In what was at times an awkward debate, Alex Sink and Rick Scott engaged in their third and final one-on-one forum at the USF Tampa campus Monday night.
On style points, Scott was more the aggressor, while Sink at times seemed to struggle, perhaps because she wanted to be more formal than either Scott or the two aggressive moderators, CNN's John King and St. Pete Times Political editor Adam C. Smith, preferred to run the hour long event.
Realizing that this would be the last time that they would have the attention for the entire state (and the nation, as the debate was broadcast nationally), Alex Sink had a game plan: to refute Rick Scott's repeated attacks that she was an "Obama liberal," and that she wants to raise taxes. On offense, she wanted to make clear to everyone watching that Scott has ethical issues, and that she's been endorsed by 16 newspapers.
Sink got the opportunity to separate from Obama during the initial question, when both candidates were asked what they approved or disapproved of in the President's record. Scott said he was okay with what's happening in Afghanistan, while Sink said she disagreed with the President on preserving the Bush tax cuts for everyone, including the top rate which the administration wants to let expire later this year. And she said that she didn't think much of the federal response to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill earlier this year.
But Sink's frustration erupted quickly when Scott once again came up with his $12.5 billion in increased spending that he has charged the Democratic with proposing, though no such numbers exist anywhere. (The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that $9 billion might be for supporting the Orlando-Miami high speed rail line). Sink was equally dismissive when Adam Smith asked her how she would pay for her plans.
After being hit over the head about his issues over at Columbia/HCA since he got into the race this past spring, Scott realizes that most voters have already heard about it, and either care about it and won't vote for him, or don't care. He's clearly not worried about it, and tried to put Sink on the defensive by bringing up the issue about tellers being paid kickbacks that occurred at NationsBank while Sink was still running the bank's operations in Florida. Sink reacted by smiling, which Scott immediately pounced upon, saying, "You think it's funny for these seniors? You were sued and you paid fines. That's called fraud."
The issue came up later in the debate, with Sink saying that an attorney who was involved in the civil suit had absolved her (that was Tampa Jonathan Alper).
The two at times showed their contempt for each other in their own ways. At the end of one commerical break, Scott busted Sink for getting a message on "her IPod or IPad." (Later Adam Smith reported on that message).
On the critical issue of creating jobs, Scott boasted that he had done that in running his hospitals. Sink interrupted him by saying that his whole campaign was based on "9 or 10 sound bites." She said (for the first time that I can recall) that she actually invested in a biotech company and had to make a payroll a few times, but "he didn't build a company, he was a corporate raider…he left as a disgraced corporate executive.."
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2010.