HAS LEE'S LEASH ON SENATE PREZ BATTLE BROKEN?

Two weeks ago, I passed along information from a Bill Rufty piece in the February 27 Lakeland Ledger regarding the effort of Florida Senate President Tom Lee to maintain somewhat cooler heads in the increasingly nasty battle over the battle for Lee's current job in 2008. State Senator J.D. Alexander (R - Lake Wales) is in the midst of the fray, as he switched his loyalties in the contest from Alex Villalobos (R - Miami) to Jeff Atwater (R - North Palm Beach).

Now Alexander comes out claiming that although he is not up for reelection this year, he is being targeted with negative telephone messages to people in his district, which includes all or part of seven counties, mentioning his support for a bill three years ago the callers say will result in higher local phone rates. And Alexander believes the messages are a direct result of his decision to switch his support in the 2008 Senate President race to Atwater.

Today, Rufty writes that the undercurrent of this split among Senate Republicans may have reached Lee's scheduled successor, Senator Ken Pruitt (R - Port St. Lucie), as some of Villalobos' supporters are blaiming him for not preventing the issue to boil over...and Rufty reminds us of the recent past:

There really isn't enough of a backlash among Republicans to replace Pruitt as the official party choice for this year, and Atwater's 2008 crowd insists it has enough votes for its man two years later.

But Republicans in the Florida Senate better look at the history of the Democratic Party in the Senate and learn something -- quickly.

In 1982, Sen. Harry Johnston, a West Palm Beach Democrat, was supposed to become president of the Senate. While the rank-and-file Democrats stayed with Johnston, some rebels upset with some of his policies decided they'd elect someone else, without all the Democrats.

The handful of rebelling Democrats combined with the fledging Republican Party in the Senate and elected Sen. Curtis Peterson, a Lakeland Democrat, as president. Some Republicans got committee chairmanships in the deal.

You see, the president is elected by all 40 members of the Senate. Most of the time Republicans vote for their party nominee and Democrats vote for theirs. But as the 1984 vote proved, there is nothing to prevent a group from the majority party forming with a group from the minority party to become -- if only for one vote -- the new majority.

I guess the three words most appropriate for Villalobos to say to his collegue from Polk County come from Shakespeare in his classic Julius Caesar:

"Et tu, Brute?"