House District 13 will not be seeing an election on November 4th. Representative Reggie Fullwood failed complete his paperwork properly and thus, no candidate filed for the seat. A judge ruled that Fullwood could not appear on the November election, triggering a special election. However, Fullwood’s easy re-election is out the window – he now faces a primary opponent in Johnny Gaffney and then a Republican challenger in Lawrence Jefferson. This mistake will cost the district almost half a million dollars according to the Duval Supervisor of Elections. Even though the district is safely D and there is very little chance a Republican could be elected here, Johnny Gaffney is a formidable opponent and this will prove to be a hard primary. The primary will take place in December, with a general election in February. With voter turn out to be projected in the mid-single digits, Fullwood has to be kicking himself for a simple mistake that has cost him an easy no-contest election.  –   KB@BurnettKaty 

Politics in Broward County the last month and a half has been dominated by two things: The Governor’s Race, where Charlie Crist is making a massive field effort locally, an effort his campaign is quite frankly NOT replicating in other parts of the state. The other was the Sachs-Bogdanoff State Senate race. But in the last ten days, interest has started to shift towards three issues that will be on the ballot November 4th. First is the the School Bond issue which has faced more organized and sustained opposition than perhaps expected. The second is a local government reorganization in Plantation. The third is the Coral Springs Mayor’s Race between former State Senator and 2006 Democratic Attorney General nominee Skip Campbell and City Commissioner Tom Powers. These three issues have livened up Broward’s politics in the past few weeks. – KK @kkfla737

Although #fangate dominated all the news, there were several other major points that should be highlighted from the debate. The biggest thing missing from the debate was any discussion of immigration from either candidate, which is a surprise considering how hard the campaigns are fighting over the Hispanic vote both in South Florida and in Orange County. Neither of the candidates even attempted to pitch to the Hispanic vote, so look for definite mention of this important demographic on Tuesday. The other issue group that was left out was women – although Rick Scott particularly mentioned his abuse father and wonderful mother three times, real issues that pertain to women were left out. Again, I expect both of these will come up in the CNN debate on Tuesday, where it has already been confirmed that there will be no fan. Even though this debate was not set up to persuade voters – we’ve talked about several times on this blog about how there are very few persuadable – these huge issues could decide if people are going to vote or not. –   KB@BurnettKaty 

I have heard Republicans compare this election cycle to 2002. Having been around in a prominent role within the state party in 2002, I find the comparisons laughable. Yes it is very true that Bill McBride and Jeb Bush were neck and neck for a long while that year and that Bush eventually pulled away and the GOP ended up cleaning up in Cabinet and State House races. But a fundamental difference between then and now is that the Democrats were not organized on the ground and had no real program to chase VBM or to drive early voting (in fact I was told in public by the state party NOT to worry about VBM at all and to focus on Election Day turnout exclusively). One thing that is similar though is the amount of out-of-state money that poured into the state on behalf of the Democrats. Coming off the 2000 recount, every major progressive group in the country played in Florida’s 2002 elections.  – KK @kkfla737