Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) refused to say if he knew that Florida’s attorney general asked to delay an execution of a condemned man because the timing of the execution overlapped with a political fundraiser (her own, to be precise).
Scott wouldn’t mention it his knowledge about the delay during a debate against former Gov. Rick Scott (D) on Tuesday night. He only said that the attorney general, Pam Bondi, asked for a delay.
“She asked me to delay it because it didn’t work with the dates that she thought it was going to be on,” Scott said. “She apologized. She apologized —what would you like her to do?”
Scott, The Huffington Post noted, delayed the execution of convicted murderer Marshall Lee Gore for three weeks after Bondi asked him to. Bondi eventually apologized and told Florida’s Tampa Bay Times that the execution had been stayed two times and that “we absolutely should not have requested that the date of the execution be moved.” The execution was conducted on October 1, 2013.
In 2013 Scott told the Times that he didn’t know why Bondi requested the delay. He refused to say whether he thought a political fundraiser was a good reason to delay an execution.
The TPM Polltracker finds Crist with a 1.2 point lead over Scott.
