Just when we thought we had a handle on the over-sized field...

There have been rumors, whisperings, the occassional outright scream, about NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg jumping into the White House race as an independent. Just when such talk seems to quiet, there is news like this. This is former OK Senator David Boren in this morning's NY Times suggesting that if the prospective party nominees failed to embrace bipartisanship within two months, "I would be among those who would urge Mr. Bloomberg to very seriously consider running for president as an independent."

Voting begins

The Iowa caucuses are still three days away but voting has already begun in Florida, Georgia and nine other states in the form of absentee ballots. Floridians have been able to cast their absentee ballots since the day after Christmas. A couple of states are reporting extremely high absentee ballot volume.

Iowa and New Hampshire have been monopolizing the presidential candidates but on Thursday, caucus day in Iowa, Republican Rudy Giuliani will spend the day in Florida - as far as I know the only candidate who will be here that day.

A few of my favorite things

The AP has been offering up daily nuggets of trivia about the presidential candidates. I'll pass along today's: Favorite Electronic Gadgets.

Their answers
DEMOCRATS:
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: iPod
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards: iPod
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama: BlackBerry
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson: BlackBerry, "my Crackberry."

REPUBLICANS:
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: CD player
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: "Probably my laptop. Or my
bass guitar and amplifier."
Arizona Sen. John McCain: Razr cell phone and the TV remote
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney: BlackBerry
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson: iPod

OTHER
First Coast News anchor Shannon Ogden: TiVo, Wii and online airline check-in.

Bono Mack

Another item that didn't get a lot of attention this weekend was the marriage of Mary Bono to Republican Congressman Connie Mack who represents the Florida 14th - the Ft. Myers area. Bono is the widow of Sonny Bono and replaced him in Congress.

Congressman Mack, by the way, is the great grandson of Hall of Fame manager Connie Mack. Impress your friends at holiday parties with that fact.

McCain and Paul

A nice Monday capped a nice weekend for Republican presidential candidate John McCain. In case you have a life and missed it this weekend, the Arizona senator picked up endorsements from the Des Moines Register, Boston Globe and Portsmouth Herald. Both the Globe and Herald are influential in New Hampshire. Then today, Connecticut's former Democratic and now Independent senator Joe Lieberman endorsed the McCain. Lieberman, though independent in official party affiliation, caucuses with Dems and of course was the Dem VP nominee the last time around. He chose to back McCain over all Dem candidates including his fellow CT senator Chris Dodd.


Another Republican presidential hopeful had a strong weekend, too. Ten-term Texas Congressman Ron Paul took in a reported $6.2 million in online contributions Sunday. The Paul campaign continues to poll near the bottom of the pack but its enthusiastic following is keeping the money coming in. You'll recall on November 5,Paul took in $4.2 million in online contributions which was a single-day record for campaign money raised online.

Late last week I said I would be posting my interview with new Duval County Republican Party chairman John Falconetti. The interview had to be postponed and will now be done this Wednesday. I will make it available to you in its entirety soon after we shoot it.

Tomorrow afternoon I am interviewing the new chairman of the Duval County Republican Party, John Falconetti. I'll post the entire unedited interview Thursday or Friday. It should be interesting.

Email me if you have any questions you'd like me to ask him.

sogden@firstcoastnews.com

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The days are short. There’s a chill in the air. Bell ringers greet us as we shuffle into the stores. That can only mean one thing: BARNEY CAM TIME!

Barney cam is the best worst thing on the World Wide Web during the holidays. If you aren’t familiar with it the simple explanation is it’s a video featuring President Bush’s dog Barney at the White House during the holidays. If my memory is correct it started out being basically a dog’s-eye tour of the holiday decorations in the White House. But it has evolved into little movies, this year's centered around a plot about Barney and his pal becoming Junior Park Rangers. The White House holiday theme this year is our National Parks.

It is corny in the way of the worst school filmstrips and embarrassingly cheesy. And terrific.

The highlight is always the cameos. This year’s installment features the president, the First Twins, First Lady, a cabinet member, former world leader and surprise guests. And every year I wonder the same thing: How in the world does the person who makes these videos make these videos? What is protocol for interrupting those running the country to ask if they can please deliver lines to a Scottish Terrier in the Map Room?

“Mr. Secretary I know you are crafting response policy to the sub-prime mortgage crisis… but if you could just say, ‘What’s that Barney? You want to be a Junior Park Ranger but don’t know where to begin to learn about all of our nearly 400 National Parks? Well, come with me!’ And really sell it, sir. Really make me believe you are talking to the dog... No, look down here when you deliver your lines, sir. Down here... OK, now again, but this time really punch the 400 NATIONAL PARKS line.”

