Alex Sink and Rick Scott are going to debate only three times this year. Now only two more times.
The first was one very few people saw. That would be the Univision debate that was taped Friday afternoon and broadcast (in the Tampa Bay area) at the very non prime time hour of 11 p.m. Oh, it also helped if you're bilingual, since the show was broadcast in Spanish.
However, for you, the CL Internet reader, we went and watched it on the network's website.
Sink came out aggressive from the get-go, as she looked excited to be able to criticize and trash Scott directly to his face, as she has in her commercials and media appearances since the general election campaign began a little over a month ago.
After discussing their plan to create jobs, Sink went right for the kill, blasting Scott for his checkered business path, a path that Scott says he wants to bring to the people of Florida.
Well, Rick, I don't think the people of Florida want you to run the state of Florida the way that you ran your business. You ran a business that was charged with the most massive fraud in the history of our country. This wasn't a way to create jobs. In fact, you closed 50 hospitals around the country and fired nurses and other healthcare providers. So what we need here in Florida is a person who has character and integrity who's never been accused of not having integrity in her whole career.
But the CFO was just warming up. When talking about his "7-7-7"economic plan (in which he says he'll create 700,000 jobs in seven years), Sink pounced:
Rick, I've been thinking a lot about your seven step plan. Lived in Florida just barely seven years, that's barely long enough to qualify for being governor, take the fifth amendment 75 times so that you won't incriminate yourself and thirdly, spend $70 million of your own money so that you can catapult yourself right into the governor's office. That's your seven-seven-seven plan. I think if you had lived in Florida for those little seven years and been more involved in the fabric of our community and been more of a contributor, maybe that would make a difference, but your seven-seven-seven plan is buying the office.
Scott owed a lot of his initial success against Bill McCollum in his primary to his unabashed support for Arizona's tough anti-illegal immigration law, saying the Attorney General was soft on the issue.
This article appears in Oct 7-13, 2010.