The two men vying for the Republican nomination for governor in Florida, Rick Scott and Bill McCollum, took their nasty campaign face-to-face in a televised debate last night. According to reports out of Florida, the debate was predictably brutal, with McCollum — on the ropes after Scott’s TV ad onslaught — attempting to tear down the frontrunner. For his part, Scott continued to rip at McCollum’s past, offering the same kind of rhetoric that has served him so well in his nearly $30 million ad campaign.
McCollum “was more aggressive than ever” in attacking Scott “for the Medicaid/Medicare fraud scandal during his time as CEO of the Columbia/HCA hospital corporation,” the AP reports.
Scott “took ‘responsibility’ for the fraud but stopped short of implicating himself,” the Miami Herald reports. Meanwhile the wealthy political outsider attacked McCollum’s political career, claiming his decades as an elected official have amounted to McCollum, in Scott’s words, “living off taxpayers and bringing nothing new to the table.”
All in all, the Herald reports, the debate “was largely an hour-long version” of each candidate’s TV ads.
That’s probably bad news for McCollum, who as the Ledger reported this weekend, needs to use the debates to damage Scott in advance of the August 24 primary. McCollum’s being badly outspent, and as the Ledger reported, his supporters were banking on debates like yesterday’s and another earlier in the week as a chance for the experienced politician to slow Scott’s momentum.
But McCollum is running out of chances to slow Scott’s roll. Scott is clearly prepared to let his ads do the talking from here on out — he has refused to face McCollum in a planned third debate that was to be broadcast statewide next week. That means that yesterday’s debate, which was broadcast only to the Tampa area of Florida, may have been McCollum’s last chance to take Scott on in front of the voters.
Watch the entire Tampa debate here.
