It's official: Dave Aronberg is going to run for attorney general. I think the kid's got a chance (we're almost the same age, but he just seems so sparklingly fresh, this guy). Someone yesterday actually uttered those fantastical words... could Aronberg become... the first... Jewish governor of Florida? He's got that kind of a star arc, I tell you (though he and Dan Gelber are on a collision course to split the base and allow Rod Smith or some other North Florida yahoo to get the Democratic nod in the AG thing). Aronberg also has a secret weapon: Gov. Charlie Crist. Our now-married wannabe U.S. senator is a huge fan of Aronberg's. Check this out from a 2007 Palm Beach Post piece:
"About anything Sen. Aronberg does is important to me," gushed Gov. Charlie Crist about Greenacre's Dave Aronberg.
"The guy is brilliant. I mean, he's almost a rock star. I have such great respect for him. He's just a good, decent man. Almost everything I can think of that he has ever promoted or pushed has been something I'm able to support gladly."
Um, actually, the question Crist was responding to was about a particular Aronberg bill that would deal with the problem of sexual predators living under a bridge in Miami for want of available housing beyond 2,500 feet of a school or bus stop.
What did Crist think of that Aronberg bill (SB 2646)? "Well, I need to review it a little bit more, but given the sponsor? I'm sure it's probably very good."
Ooooh. It looks like somebody has a crush. "Almost a rock star"? Hey, Aronberg is a promising politico (and a self-avowed Daily Pulp reader, by the way), but these two guys -- a couple of the most intriguing metrosexuals in Florida politics -- aren't even in the same party. It's obvious that Good Time Charlie wouldn't mind seeing Aronberg as AG, so you have to wonder: Will Crist ever come out publicly, for all the world to see, with his support for Aronberg in a real political race?
-- One of our favorite Sun-Sentinel scribes (editor, now), Phoebe Flowers, did some late-night Pulping last night and left this comment about Sun-Sentinel "Print Platform Manager" Phil Ward (or I think that's his title):
I'd also like to randomly (because there is no other way I know) add that the perpetually eviscerated Philip Ward is in possession of what has got to be the flat-out sexiest accent in all of journalism. (I say this as a friend of his wife. And as somehow who suspects Fred Grimm will be hurt that I'm singling out Philip in this category.) But seriously, people. You just listen to that honey-and-whiskey Southern drawl and you tell me then how Philip lacks value. Just try. (This opinion, and my public voicing of it, was of course a written, legally contracted stipulation of my continued employment at Sun Sentinel Co. It had absolutely nothing to do with luck, competence, professional versatility, supermorelots luck, my obsessively prescriptivist approach to usage, luck, being a control-freak bitch, and/or luck. Please make sure to pass on this rumor about my Ward accentlust until it is accepted as total fact.)
There, it's passed along. I've heard Ward's voice before. He once called me on the phone out of the blue and told me that he was tired of watching me break big stories and that he wanted me to break them for the Sun-Sentinel instead. That didn't work out for the Sentinel, obviously (I wasn't going to leave the best job in South Florida journalism for a place that's afraid of its own shadow). But the man did have his small charms.
