As a metaphor for the absurdist ethos that has permeated the lowdown GOP gubernatorial contest between Bill McCollum and Rick Scott, look no further than a couple of events that happened last week in Tallahassee.
First, an angry Scott did something he'd avoided most of the campaign — he held a press event during which he would actually take questions from reporters. He was set to accuse McCollum of abusing his power by instructing state investigators to look into Scott's company, Solantic Urgent Care. But before he began, he was confronted at the podium by a gentleman who deposited a piece of paper in his hands.
The visitor was a process server, there to deliver a subpoena for a lawsuit (one of many) regarding Solantic.
A day later in the state capitol, McCollum held a news conference to unveil new language for an anti-illegal immigration bill that the FL attorney general boasted would be the envy of Arizona. The next day a Mason-Dixon poll showed that for the first time in months, McCollum held a lead over Scott heading into the August 24 primary.
The results came out exactly a week after McCollum dominated Scott in the second and last televised debate of their bitter primary campaign.
An hour after that debate ended, surrounded by supporters and other well-wishers in a South Tampa sports bar, the 66-year-old AG had reason to feel confident. He had put Scott on the defensive, focusing the hour-long forum on what remains a huge vulnerability in his surprising challenger's resume — that is, the ultimate fate of the giant health care network Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America, a chain of hospitals that grew exponentially in the '80s and '90s but was ultimately fined $1.7 billion for federal Medicare fraud. McCollum and friends felt on this summer night as if they had finally turned the tide in their uphill battle to catch up to Scott, who has carpet-bombed the airwaves since entering the race in April, holding on to a double-digit lead in most polls throughout the summer.
Despite the advantages of being a rich non-"career politician" in 2010, Scott's disadvantages — such as his lack of debate skills and policy acumen — were exposed, as was his lack of specific knowledge of government the following day at a Transportation Builders Conference in Orlando.
While McCollum (and Democratic candidate Alex Sink) discussed how the Panama Canal widening project could open up Asian markets to Florida in the coming years, Scott stuck with the familiar — a quick recitation of his biography. He only mentioned transportation when asked during a follow up Q&A.
Though GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio's name has been invoked all year by political pundits as a living example of the influence of the Tea Party movement, in fact it's Scott's startling ascendancy (despite the lack of endorsements from the entire Florida Republican establishment) that is truly the manifestation of the grass-roots conservative movement's power.
Tony DiMatteo is a Pinellas County state committeeman, and the former chair of the local party. A supporter of McCollum, he says that he knows a bunch of Rick Scott enthusiasts, and says of them bemusedly, "I think they just want to change the world."
DiMatteo says that he's given speeches this year to various Tea Party groups, and though he thinks it's great that this is the first time many of them have been engaged in the political process, he believes that "sometimes the zealotry is misplaced."
In addition to voter discontent and his extensive bank account (he had spent over $40 million from his own funds and those of third-party 527s by mid-August), Rick Scott's sudden rise also can be attributed in part to the failure of McCollum, the presumptive favorite, to engage the electorate.
Former USF St-Pete Political Science professor Daryl Paulson sums it up. "People are looking for a candidate that they can relate to and that they like, and that's a problem that McCollum has always had — a lack of likability."
McCollum is literally a career politician, having first been elected to Congress in the Orlando area 30 years ago this fall. After leaving his Congressional seat in 2000, he ran and lost to Bill Nelson for the Senate, and lost again in the GOP Senate primary to Mel Martinez in 2004. But the third time was the charm statewide for McCollum in 2006, when he was elected attorney general on a platform of cyber crime-fighting and anti-gang violence.
In that 2004 bitter primary loss to Martinez, he was bizarrely accused by some Christian conservatives of being too liberal, because in Congress he had voted to extend federal hate crimes legislation to cover sexual orientation.
Since then, McCollum has fought a lonely fight to keep Florida the only state in the nation that bans adoption by same-sex couples. He went even further in an interview with the Florida Baptist Witness, where he spoke in favor of banning gays from being foster parents, which would reverse current law.
When asked at a campaign appearance by CL to elaborate, he said, "I think the best thing for children is to have a man and a woman, a mother and a father, not gay parents. I don't think that is the right kind of parenting — that's my personal views, those are my religious views, those are my convictions."
McCollum has also possibly gone further to the right than he'd prefer to when it comes to the white-hot issue of illegal immigration. He initially said that he didn't believe Florida needs an Arizona type of illegal immigration law in Florida, but then said it did, after Arizona lawmakers changed its law to try to address criticisms that it invited racial profiling. Rick Scott pounced on that switch in his television ads, giving a huge boost to his then-nascent campaign.
The race to show who's tougher on illegal immigration was thrown into stark relief last week when McCollum tried to soak up the charisma of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush during their joint appearance on the first day of early voting.
CL asked Bush, who has spoken critically about the Arizona immigration law, what he thought of illegal immigration's dominance as a campaign issue. "I think the number one issue is how do you create a climate where thousands upon thousands of jobs need to be created for Florida to progress. The second issue would be how you continue to see rising student achievement.... The third issue would be Medicaid reform. You go down the list before you get to Arizona immigration being a Florida issue. That's my feeling." Miami-area GOP Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen expressed similar thoughts a few days later.
Before he ran for governor this year, Rick Scott was best known nationally as a prominent critic of government health care reform — first in 1993 against Hillarycare, and a year ago as organizer of Conservatives for Patients' Rights to battle Barack Obama's initiatives.
CPR played a major role in organizing the town hall meeting protests last summer, as Scott admitted to the liberal blog The Plum. "We have invested a lot of time, energy and resources into educating Americans over the past several months about the dangers of government-run health care, and I think we're seeing some of the fruits of that campaign."
Scott's plans for reducing state government include drug screening for state welfare recipients and cutting prison costs by $1 billion, in part by having inmate labor grow prison food.
But can he convince the majority of Florida Republicans that he's up to the job? He has assiduously eschewed meetings with newspaper editorial boards and debates, agreeing only to two — a disappointment for McCollum, who had hoped to debate him at least four times going into the primary.
Daryl Paulson says that Floridians' doubts about Scott could be the only factor that saves Bill McCollum.
"A lot of people are concerned about his lack of experience and his not so tremendous grasp of Florida politics," Paulson, a Republican, says. "If there's a crescendo of criticism about why he doesn't answer these questions, there's a real chance that some voters will reconsider him as it gets closer to Election Day."
And even though she's currently standing outside the media's glare, the Democrats' choice for governor, Alex Sink, can only look and marvel at whichever GOP candidate she'll face in November.
