In reviewing last night's gubernatorial debate in Broward County, you have to separate the bizarre opening dispute over Charlie Crist's fan that took place over the first seven minutes, vs. the actual content that followed over the next 43 minutes.
Regarding FanGate#, this is not the first time that Charlie Crist and his fan have provoked debate controversy. According to tweets by Florida political reporters last night, both Tom Gallagher in 2006 and Kendrick Meek in 2010 had similar issues with Crist's demand that he have a fan in place to keep him cool. But neither opponent made the dispute a big deal, and certainly didn't make it a national story by refusing to enter the stage for seven excruciating minutes.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have an extremely peculiar situation right now," moderator Eliot Rodriguez told the audience in a massive understatement.
Both sides seemed to be spinning massively afterwards about who was in the wrong. Crist adviser Dan Gelber issued a press release saying that he spoke with debate hosts "who indicated during an inaugural event (Candy Crowley) last week it was uncomfortable on the stage," adding that if there were still temperature problems Crist would be able to add the fan.
But the fact is Charlie Crist has an aide carrying his fan to virtually every event where he speaks, at press conferences, at TV interviews. This is nothing new.
Meanwhile, Marco Rubio said afterwards that the Scott camp had heard that Crist was going to cancel the debate if not allowed to bring out a fan. "So I think that Governor Scott was waiting to see if Charlie would actually pull that off or not," he said. Maybe true. But bad, bad optics. Killer optics.
Okay, on to the rest of the debate. I'm not sure who "won," but Governor Scott's problems as a public speaker certainly didn't help his cause. Seeing him at various campaign appearances this year, I'm frequently surprised that he hasn't improved as a public speaker since 2010. There are some politicians who aren't that skilled in performance. It's one thing when the governor isn't so sharp at a presser, but before a statewide audience, it can hurt.
Scott hammered how many jobs that he said Crist had lost during his 2007-2011 reign in office (832,000 jobs, if you didn't hear him say it. Again. And again). But he wasn't so strong when he had to defend refusing to expand Medicaid (which he said he supported last year). Instead he said that "I'm not willing to do what Charlie did and bankrupt our state," which was something of a non sequitur. "You don't bankrupt the state," Crist barked back. "You have to have a balanced budget."
There were many other statements made where it was difficult to figure out who was exactly telling the unvarnished truth. PolitFact Florida does break down four particular exchanges.
The next and final debate takes place next Tuesday in Jacksonville and will be televised on CNN.
In other news....
In the 'if you at first you don't succeed' category: the Hillsborough County Commission passed an "enhanced" domestic partner registry yesterday.
There've been some changes with the HART board...
And with Election Day just 19 days away, new television ads are airing every day in the Tampa Bay market. Yesterday we looked at CD15 Democrat Alan Cohn's first effort, as well as the Democratic Super PAC American Bridge 21st Century's attack on Rick Scott.
