The Rick Scott bus tour continues today when the GOP gubernatorial candidate makes his way to Ybor City for lunch at the Columbia restaurant.
Yesterday in Sarasota, Scott heard from a citizen who complained about the negative rhetoric that he and Bill McCollum have been exchanging in their television ads. That followed a similar question that we heard Tuesday night in Tampa. This was the question that Rosemarie Currie from Venice asked Scott yesterday:
"Would it be possible," Currie asked Scott, "for you and Bill McCollum to sit down and make an agreement to stop the negative advertising? I feel its pretty much helping Alex Sink sink our chances."
If you believe a new poll released yesterday from the Public Policy Institute, Scott has a solid, 14% lead over the Attorney General, 43% to 29%. This poll is not an outlier. Two polls last month, the Florida Chamber of Commerce survey and Quinnipiac showed Scott leading McCollum as well, by a 5% and 13% margin, respectively.
With over 4 weeks to go, it's too early for Team McCollum to begin panicking, though they know, even with their 527 friends they're not going to be able to outspend Scott on the airwaves.
Windy March in the Tribune quotes a McCollum campaign staffer saying sort of the obvious:
McCollum strategist Shannon Gravitte said the campaign's own polling "indicates that the more Republicans learn about Rick Scott, the more troubled they become," over the fraud case and Scott's lack of knowledge and experience in government.
"It's inconceivable that Florida Republicans would elect a man whose claim to fame is having orchestrated the largest taxpayer ripoff in history," she said.
"The only people celebrating if Rick Scott emerges from this primary are the Democrats, who will face one of the most flawed candidates in the history of Florida politics."
Gravitte is right. The most notable thing known about Rick Scott, other than his role in spending millions in trying to thwart health care reform both last year and in the 1990's, was his dubious role as the former head of Columbia/HCA, which was nailed with a $1.7 billion fine on Medicare fraud charges, though Scott himself escaped any criminal or civil penalties.
She's also correct that Alex Sink, Karen Thurman, and the rest of the Democratic Party establishment is enjoying the battle, especially that the Public Policy Institute earlier this week showed Sink with leads over both men for the first time this year, a trend that should continue at least until the end of the primary, as McCollum will need to hit harder at Scott, while hoping that he makes more rookie mistakes on the campaign trail.
Scott flirted with one yesterday when he was asked to comment on the whole "birther" issue, as a citizen in the Villages last night asked about Barack Obama's birth certificate, an issue amongst die hard haters of the President refuses to die. According to the Orlando Sentinel
After confessing to the crowd he’d never gotten that question before — and wasn’t sure precisely how the practice of getting a presidential candidate on the ballot worked — he said, “I’ll have to look into it.”
That response was pretty weak, and you can bet Scott would pay a price for it if this was the general election. But it's not, it's a GOP primary. So maybe it wasn't so weak.
This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2010.