At times during Tuesday night's U.S. Senate debate at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale , all three candidates seemed more stressed than they have at any point during this long campaign.
Both Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek are running out of time, as it appears at this point that Marco Rubio is all but unstoppable, leading his opponents to grow bolder in calling in each other out — Crist on Rubio, Meek on Crist.
For Crist, his go-for-broke moment came when he mentioned Rubio selling his first home to a woman named Nora Cereceda, whose son at the time was, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, aggressively lobbying Rubio over a state insurance issue. The paper reported last month that:
Nora Cereceda paid $380,000 cash for the house, a $205,000 profit for Rubio at a time when the market had begun to drop.
A man who answered the door at the house recently said Nora Cereceda was not home. She did not return a message left at the house.
Dr. Cereceda lives on the same street. He told news organizations at the time that his mother wanted to live close to him.
The sale price was comparable to other sales at the time, but the home value has since dropped nearly in half, to $215,403, according to the county property appraiser's website.
Shortly after Dr. Cereceda's mother purchased the home, Rubio removed the House's block on the insurance provision and voted for it himself. Governor Crist and the Senate had already come out in favor of the bill and Rubio was the main holdout.
Rubio countered, claiming Crist had "just launched a vicious personal attack." He then attacked Crist in turn, repeating his line from Friday's debate in Tampa that the governor was a phony with his pox-on-both-houses centrist stance, claiming he only went indie when his pollster said it was the only way he had a chance to win the Senate seat.
This article appears in Oct 14-20, 2010.