Rick Scott and his new Lieutenant Governor nominee, Jennifer Carroll, campaigned in Brandon late Thursday afternoon after earlier romps around the state touting the newly minted GOP gubernatorial ticket.
Their appearances come as the Florida Republican party is slated to start spending cash on behalf of Scott on the television airwaves beginning this weekend. The Orlando Sentinel's Aaron Deslatte reports that $1.3 million will be expended on two ads, one positive commercial, and one hitting at Democrat Alex Sink, who Deslatte reports, has already spent $2.5 million on television in just the past few weeks, including this new on her "detailed" plans to aid Florida's ailing economy:
We've already written a couple of times this week about how Rick Scott apparently aims to link Alex Sink with Barack Obama as much as he can, such as on her (extremely muted)support for the federal health care reform bill passed this spring.
When we saw Scott on Monday, we asked him specifically if this is how planned to run his campaign against Sink, in effect "nationalizing" the race to target Washington Democrats, who most polls agree aren't the most popular group these days, as opposed to his primary campaign against Tallahassee insiders, the Florida Republican Party, of whom he has now embraced. In an indirect way, Scott said yes.
The issue came up again in the past few days after Bud Chiles dropped out, when in a seeming non sequitur but actually part of his focused message,Scott said :
"This will be a contest which presents a clear choice between a conservative outsider with business experience and a specific plan to create 700,000 jobs and another liberal Obamacrat who wants to raise taxes, cut Medicare, and supports Obama’s failed stimulus."
We're not certain at all where Sink has come out for raising taxes, but on the question of cutting Medicare, the folks over at PolitiFact spent a day researching the claim, and in a 1,400 + word response, calls the claim false.
