Kevin Cate moves to campaign trail, joining Ausley's camp

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink's spokesman Kevin Cate is leaving the administration side to the return to the campaign trail, where he will be campaign spokesman for Loranne Ausley, former Democrat Tallahassee state rep. and candidate for CFO.

Cate, who headed up President Barack Obama's north Florida regional effort, will start working with the campaign in early August. Ausley is facing Senate President Jeff Atwater in the down-ballot race. Both have little name recognition and offer plenty of challenges for their campaign spokes people to get attention. The ballot is heavy with higher profile big fights in the U.S. Senate and the gov's mansion. 

Ausley pulls down $203k

More fundraising numbers! In a down-ballot race that doesn't get much ink this time of year, Democrat Loranne Ausley pulled down a strong $203,000 last quarter, compared with Jeff Atwater's $246,000.

Ausley is still pretty far behind Atwater in the money totals: She has $507,000 on hand compared with Atwater's $2.1 million. We'll see after the next few fundraising reports if Ausley can close the gap.

UPDATE: Our original post had Ausley raising $317,000. Using the Department of State's fundraising site, we erroneously included that number for her cash contributions, but that figure also includes in-kind donations. The post has been updated to reflect this.

Public financing winners: McCollum, Atwater, Gelber

The public financing totals are out. Here are the big ones: Bill McCollum got $1.26 million, Jeff Atwater got $492,000 and Dan Gelber got $353,000. There are also some big names with $0 listed, including Alex Sink, who has said she is still deciding whether to accept public funds.

Other candidates with no public money listed who would otherwise be eligible include: Dave Aronberg, Loranne Ausley and Scott Maddox. Common thread? All Democrats. We're on the case to find out why.

Voters undecided in statewide 2010 races

A new Ron Sachs/Mason-Dixon poll shows wide open races for statewide offices with few voters confident about which candidate to elect. (Here are the findings.)

Take the race for Attorney General: voters are 73 percent undecided in the Democratic primary (feature Sen. Dan Gelber verse Sen. Dave Aronberg) and 72 percent undecided in the three-way Republican primary (which pits Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp against prosecutor Pam Bondi and former agency head Holly Benson).

The most intriguing figures come in the Agriculture Commissioner election where the poll tested a the match-up between Republican U.S. Rep. Adam Putnam and former Tallahassee mayor Scott Maddox, a Democrat. It's a deadlock with Maddox at 31 percent, Putnam at 30 percent and undecideds at 39 percent. (The margin of error is 4 percent for this question.)

"The huge number of undecided voters is really where this election rests," said PR guru Ron Sachs, whose firm isn't representing any candidates.

First quarter fundraising roundup

Here are the highlights of the official first quarter fundraising numbers that came out last night. (With a helpful assist from Christina Johnson over at On3PR)

Toplines in the governor's race: Republican Bill McCollum raised just less than 1.4 million in the first three months of 2010, compared with Democrat Alex Sink's 1.1 million. Sink still holds the overall edge in campaign cash, though, with $5 million on hand compared to $3.8 million for McCollum. GOP challenger Paula Dockery has $410,000 on hand. That figure includes $280,000 in personal cash she has put into her campaign.

An interesting note in the AG race. Days before the official numbers came out, Democratic Sen. Dan Gelber announced an impressive haul of $330,000. Turns out that number was pumped up with about $100,000 worth of in-kind contributions. His actual cash haul was $218,000.

Other AG candidates: Sen. Dave Aronberg took in $259,000 to use in the primary against Gelber. On the Republican side: Lt. Gov Jeff Kottkamp raised $232k, Pam Bondi raised $222k and Holly Benson raised $198k.

Senate President Jeff Atwater and Congressman Adam Putnam both opened up wider leads in their races for CFO and Agriculture Commissioner. Atwater took in $446,000 and has almost $2 million on hand. His Democratic challenger, Loranne Ausley has $346,000 on hand. Putnam had about $1.2 million on hand, while Democrat Scott Maddox has $314,000.