This web video was released this morning by the 527 group “Don’t Bank on Sink,” run by Gainesville businessman Jay Navarrete. The video jumps off this AP story that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink used the state plane to pick up and drop off her husband in Tampa Bay. Sink has re-paid the state for his costs.

But the ad tries to paint Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink as out-of-touch with state taxpayers and pulls footage from her ’06 campaign in which she promises to end the “spending spree” in Tallahassee.

This story from the Times-Herald, however, shows that Republican candidate Bill McCollum also has his share of questions surrounding his taxpayer-funded travel.

The anti-Sink group’s spokesman, Alachua County Republican Party Chairman Stafford Jones, acknowledged that McCollum isn’t squeaky clean on this issue. But he said Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, should be held to a higher standard.

“McCollum did get dinged, but the difference is that Bill McCollum – from what we can tell – has never flown a family member and he’s never diverted a plan to pick up a family member,” Jones said. “Alex Sink is the CFO. And we’re kind of scratching our heads wondering why there wasn’t better judgment on that.”

Jones said the group remains a “little bit of a grassroots thing” that was started out of Gainesville as Navarrete hoped to become more involved in politics.

“There’s not a whole lot of money flowing in right now – just enough to put together a web site and design an ad,” Jones said. “It’s not big, financed effort. At least not yet.”

Tags: Alex Sink, Bill McCollum, Don't Bet On Sink, state plane

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 11:42 am and is filed under 2010 campaigns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.