One day after the Tampa City Council voted to protect transgender people from discrimination, state Rep. Kelly Skidmore has filed a perennial state bill that would do the same.

Like the city’s new rule, Skidmore’s bill would protect people from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations based on gender identity or expression. The Tampa City Council voted 5-1 for the local ordinance at its Thursday meeting.

When Skidmore, D-Boca Raton, first filed her antidiscrimination bill in 2007, she worded it to create protections from discrimination based on “sexual orientation.” In 2008, she added “gender identity or expression.” The expanded wording appeared again in the version she filed for the 2009 session and is likewise present in the bill she just proposed for 2010. (Technicality: Skidmore submitted the bill on Thursday but then withdrew it and filed the current version today, online records show.)

The 2010 races are fueling more than fund-raisers and flurries of press releases. They’re also spawning eBay auctions. A quick round of searches on contenders for statewide office produced hits including:

-Five copies of the Sept. 7, 2009 National Review featuring GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio—$15.65 a-piece. One seller is offering a copy for just $6. (Compare with the $5 sticker price of the latest edition of NR available at the magazine’s website)

-One “good condition,” hardback copy of “100 Innovative Ideas for Florida’s Future by Marco Rubio,” circa-2006—$12.60 (if you can settle for an “acceptable condition” copy, you can snag it for $2.94)

-set of seven “Charlie Crist For Governor” bumper stickers—$1.99 for the lot, the only result we found for Crist. UPDATE: one of our newsroom colleagues just found this one by searching on “governor Crist:” a collectible U.S. Governors card in “Nrmt-Mint Condition,” featuring Crist—$3.50

-small, undated card bearing the signature of Bill McCollum—$4.99

-signed BxW photo of a more youthful Bill McCollum. Addressed “To Edwin, With Best Wishes”—$9.99

Searching for McCollum on eBay also yields listings for DVDs of “Reefer Madness,” which we think is funny. (One of the cast members was named Warren McCollum.)

Where’s all the Democrat-specific memorabilia, you ask? Search us. As of this afternoon, we couldn’t come up with a single Alex Sink checkbook cover or signed photo of Kendrick Meek.

(We’re assuming that a book titled, “Paranoia: A Role Playing Game of a Darkly Humorous Future” is by a Dan Gelber who is not running for Attorney General, but we’ll be happy to stand corrected if necessary.)

This just in from the state Agency for Workforce Innovation: Florida’s unemployment rate inched up again last month to 11.2 percent, reflecting the fact the fact that 1.027 million Floridians were out of work.

That’s just a hair worse that September’s rate of 11.1 percent, but a full percentage point higher than the national jobless rate. It’s also 4.3 percentage points higher than Florida’s unemployment rate in October 2008. According to the folks at AWI: “October’s rate was the highest since June 1975 when it was also 11.2 percent. The last time it was higher was May 1975 when it was 11.9 percent.”

The not-especially-surprising bad news comes amid debate between state Democrats and Republicans over whether Florida should have accepted $444 million in federal stimulus bucks for unemployment compensation. GOP leaders refused the money because it came with a mandate to expand both eligibility and benefits.

Now, according to the state Department of Revenue, Florida is facing a deficit in its unemployment compensation fund, which will dramatically hike unemployment compensation taxes on businesses next year. Democrats have been hammering Republicans this week for leaving the $444 million on the table, while Republicans argue that accepting the money wouldn’t have made the current situation any better.

Amy Baker, Coordinator of the Legislative Office of Economic and Demographic Research, lent some nonpartisan credence yesterday to the Republican’s version. In an email that House leaders distributed to reporters, Baker said that even if Florida had accepted the $444 million, “the 2010 tax rate would not have been affected” because the federal dollars would not have arrived in time. “The only impact in the current year (FY 2009-10) would have been to delay the need for federal advances by one to two months. Even so, the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund would have ended the year in a negative position, thereby triggering a rate increase.”

House Minority Leader Franklin Sands, D-Weston, brought up the issue again this morning anyway. Responding to the new 11.2 percent jobless rate, he said: “Florida House Democrats remain hopeful that Republican leaders will drop their opposition to modernizing Florida’s Unemployment Compensation system and will join Governor Charlie Crist in approving the use of $444 million in federal stimulus to assist the growing-number of jobless Floridians.

“These dollars will be spent helping families buy food, pay rent and will generally boost economic activity and retail business throughout the state ... It is time that Republican leaders begin working on bipartisan solutions that will put Florida back to work.”

A poll done by Research 2000 for the liberal Daily Kos web site says Marco Rubio has pulled to within 10 points of Gov. Charlie Crist in the Republican U.S. Senate primary.

A sample of Republican voters in the poll split 47 percent for Crist and 37 percent for Rubio, with 16 percent undecided. That poll, done by traditional random-digit telephone dialing Nov. 16-18, included 400 likely GOP voters, for an error margin of 5 points, the web site said.

That’s the best result for Rubio of any poll so far in the primary.

An October Quinnipiac University poll made headlines when it showed Rubio within 15 points of Crist; but immediately afterward, a St. Petersburg Times poll published Nov. 1 showed Crist with a 22-point margin.

The Kos poll also shows Crist handily beating the likely Democratic nominee in the Senate race, Kendrick Meek, by 50-33 percent, but Rubio losing to Meek, 38-30 percent.

It also gives Democrat Alex Sink the best result of any recently published poll in the governor’s race against Republican Bill McCollum, showing McCollum ahead by only two points, 35 percent-33 percent—less than the error margin.

Advertisement