Senate over spending, medical malpractice legislation and school vouchers, a key component of his education agenda.

In 2003, Bush publicly criticized "wandering senators" in his party who disagreed with him on the need to limit a doctor's liability in medical malpractice cases, but he was forced to compromise with them.

"He's tough-minded and hardheaded, and he likes to get his way," said Jim Apthorp, a public policy expert and a Democrat who was Askew's chief of staff in the 1970s. "Lawton Chiles was, too. But he didn't feel required to dominate the scene the way Jeb has."

Bush was dominating, all right.

He seized the power of the purse from the Legislature, insisting that requests for state dollars be endorsed by agencies under his control.

This was no bureaucratic tweak. It was a fundamental change in the way tax dollars were spent, placing the governor squarely at the center of a process that had long been driven by lawmakers.

"He usurped a good deal of the Legislature's power," noted Curt Kiser, a former Republican state legislator from Pinellas County. "He staked that claim out in his first year in office, and he's done nothing but build on it."

In 1999, legislators sued Bush, claiming he had no right to veto part of a budget line item. The Florida Supreme Court sided with the Legislature, but that didn't ease Bush's appetite for cutting budgets.

Over his eight-year tenure, Bush vetoed more than $2-billion in legislative spending, earning the tag "Veto Corleone" from former House Speaker John Thrasher, an ally.

***Bush believed in socking away as much money as possible for a rainy day; he leaves office with nearly $8-billion in reserves.

In his last round of budget vetoes in June, Bush axed a record $449-million in spending. The cuts infuriated lawmakers every year, but they never tried to override Bush's vetoes.

By executive order, he replaced affirmative action with his so- called One Florida initiative in university admissions and state contracts in 1999. The move opened a gaping political wound between Bush and African-Americans on the issue of race, and thousands marched on the state capital in protest.

State contracts with minority-owned businesses have increased dramatically, but the percentage of black students enrolled at state universities has remained largely unchanged under Bush.

* * *

At a symposium in October honoring the legacy of former Gov. LeRoy Collins, Bush spoke of how he drew inspiration from Collins, whose moderate course on race relations through the 1950s saved Florida from the disorder that flared in other states.

Early in his first term, Bush quietly ordered the Confederate flag removed from the front of the Florida Capitol and placed in a history museum.

It was his way of sparing Florida a racially divisive flag debate that was already raging in South Carolina and would soon take hold in Georgia.

Bush said Collins' vision of leadership inspired him. He quoted Collins' 1957 inaugural address, in which he said the duty of a governor is to "navigate the ship of state out of the harbor, but not beyond the horizon, where it can no longer be seen by those on shore."

Bush said Collins' words stayed with him.

"I have a tendency of seeing problems and creating five-point plans," he said. "The people around me tire out quickly, because I try to create a sense of urgency and a sense of purpose. I might have gotten out too far past the port for people to see. To be a leader, you have to have followers."

On the day Bush took office in 1999, he said in his first inaugural address: "The best and brightest ideas do not come from the state capital, but from the untapped human capital that resides in our diverse communities."

Yet from that day forward, as he guided Florida into a new millennium, this advocate of limited government was a man of unlimited energy and ideas.

"BHAGs," Bush called them. "Big, hairy, audacious goals."

He privatized a vast array of government services, from state workers' paychecks to meals in prisons.

He eliminated 13,000 state jobs, and during his tenure Florida was a national leader in job creation. Its unemployment rate was well below the national average.

He created the nation's first voucher program that allowed students in failing public schools to leave them and enroll in private schools using state money. He also made the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, the engine behind a push to make public schools accountable for the academic standing of its students.

He signed into law the largest rate hike in basic phone service in the state's history in the name of increased competition for telecommunications.

* * *

The intense loyalty Bush inspired in others was never more apparent than on a day two weeks ago when he appeared at his final Board of Education meeting. One by one, his appointees took turns lavishing praise on him.

"Wherever you go, if you send for me, I will come," said T. Willard Fair, who started a charter school in Miami's Liberty City with Bush's help and money more than a decade ago. "There is no greater person on the Earth than you. I love you."

In the next stage of his life, Bush is expected to continue having an impact on education policy. He has a well-financed political committee, the Foundation for Florida's Future Action Fund, but he has not been definitive about his plans.

"I want to find a way to stay involved in some fashion in public policy that is not intrusive," Bush said.

Times researchers Angie Drobnic Holan and Deirdre Morrow contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press.

8:48

"The first Republican governor to win re-election in Florida history will leave office Tuesday."

The best part of your little encomium. May I suggest that the grass looked a lot greener in 2006 before we discovered that the Bushes had fertilized it by steling form our kids' future.

I think Abe is right Charlie will be leaving Tallahassee in 2010.

This is what George Bush has done to the republican party in Washington. not even his brother wants to be a part of it. Hooray!

Jeb was Florida's best governor ever.

Florida needs him back.

***Bush believed in socking away as much money as possible for a rainy day; he leaves office with nearly $8-billion in reserves.****

Amen 10:10 in '10

Crist wins in a landslide in 2010.

[Jeb didn't want to catch a shoe upside his big head]

Jeb didn't want to catch a shoe upside his big head like his big brother George Bush.

[1,000,000 Lemmings announce their]

We're following Rubio now. Onward and over, fearless leader of the 100 lame ideas.

Baker

1:14 -

Except that George didn't catch a shoe upside his head either.

The moron who threw it missed...twice...and then proceeded to get his @ss beat.

[jeb lover]

jeb has the biggest rooster

given that the bush-pierce crime family's connectioins could have raised zillions for fatties run, the reality of his announcement reveals that even he understands that his dummerthaa bagofkrapdrunkenbrother has so soiled the "family" name that he couldnt win...period.

s for the shoe upside his head, make sure there is a foot in it and a large, strong leg powering it!!

take several shots, if you please!!

Wow Jeb's been busy posting here! 7:35, 7:42, 8:48, 10:10, 10:20 all posted by Jeb!

[Clyde]

Never thought he would run for Senator anyway. And Messiah is already taken, so the obvious choice is to sit this one out. He can spend more time building his cult following.

Rubio for Senate!

Rubio or Haridopolos would be great. We need a true conservative. Bense also for that matter.

[t-hizzel]

the only thing jeb has done right was not to run!!!budget cuts from our schools....GLAD HE IS NOT RUNNING!!!!

Hari would be a great candidate in the primary if he could raise the $$.

For the sake of us conservatives, we'd need Rubio & Haridopolos & Bense to work this stuff out ahead of time. We can't have all of them in it and end of with a Charlie Crist candidate winning the nomination.

State Senator Mike Haridopolos would make a great pick for U.S. Senator. He's been a strong supporter of Jeb Bush, Charlie Crist, and conservative principles. He can raise the money necessary for this campaign, no doubt about that.

Why would Haridopolos give up the Senate Presidency to run for something else? He has the brass ring, why toss it?

Haridopolos is definitely a true believer and would represent the RIGHT, not sure the moderates would enjoy him too much.

No doubt HARI is too the right, maybe a bit too much for the US Senate. How would his mentality be any better suited for DC than Jeb? He should stay and be Senate Pres.