With just a week to go before the end of voting in Florida's midterm election, St. Peterburg House Democrat Bill Heller, feeling the heat against insurgent GOP challenger Jeff Brandes in the HD 52 race that is one of the most watched races statewide, attacked his opponent today at a Suncoast Tiger Bay meeting in St. Petersburg.

In a recent television ad Brandes accused Heller of raising property and small business taxes and suggested “he even wants to tax the Internet." (You can read more about that here.)

Prepared to engage,  and with a large contingent of supporters in the St. Petersburg Yacht Club loudly cheering for him, Heller fired back, first to attack Brandes on his initial TV ad that showed the candidate saying he wanted to take some people back "behind the woodshed" in Tallahassee.

"Who exactly are you planning to take behind the woodshed, and what are you going to do to them once you get them there?" Heller asked. "Because here's the thing. The main reason the St. Pete Times called you short on specifics, is that you talk more about being a member of Tallahassee's majority party, then about what you will do."

"You point to your party's registration as a reason to vote for you," he continued. "But all the problems you point to in Tallahassee… you understand, it is Republicans who have been in control for over a decade… these are the same folks paying for your ads and bankrolling your campaign, and these are the same people you're going to take behind the woodshed. Is that what we're supposed to believe?"

Heller said in his experience, people were weary of campaign rhetoric like "taking somebody to the woodshed." Demonstrating that he isn't a partisan Democrat, Heller boasted that he sponsored "the most expansive ethics legislation in decades, and I will do it again," adding that there are people on both sides of the aisle who would prefer that not happen. He also mentioned a corporate scholarship program for kids struggling in schools that he stood up for it, "my party did not appreciate it, but it was the right thing to do."

When Jeff Brandes was asked by a Tiger Bay member what distinguished him from Heller, he hit back on the taxes issue, saying he differed from his opponent because he believed the role of government is to be small.  "We know people are struggling, and to say that we can raise taxes and that we need more government now is exactly the opposite thing."

Heller immediately responded that he was not for more taxes or regulation, and said Brandes had no clue about what his record was.  "He just needs to get his facts right," he scolded him, sometimes talking directly into mic, making him louder than any of the other candidates in the room.

This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2010.