Knowing that he's down in his race against Rick Scott for the race for the GOP nomination for governor, Bill McCollum knew he had to go for broke Thursday night in what could be the last debate between the two candidates before the August 24 primary.
McCollum was relentless in trying to bring up the biggest vulnerability that is part of the Scott legacy, his involvement as CEO with the health care company Columbia/HCA, which was hit with a record $1.7 billion Medicare fine after he resigned from the company in 1997.
At one point in the debate McCollum, clearly exasperated, said to Scott, "I know what I'm doing. You don't know what you're doing, and you don't know what you're talking about." That, in a sentence, was McCollum's theme throughout the hour-long debate anchored by WTVT-Fox 13 in Tampa. Almost condescending at times, McCollum no doubt won the contest, since he was sharper in his message and what he was trying to accomplish.
Scott was on defense throughout, basically responding to McCollum's fusillade of charges simply by responding that his opponent is a career politician who doesn't get it. He repeatedly answered the criticisms about what happened at Columbia/HCA by saying that he should have hired more auditors at the company, but that he took responsibility, adding that politicians (like his opponent) "are never responsible."
If we are still considered to be in the era of the Tea Party, clearly, more than Marco Rubio, Scott is a product of the times and the culture. Although McCollum is as dull as it gets, he clearly is an adult who knows his way around government. But in 2010, that's a handicap that Scott has been able so far to exploit with the electorate.
After awhile, the questions and responses about Columbia/HCA became a bit excessive, and there seemed not to be enough about substance, such as what each man might do if elected governor. McCollum did toss off his various plans on trying to regenerate the state's stagnant economy, while Scott spoke about his 7-7-7 plan, a plan that McCollum again charged was a rip-off of his own plans, saying that perhaps he should be flattered that Scott had attempted to imitate him (McCollum also said that Scott ripped off his plan to have the state use the E-Verify program for employers to vet if their workers are undocumented or not).
Speaking of illegal immigration, a subject that has helped catapult Scott to his leading man status in the race, the two got into a back and forth about what Scott called McCollum's shifting positions on the issue. It is true, and McCollum agreed, that he initially said Florida did not need Arizona's law. He then shifted his position. But Scott has proven to be the tough guy on the issue, and in a GOP primary that's helped tremendously.
At least until now. According to a Mason-Dixon Poll released Thursday, however, Hispanic Republicans are now coming home to McCollum.
Hispanic Republicans favor McCollum over Scott by a 3-1 margin, which now is keeping McCollum in the race," said Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, which conducted the poll. "Perhaps Hispanic Republicans have been put off by Scott's use of immigration as a wedge issue in the primary, while McCollum has communicated a position quite similar to that of Marco Rubio, which gives him some cover among Florida's Cuban Republican community."
