![\"meek\"](\"http:\/\/liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com\/files\/2010\/03\/meek-259x194.jpg\" "\\"meek\\"")
MIAMI — As evidenced by Sunday’s\u00a0rancorous debate on “Fox News Sunday,” Florida Republicans are undergoing a bruising Senate primary process, while their likely Democratic challenger,Congressman Kendrick Meek, is keeping his powder dry while waiting for his general election opponent to emerge.<\/p>\n
Since announcing his candidacy for Senate in January 2009, Meek, a former highway patrol officer, has been campaigning relentlessly but without netting much national attention press attention. His Republican counterparts, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio and Gov. Charlie Crist, have been duking it out in one of the most acerbic primary battles of the 2010 election cycle.<\/p>\n
And while Crist and Rubo attract the majority of the media’s\u00a0focus, Meek patiently waits.<\/p>\n
During the Republican debate on “Fox News Sunday,” Meek’s name did not come up once in the 40 minutes that Rubio and Crist sparred. But the Florida Democrat was watching intently.<\/p>\n
“I saw the debate. I thought it had very little to do on the issues that people are facing in Florida and a lot about one another, but I am looking forward to hopefully being a part of the debate in the future,” Meek said in an interview with Fox News.\u00a0“I’m committed to the voters of the state of Florida, not national groups that gave endorsements to\u00a0the governor’s campaign and the speaker’s campaign. I’m working on issues today that will get more attention tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Meek, elected to Congress in 2002, has drawn attention to the strong fundraising foundation that he has amassed. The South Florida Democrat has about\u00a0the same cash on hand, $3.3 million, as Rubio, the Republican front-runner.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Meek became the first U.S. Senate candidate in Florida history to get his name on the ballot by collecting over 145,000 signatures statewide. Typically, a candidate pays a fee of $10,000 to officially qualify for November. This way, the Meek campaign has personally contacted over a hundred thousand names to use for their grassroots organization, and the effort gets him publicity. The petitions are\u00a0not the only significant, historical aspect of Meek’s Senate run: If elected,\u00a0he would be not only Florida’s first African-American U.S. senator but the first black senator elected in the South since Reconstruction.<\/p>\n
Asked who he’d rather face, Rubio or Crist, Meek replied that it didn’t matter — he is ready for a fight either way.<\/p>\n
“Put it this way: Whoever comes out of the Republican primary, we are ready to face,” he said before leaving for a campaign stop in Jacksonville. “I feel that I’m better than both of the candidates that are running, and we will continue to prepare ourselves for that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MIAMI — As evidenced by Sunday’s\u00a0rancorous debate on “Fox News Sunday,” Florida Republicans are undergoing a bruising Senate primary process, while their likely Democratic challenger,Congressman Kendrick Meek, is keeping his powder dry while waiting for his general election opponent to emerge. Since announcing his candidacy for Senate in January 2009, Meek, a former highway patrol […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5040,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-486101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5040"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}