Federal District court Judge Robert Hinkle Wednesday afternoon ruled against Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott’s attempt to ban his opponent, Bill McCollum from collecting public financing money if Scott spends more than $24.9 million, which his attorney have already said Scott intend to do soon.

Florida’s election laws allow for gubernatorial candidates to qualify for dollar-for-dollar public financing once a candidate breaks the spending limit, which going into this year’s race was $24.9 million, an amount that Scott said he would adhere to when he qualified for the ballot.

But that was perhaps before he realized that by the fact that he has spent so much so soon, he has catapulted into the lead over the much more experienced and better known McCollum, for a year now considered the Florida Republican party’s establishment candidate.

The upshot?  McCollum will be able to collect what he and other Republicans , such as Jeb Bush, have derided as “welfare for politicians.”  It’s something that the state GOP, which as a whole is solidly behind the establishment candidate  McCollum, has loudly spoken out against, but you can bet your as bottom dollar they’re grateful for it now.

That’s despite the fact that in their ire to eliminate the 1986 law forever, state lawmakers in Tallahassee have already voted to allow Floridians to repeal the law , listed as Amendment One, on this November’s ballot.

The Scott camp says they’ll appeal:

“We are disappointed with today’s result but we intend to seek appeal of the Court’s ruling on an expedited basis to the 11th Circuit to defend Rick Scott’s First Amendment rights. Today’s ruling is unfortunate and a setback for the First Amendment and Florida taxpayers.”

Recent polls show Scott and McCollum to be close to even.  The most recent survey, from Reuters/Ipsos did not reveal the breakdown between the two, but did show presumed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink up (for the first time) against McCollum, but down slightly to Scott.

Also today, McCollum announced that in his daytime job as Attorney General he has gone ahead and had the state join with eight other states in an amicus brief supporting the Arizona immigration law, currently being challenged in federal court by the Justice Department.

“I support the current law in Arizona, and I support efforts to see a

similar law brought to our state,” said Attorney General McCollum. “Seeing

no action or leadership from the federal authorities, Arizona has every

right to move to protect its citizens, and for this they are being sued by

the President.”

Anti-illegal immigration rhetoric has been a boost to Republican across the country this summer, and certainly has been a factor in Scott’s rise to the top of the polls.  Earlier today Florida Republicans Kevin Ambler and Paula Dockery announced their plans to introduce an anti undocumented immigrant bill next week in the special session beginning July 20.

This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2010.