Anyway, Happy Holidays. Enjoy.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/holiday/2007/barneycam.html

An addendum

Remember like an hour ago when I was complaining about the reporters in Iowa and New Hampshire having all the fun? I would like to retract that. Iowa is coated in ice. It's an inch thick in some places. Sixty thousand people have no power. There will be no "Deal or No Deal" for them tonight. Huckabee had to cancel events in Iowa. Edwards canceled, too. Mrs. Ann Romney was forced to postpone as well as Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton. Though I'm almost positive they weren't all supposed to appear at the same event.

Anyway, here it's currently partly cloudy and 66 degrees after a sunny high in the low 80s. And Deal or No Deal is on.

Many people are rightly critical of the media focusing too much on the horse race of the presidential race. Let me further irritate those people with the latest ABC News-Washington Post poll. It just crossed the wires. Margin of error is plus or minus 3.

DEMOCRATS
Hillary Rodham Clinton, 53 percent
Barack Obama, 23 percent
John Edwards, 10 percent
------
REPUBLICANS
Rudy Giuliani, 25 percent
Mike Huckabee, 19 percent
Mitt Romney, 17 percent
Fred Thompson, 14 percent
John McCain, 12 percent

As I grab a quick bite to eat at my desk tonight ("movie-style" microwave buttered popcorn. What "movie-style" means I have no idea. Overpriced and served by an indifferent 16 year old?) I can't help feel a little envious of the reporters in Iowa and New Hampshire. They are knee-deep in presidential candidates.

As campaign territory, Florida right now reminds me of a scene in an old Western. Picture a recently abandoned town. Not a soul in sight. The squeaky doors of the otherwise silent saloon swing in the hot, dusty wind. The occasional tumbleweed lumbers by. Where is everybody? Did the well dry up? Did Calvera and his men scare everybody off?

We are roughly a month and a half from Florida’s presidential primary. Florida! The decider, more or less, of the last two presidential elections. The state with 27 big fat juicy electoral votes up for grabs next November, the most of any of the states generally considered toss-ups. This is Florida! So where are all the candidates? That’s a rhetorical question. I know they are in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and occasionally Nevada. We do see a trickle of Republicans now and then. Huckabee and Thompson were in south Florida today and yesterday I believe. And by the way, Huckabee picked up the endorsement of House Speaker Marco Rubio while he was here. But where are the Democrats? They lost this state the last two times around. You’d expect them to be thick as flies buzzing around our meeting halls and breakfast joints begging for our attention.

What happened of course is that some powerful people felt the state got lost in the shuffle with a March primary last time. So to raise the state's profile to better match its actual power lawmakers voted to move up the primary date to the spotlight-stealing January 29th. But the DNC didn't like the early spotlight here. It likes it where it has always been - New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina. And to make sure it stayed there the national party essentially forbade candidates from campaigning in Florida until after the primary.

You know all this already. I am just reminding myself why it’s so darn quiet here. As a journalist, I’m ready for Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen to ride in and get all this business settled so the candidates will come back.

It also reminds me to rent The Magnificent Seven this weekend. And to bring a sandwich or something tomorrow night. This popcorn really isn't doing it for me.

Huck and Me

As I look at the most recent polls which have Mike Huckabee atop the GOP heap in both Iowa and South Carolina, I think about the first times I met the affable former Arkansas governor. He was then the affable lieutenant governor of Arkansas and I was the affable but clumsy rookie reporter just out of college. It was my first TV news reporting job and his first statewide office. Neither of us yet seemed to have firm footing in our jobs.

I remember standing microphone in hand at the back of a room watching some ceremony (something having to do with a new college president maybe?) and the brand new lieutenant governor was standing next to me. After the event wrapped up he inquired genuinely, Should I say something to you about this? I genuinely responded, “I guess?” And I put my microphone in front of his face and we stumbled through an “interview.”

Several years and television jobs later I found myself once again working in Arkansas and by then Huckabee had ascended to governor. Governor Huckabee invited a few of us to lunch at the mansion. He had recently gotten a new chocolate lab and went upstairs to get him to show him off. The dog came barreling down the stairs ahead of the governor and greeted us. Scruffing his head (the dog’s not the governor’s) I joked, “What’s his name? Buddy, is it?” The “joke” was that a previous resident of this mansion who did not share the current occupant’s political affiliation, famously had a chocolate lab named Buddy. And my joke went over like a lead balloon. As soon as I spoke what was no more than a throw-away line, all of Huckabee’s aids went dead silent, dead serious and stared at their boss waiting for indication of how to respond to this heretic-buffoon (me, not the dog). The governor paused just long enough to make me think I was about to be shown the gubernatorial door and then burst into laughter waving his hands and shouting “No! No! No! No way! This is Jet!” Crisis averted. I got to finish dessert.