If one had to issue out a quick description to describe the message that each of the candidates pounded home in the first prime time debate of the 2010 U.S. Senate race, it would be this:
Marco Rubio: I'm running because I'm against the stimulus and the health care reform bill. If you want more of that in Washington, vote for one of the other two guys.
Charlie Crist : Marco Rubio is a member of the radical extreme right. You've got the radical right and the radical left, and then there's me.
Kendrick Meek: I'm the only guy who'll fight for the middle class in Washington.
Moderated by ABC's George Stephanopoulous, who was flanked by ABC 28's Brendan McLaughlin and former Fox-13 reporter Craig Patrick, the debate was stimulating, with some trash talking supplied by Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek, both clearly going after the undisputed front runner, Marco Rubio.
Rubio stayed on message throughout, which included lots of bashing of the stimulus and the health care reform bill. Considering that both are considered unpopular with the majority of the American public (regardless of whether that's fair or not), it was a winning strategy that probably did him no harm.
Only once did his issues with his own personal spending with his Republican Party of Florida become an issue, but what was a bigger one was he and Crist arguing over who came up with a leaner budget when Rubio was House Speaker.
In particular, Crist knocked Rubio for one earmark, where he claimed several times that Rubio requested $800,000 in the budget to provide astroturf in South Florida where he played flag football.
Despite Rubio's post debate press release listing that comment as one of 7 Crist lies during the debate, PoliFact ruled that it was actually half-true. However, as blogger Gary Fineout referenced during the debate, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune last December listed a slew of items that Rubio championed that could be considered earmarks.
Trailing badly in the polls as he has all year long once Charlie Crist went indie, Kendrick Meek had the most ground to gain, and had several impressive moments, none better than when he was defending the health care bill. He mocked Charlie Crist's Cover Florida plan, and blasted the longtime Republicans as being uncaring when it came to those who lose their insurance benefits.
He also had the best and maybe worst lines of the night. The winner was when he denounced Crist as "standing on a wet paper bag," alluding to his constantly shifting positions. But when he hammered the Governor at the end for his just extremely schizophrenic stance on gay adoption, he ended up calling him "the George Wallace of gay adoptions," which came across as mean and excessively partisan (Though Meek was totally correct in blasting the Governor for flipping to his pro adoption stance for gays recently, all part of his white paper where he suddenly decided to declare his support for LGBT rights, in the waning months of his term in office).
When asked about his ever changing position on the health care bill, Crist was at his worst, saying he was against it, before talking about the provisions he digs (such as banning insurance companies from dropping patients with pre-existing conditions, being able to keep children up to age 26 on their parents insurance plan), and then saying he didn't like the mandate or that it intends to take out $500 billion of Medicare Advantage (which Bill Nelson fought against).
This article appears in Oct 7-13, 2010.