Yes, I’m in mourning today.  I’ve never been particularly fond of Florida (except for the weather from Dec-March), but the next few years will be particularly awful here.

Although the Governor’s race hasn’t officially been called, as of this writing -at 9:40am Wednesday morning and 99% of the precincts reporting, Rick Scott is in the lead with 2,553,434 votes (49%) to Alex Sink’s 2,500,510 votes (48%).  Ms. Sink has a press conference scheduled for 10:30 this morning.  Unfortunately, I think it’ll be her concession speech.

Want to know a bit more about our presumptive governor?  Here’s what the Broward New Times had to say:

If your ex-con boyfriend slaps you around when you ask why he emptied out your bank account and then you take him back, everyone knows you’ve given him permission to rob and hurt you again.

That’s the message voters gave Republican Rick Scott yesterday when they elected a man to the governor’s mansion who oversaw the biggest Medicaid fraud in the nation’s history.

Throughout the campaign, reporters asked Scott whether he took credit for the fraud
Columbia/HCA committed while he was its CEO. Scott’s answer was that his underlings didn’t keep him in the loop, yet he took credit for the company’s successes during his tenure. At best, that’s malfeasance, and at worst it’s criminal.

Yet it appears Scott has clinched the race. Final results haven’t been announced, and Scott has yet to declare victory. But the remaining absentee ballots and uncounted precincts appear to be not enough to give Democrat Alex Sink a victory.

Scott ran Columbia/HCA for ten years before resigning in 1997 amid an FBI probe. The company’s scam was a simple bookkeeper’s skim job — overcharge the government for Medicaid procedures and reap the excess profits. The company later paid a $1.7 billion fine but avoided criminal charges. Scott also was never charged, despite overseeing the Medicaid rigging.

(More here)

Marco Rubio is the Senator-elect.  But he likely won’t hold that seat very long, as he’ll likely be running and, if last night’s trend continues, for VP in 2012 or 2016 at the latest.

We lost one of the best members of the House of Representatives, as “Taliban” Dan Webster unseated Alan Grayson.  I’m sick about that.  And here in my district, another criminal was elected. The unthinkable has happened with Allen West heading to Washington.

More about Florida on today’s show, along with the rest of what happened yesterday.

Howie Klein will join in for the post-mortem, and will shine the spotlight on one of the positive aspects of the outcome… “Blue Dogs Wiped Out!”

And in hour two, I’ll be joined by Dante Chimmi,  journalist and author of the new book, “Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth About the ‘Real’ America… The 12 community types that make up our nation”