A COUPLE OF NOTES FROM THE FLORIDA GOVERNOR'S RACE

Thanks to the St. Petersburg Times' political blog The Buzz for the heads up on a couple of fronts, noting that the two primary Democratic candidates for governor next year are working...

Congressman Jim Davis (D - Tampa) has hired Jennifer O'Malley as his campaign manager. Ms. O'Malley brings a strong background to Davis' plate, having worked on the Al Gore presidential campaign in 1999-2000 and as John Edwards' Iowa field director in 2004. She received kudos for her work as Tim Johnson's field organizer three years ago for his U.S. Senate campaign, one of the few recent campaigns where Democrats soundly defeated the GOP. And she was deputy campaign manager for former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle's reelection campaign last year.

And State Senator Rod Smith (D - Alachua) received a standing-o from, of all folks, the Tampa Bay Democracy for America group after an appearance Wednesday evening. He even had the local organizer wishing Smith was running for president!

The Buzz piece focused on Smith's comments about the need to better fund Florida's schools. This is what Smith had to say:

"Somebody's going to ask me, so I'll go ahead and say it: "How are you going to pay for it?' By the way, I wish that's a question I wish somebody had answered better a few years ago...We've got the dollars. It simply takes the political will to say these other kinds of projects that we spend on, they're going to be secondary to our state's all out (focus) on moving the scools of this state, our per-capita spending, our teachers spending to the upper half...of the country,''

The bit about wishing somebody had answered better...that was an obvious swipe at 2002 Democratic candidate Bill McBride, who endorsed the initiative on the ballot that year (which passed) to reduce class sizes but failed to propose how to pay for it.