Backroom Briefing: Will GOP presidential candidates enjoy some sunshine?

By DARA KAM AND JIM TURNER
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, September 24, 2015..........Republican Party of Florida leaders are walking back a proposal that would require GOP White House wannabes to show up in the Sunshine State this fall if they want to make it onto the 2016 presidential primary ballot.

The party's Constitution and Rules Committee unanimously approved a revised plan Thursday, a day before the state party's executive board is slated to vote on it.

The latest proposal would give candidates three options if they want to participate in Florida's winner-take-all GOP primary in March: Show up at a party fall fete, pay a $25,000 fee or gather petitions from voters.

State Chairman Blaise Ingoglia originally wanted to require candidates to submit their qualifying papers for the primary at the party's "Sunshine Summit" event in November or be banned from the ballot.

He defended the proposal as late as Wednesday, the day before the committee approved the modified plan.

The GOP candidates need to throw some red meat to the party faithful in Florida this year if Republicans want to win back the White House, Ingoglia implied in an op-ed published on the website Context Florida.

"In 2016, Florida will have unprecedented influence in the general election as the largest, most diverse swing state in the nation. Republicans cannot win the White House without winning the state of Florida, and to win, we need the grassroots of our party active, engaged, and motivated," he wrote.

The rule "takes the power of selecting who appears on the ballot out of the hands of the party leadership and benefits each candidate by providing a forum to engage the grassroots of our great party," Ingoglia concluded.

But not everyone thought the original proposal was such a grand plan.

"The word that comes to my mind is dumb," said veteran Florida GOP operative J.M. "Mac" Stipanovich. "I think it is short-sighted, if not selfish, for the party leadership to consider depriving Republican voters in Florida of their full ability to influence the selection of America's next president because of some silly desire to hold a debate."

Florida home-state hero, former Gov. Jeb Bush, is planning to attend the party summit, but dissed the proposed rule recently. Another Sunshine State native son, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, probably would have attended anyway.

The proposal could have backfired and provided perfect cover for anyone but Bush, Rubio or Donald Trump --- the current GOP frontrunner, who also has Florida ties --- to boycott the state, and spend their campaign cash elsewhere.

Keeping candidates who probably wouldn't fare well in Florida off the ballot would do them a favor by allowing them to avoid the embarrassment of a poor showing, Stipanovich said.

"It gives me the perfect excuse not to do what I don't want to do anyway. So, thank you, baby Jesus," he said.

SCOTT'S KENTUCKY TRIP COULD MEAN MORE PIZZA FOR FLORIDA

Gov. Rick Scott and Enterprise Florida typically keep hush-hush the names of businesses the governor and his entourage have met privately on domestic-recruiting trips launched in Democratic-run states.

But on Wednesday, the governor's office wasted little time in revising Scott's daily calendar to highlight in red that he had just spent an hour in Louisville, Ky., with his old pal John Schnatter, the founder and CEO of Papa John's pizza.

Scott spokeswoman Jackie Schutz said the one hour meeting, which included a brief tour of the company's headquarters, was simply posted so people could see that the tete-a-tete had occurred.

"Obviously they're very successful in Florida, and he wanted to talk about how they're doing in Florida and about continuing to grow and have success in the state," Schutz said.

The three-decade-old chain has more than 4,700 locations in 37 countries, including about 260 locations in Florida.

Schnatter told WLKY in Louisville that he understands the appeal of Florida, but that he wasn't moving the company headquarters.

"When it comes to business in Kentucky, Florida is definitely much more pro-business, but we got an election coming up and hopefully we will rectify that," Schnatter told WLKY, referring to a Kentucky gubernatorial election this fall.

Scott heard a similar reply when he went to Philadelphia in February.

Wawa convenience stores Chief Executive Officer Chris Gheysens told reporters that expansion in Florida was ahead of schedule but that he rebuffed efforts by Scott to move the company headquarters to Florida.

"It wasn't about … tax breaks and things like that, it's what's best for our associates," Gheysens said at the time.

Scott did get to conduct a little end-zone dance in downtown Lexington on Tuesday, rolling out a Northern Kentucky company, 1st Choice Aerospace, which had months earlier announced that it would expand its South Florida operations.

While Scott's office highlighted the WLKY coverage of Wednesday's visit to Papa John's, the press release omitted a less-than-flattering quote from Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer. Fischer hit on the lingering resentment over Scott's decision, as the then-CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., to relocate the company's headquarters from Louisville to Nashville, Tenn.

"In 1995, Rick Scott left town in the middle of the night, breaking dozens of commitments he'd made here. Within two years, his Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty in one the largest Medicare fraud cases in U.S. history," Fischer said. "The company paid an historic $1.7 billion fine, and Scott was forced to resign. And now, this guy is coming to Kentucky and saying, 'Trust me?' I don't think so."

TWEET OF THE WEEK: "Skipping Florida primary no longer just a threat for @ScottWalker." --- Palm Beach Post political reporter George Bennett (@gbennettpost) on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's departure from the GOP presidential campaign.