As those of you who watched last night's CNN debate between Rick Scott and Alex Sink saw, Scott accused Sink after a commercial break of breaking the rules of the debate, which did not allow for any notes or campaign aides to be a part of the debate.
Sink said nothing after Scott's remarks, but hours after the debate ended, Sink stunningly fired the aide that sent the message to her. In a statement Sink released she said:
"After the debate tonight, one of my campaign advisors admitted he tried to communicate with me during one of the breaks,” Sink said.
“While he told me it was out of anger with Rick Scott's repeated distortion of facts, it was a foolish thing to do. It violated a debate agreement and I immediately removed him from the campaign. "
CNN reported that it was Sink aide Brian May, who actually signed the agreement before the debate that said there could be no notes or no communication with staffers, that was the guilty culprit.
But hold on a second here. Did Sink do this to show accountability? Did she feel she had to do something? Okay, so May shouldn't have sent the note on her smart phone. But couldn't have Sink told her make-up artist immediately "don't show that to me, it's against the rules?"
(You can see the whole incident here. We would show you the YouTube video, but for some strange reason the embedding code has been disabled).
Unfortunately for the CFO, this "cheating incident" is all over the blogosphere. But the reaction to fire her staffer seems to us a bit tone deaf. It may "satisfy" whomever was lusting for some action to be done here, but it just seems to have made the story bigger.
Interesting to see by the way that Sink is scheduled to appear this morning on Miami black radio with Bishop Vincent T. Curry, who lambasted the Democratic candidate for blowing him off last week (which we reported on that yesterday).
Apparently realizing that she can ill afford to alienate a crucial constituency with her party, Sink is attempting to make amends today by reappearing on the show.
Oh, and remember the debate itself? A pretty nasty affair all around. We wrote a review up immediately afterwards, which you can read here. We stand by our initial impressions - frankly, Rick Scott is never smooth, but he seemed to get in all the points he wanted to, while Sink seemed very programmed, and not very loose or spontaneous at all, which did not come across well on the small screen.
