Backroom Briefing: Is Bondi poised to go to Washington?

By JIM TURNER
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, January 5, 2017.......... Bloomberg Politics amped up speculation Thursday that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi will soon leave her job to take a position in the White House.

Which means gossip can also amp up in Tallahassee about Gov. Rick Scott's appointment of a new attorney general.

Bloomberg first tweeted, and then reported, that aides to President-elect Donald Trump were finalizing details on a post for Bondi in the White House.

"It was not immediately clear what her title would be," the report said. "Bondi was not among a lengthy list of White House appointments Trump announced on Wednesday."

A spokesman for Bondi, who was an early backer of Trump's presidential bid, brushed aside the latest report.

"Attorney General Bondi has absolutely no news to report at this time and is unaware of who the source of this information is," spokesman Whitney Ray said in an email.

Bondi has previously been rumored as a candidate to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, a position informally known as the drug czar.

She offered few details about a meeting with Trump last month in New York City other than to repeat that she was happy to be Florida's attorney general "right now."

Bondi is term-limited from running again for attorney general in 2018. If she leaves, Scott would be able to appoint a successor to finish out her term.

Among the names that have been tossed around for the job:

--- Pete Antonacci, a former general counsel to Scott who was appointed last year as executive director of the South Florida Water Management District.

--- Jesse Panuccio, another former counsel to the governor who was named by Scott to head the Department of Economic Opportunity. Panuccio left the department in 2015 with a contentious Senate confirmation hearing in his path and is currently in private practice with Foley & Lardner.

--- Tom Grady, a Naples neighbor of Scott who the governor appointed to the State Board of Education. Grady served a single term in the House and a stint as head of the Office of Financial Regulation.

Other names in the rumor mill have included Kent Perez, who serves as Bondi's general counsel; Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart; and state Rep. Jose Felix Diaz, R-Miami.

EYE ON THE CALIFORNIA SKY

Space Florida is rooting entrepreneur Elon Musk gets off the ground in California as soon as this weekend.

Musk's Falcon 9 is targeting a return to flight Sunday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, marking the first launch for SpaceX since one of the company's rockets exploded Sept. 1 during preparations for a static fire test from Launch Complex 40 at the north end of Cape Canaveral.

"Once they validate their corrections and repairs, and whatever modifications they felt needed to be made, and the FAA signs off … once that is done they'll be back in business and that will be good for us here in Florida and it won't be much longer before they're launching from here," Dale Ketcham, Space Florida's chief of strategic alliances, said Tuesday.

Launches, even unmanned commercial vehicles, mean tourists to the Space Coast and business throughout Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX, which uses a U.S. Air Force facility for its Florida launches, announced Monday that a four-month investigation into the September explosion put the fault on a system using cold helium gas to pressurize propellant tanks filled with super-chilled liquid oxygen.

SpaceX said in a statement on its website it intends to redesign the tanks.

If the upcoming launch in California is successful, SpaceX may be able to send an unmanned cargo ship to the International Space Station from the cape before the end of January.

Space Florida, the state's quasi-governmental agency created to expand the state's space industry, lost out to Texas in 2014 as Musk sought a location for what is to be the world's first private launch facility.

But Space Florida, which generates revenue through the management of a former Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center as a testing ground for new companies and technologies, views the anticipated return to flight by Musk's Falcon 9 as boosting efforts to expand the use of launch pads at Cape Canaveral.

"Florida has a major stake in their success, because they are one of, if not the, industry leader in terms of the number of launches," Ketcham said.

Space Florida officials have discussed a desire for the cape to handle over 100 launches a year.

Among the current targets, the Space Florida Board of Directors reaffirmed last month support for a deal that would extend a $1 million line of credit to what had been an unidentified company labeled Project Ice.

During its Dec. 16 meeting, board member Jason Steele advised his colleagues of the need to fully disclose the contract details as they become available due to the political focus in Tallahassee on undisclosed information at public-private agencies.

Within a week, Florida Today confirmed that Project Ice was Silicon Valley-based Made in Space, which intends to manufacture advanced fiber-optic cable aboard the International Space Station. The belief is that the space-made cables will have fewer impurities --- resulting in faster transmission rates --- than those produced on Earth.

TWEET OF THE WEEK: "Glad to have Pres Gaetz here in the US Capitol today!" Congressman Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) on his father, former Florida Senate President Don Gaetz, attending his swearing in on the U.S. House floor.