Realizing that the hour is late for his faltering campaign, Charlie Crist was determined in Sunday morning's latest U.S. Senate debate to put Marco Rubio on the spot regarding his failure to fully account for expenditures he put on a Republican Party of Florida American Express card back in 2005-2006.
The St. Pete Times on Friday reported once again on some of the seeming contradictions that Rubio has between his public persona of wanting to reduce federal spending in Washington, and his own profligacy with state party money, which he has insisted was never used to purchase personal items.
The exchange began after Governor Crist was trying to (again) deflect accusations of massive flip flopping in the past year on several key issues:
CRIST: Well, let's talk about another article that was in the St. Pete Times…
RUBIO: … and picked up the phone…
CRIST: … about the job you got…
RUBIO: … and called the pollster, and pollster told him you have a better chance of running as an independent.
CRIST: You traded tax money to get two jobs at a university and a hospital…
RUBIO: Can I – can I…
CRIST: by steering millions of dollars to…
RUBIO: That's categorically false…
CRIST: If people at home make $165,000 – I don't, and I'm the governor of Florida.
But he traded money to get it.
That was in the St. Pete Times, too.
RUBIO: That is a false accusation. Not only is that a false accusation but it's been a trend in this campaign. Any time we get into the issues, the governor wants to turn it into something else because he's wrong on the issues.
CRIST: Why won't you release your RPOF credit card and clear this up?
RUBIO: On the ideologue issue, as of today, I have now been…
CRIST: And why is there a federal investigation into your reporting income?
RUBIO: This is just one litany of falsehoods after another.
CROWLEY: Well, why don't you – maybe he would let you – why don't you – can you answer this question, and then we'll…
CRIST: … across the state of Florida for the past year.
SMITH: Why not release the full IRS records, the full credit card statements from you charged on the card?
RUBIO: Adam, these questions have been answered now since February. My tax returns are public. I've gone well beyond the point of disclosure. The bottom line is people want to focus on these issues because they're wrong on the important issues. This country has a $13.5 trillion debt.
CRIST: He doesn't want to release them because he doesn't believe in transparency. I created the Office of Open Government in the governor's office for the first time in the history of our state.
RUBIO: I've never had a heckler at the debate. I've always had them in the audience.
CRIST: That's the way it is. Welcome to the NFL.
SMITH: Go ahead. Let him finish.
RUBIO: I apologize. I mean, I've had this heckler going on for two minutes now. Here's what I'd like to be able to tell you about ideology and all this talk about – this is a national talking point now that the Democrats have adopted across the country.
As you can see from the beginning of this section of the transcript, there was a significant amount of cross-talk happening, but Crist was determined to once again have Rubio respond on the record to charges that he was fiscally irresponsible with party money, and that there is an investigation by the I.R.S. into his finances (Rubio has consistently denied this, but the Times/Herald reported that earlier this year that that is the case).
The debate, which began at the early starting time of 9 a.m. live from the Marshall Center on the USF Tampa campus and broadcast worldwide by CNN, started off relatively slow and with no real interesting exchanges for those who have watched earlier candidate forums. But it definitely heated up towards the end.
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2010.