CL spoke briefly with Bill McCollum last night after his combative debate with his GOP gubernatorial challenger Rick Scott at WTVT-Fox 13's studios in Tampa.
Perhaps buoyed by a Mason-Dixon poll released earlier Thursday that showed him down by only 6% to Scott, 37%-31%, and the fact that as a lifelong politico he's skilled at debates (and wish he would have more opportunities like he did Thursday night to show off his skills), the Attorney General was feeling good as he met with supporters at a get together afterwards at Beef O'Brady's on MacDill Avenue in South Tampa.
Although much of the debate – too much, critics have contended – revolved around Scott's involvement with Columbia/HCA, McCollum said he was more interested in talking about the latest development's on another Scott business, Solantic.
McCollum admitted that the debate didn't feature nearly enough discussion on public policy, laying some of the blame for that on the moderator, WTVT-Fox 13's news anchor John Wilson.
"it became a little disappointing because we didn’t talk about some of the issues like education, water, transportation, health care, jobs got a little bit," he confessed.
McCollum admits he's still trailing in the polls, and considering this will likely be the last time he's in the same room with his opponent, he said he had to go for broke, as he busted out the boxing metaphors.
"When you have a fellow spending $40, $50 million against you , for awhile you have to take some punches, so you’ve got to hold your powder, you gotta wait until you see him, and you gotta fire when you see the whites of his eyes and I think that’s how this campaign has had to go."
A week ago McCollum took a blow himself, when an appeals court ruled for Rick Scott, and denied McCollum what other Republicans have previously derided as "welfare for politicians", matching dollars if Scott busted the $24.9 million spending cap (which he now has). But he said last night in Tampa that with a little help from his friends, he'll be just fine.
"I think we do (have enough money). We’ve got a couple of million dollars in my campaign account, that we’ll spend the last two weeks," he said. " It’s a million dollars a week. It’s not quite as much as I’d like, but it buys state wide television for two weeks and then we do have the Florida Chamber of Commerce running an ad now that has some power behind it that’s very favorable, and we’re raising some money for an outside group Florida First Initiatives, that should run one or two more ads I hope."
McCollum was also the recipient today of a fawning column written by Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel, who praised the AG for his lawsuit against the federal health care bill.
And on that lawsuit, McCollum held a news conference in the capital today to announce that he and the 19 other attorneys general and governors who have joined his lawsuit have now filed a response to the Department of Justice's motion to dismiss the case.
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2010.