The three years of tax returns for Scott and his wife Ann show that they paid more in taxes – nearly $3.7 million – than his Democrat opponent Alex Sink and her husband reported as their total adjusted gross income, $2.9 million.
Scott’s release of the 412 pages of documents includes a side-by-side comparison of his earnings and tax payments with Sink and her husband’s, apparently to illustrate that he’s the bigger taxpayer.
But, according to Scott’s analysis, he and his wife paid a lower percentage of their adjusted gross income from 2007-2009. The Scotts paid 14.6 percent and Sink and McBride, who filed separately, paid a combined rate of 15.8 percent.
Sink’s been after Scott, who made his millions as the founder and CEO of the HCA/Columbia hospital chain, to release five years of his tax returns as she did last month.
But Friday night’s reports didn’t satisfy her campaign.
They want to know why he didn’t release the full five years worth of returns as he previously said he would.
“The list of why Rick Scott can’t be trusted keeps getting longer and longer, and not following through with his promise to release a full five years of his taxes is the latest example of not following through on his word and just another reason why he’s not fit to govern this state,” Sink campaign spokeswoman Alexandra Fetissoff said in a press release.
GOP attorney general candidate Pam Bondi’s campaign consultant called out her Democrat opponent Dan Gelber for “a distortion of the truth” in his new television ad.
In the ad, Gelber accuses Bondi of promising to “side with corporate interests” if she is elected.
“Dan Gelber’s first television ad is a disappointing distortion of the truth and in keeping with a career politician’s ‘win at all costs’ attitude. He talks about corruption but has no problem corrupting the truth. He made an allegation that wasn’t true and offered no evidence, because there is none,” Bondi campaign consultant Brett Doster said in a statement.
The ad refers to remarks Bondi’s made on the campaign trail pledging to side with the Florida Chamber of Commerce in fighting the union-backed card check issue and statements she’s made saying that “the last thing we need is an Eliott Spitzer-type” AG.
Gelber interpreted that to mean she won’t go after white-collar criminals as Spitzer, known as the “Sheriff of Wall Street,” did before he went down in flames after being caught with prostitutes.
MIAMI — Republican governor candidate Rick Scott ducked a post-debate gaggle with reporters after today’s Univision debate against Democrat Alex Sink.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush took the stage instead to talk to reporters.
Asked why he was facing the press instead of Scott, Bush said, “I don’t know.”
Bush, who supported Bill McCollum in the GOP primary, said he’ll vote for Scott in the general election “because I think we need an outside-the-box thinker to get the eocnomy back on track.”
Dan Gelber slammed his GOP attorney general opponent Pam Bondi in his first campaign ad, accusing the former Tampa prosecutor of being too close to her business backers to go after corruption.
Bondi, who has never run for office before, won the endorsement of the state’s two biggest (and influential) business groups – the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Associated Industries of Florida – in the three-way GOP primary and in the general race.
Gelber, a state senator and former federal prosecutor, has made going after public corruption one of his top priorities in the campaign.
DORAL – The first debate of the governor’s race quickly turned testy, as Democrat Alex Sink stressed Republican Rick Scott’s questionable business background, while Scott painted Sink as an Obama liberal.
Sink stressed the $1.7 billion in fines paid by hospital company Columbia/HCA for Medicare fraud committed during Scott’s tenure. Scott never was charged but was forced out as the company’s chief executive.
“Rick, I don’t think the people of the state of Florida want you to run the state of Florida the way you ran your business,” Sink said. (more…)
John Schilling acknowledges that he has no evidence that Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott knew about the massive Medicare fraud at Columbia/HCA. But he doesn’t believe Scott when the former CEO blames underlings for the fraud that led to a $1.7 billion fine.
“I can’t say what he knew or didn’t know, but he should have known what was making up the majority of the revenues of the company,” Schilling said today.
Schilling is a CPA who worked at Columbia/HCA, including a stint as an FBI informant. A registered Republican until Scott won the primary, Schilling said he switched his political affiliation to independent. He’s in Doral today for the first debate between Scott and Democrat Alex Sink.
“He was a hands-on CEO,” said Schilling, who lives in Naples. “He was probably aware of a lot of the activity.”
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The money event — with host status and a photo op for couples who donate $17,600 — will be at the Coral Gables home of former Miami Heat star Alonzo Mourning.
Although it’s a House campaign event, Democratic Senate nominee Kendrick Meek, struggling for Democratic votes against independent Charlie Crist, will appear with Obama at some point, Meek’s campaign says.
“They’ll be together,” said Meek spokesman Adam Sharon, who didn’t reveal any details.
Don’t look for an Obama-Alex Sink photo op, however. The Democratic governor candidate has events elsewhere in the state on Monday, her spokeswoman said.
There either will or won’t be a debate between chief financial officer candidates Jeff Atwater and his Democrat opponent Loranne Ausley.
Ausley, a former state representative from Tallahassee, has made much of Atwater, the outgoing Senate president, avoiding a debate in the statewide race.
She held a press conference in Tallahassee this morning Florida demanding that Atwater agree to a debate before the Nov. 2 election.
“I’m running to clean up the mess in Tallahassee, not to hide from problems, duck debates, and refuse to be held accountable,” she said.
Hold on, Atwater’s campaign insists. The North Palm Beach banker’s campaign spokesman Brian Hughes said they had agreed to an Oct. 21 debate at Univision but Ausley backed out.
“As for the issue of a debate, the facts are as I laid them out to you. She needs to tell you guys why she said no the the 21st. We accepted one date Oct 21) that they’ve said no to because of schedule. (Univision) They accepted one that we couldn’t do because of schedule (Leadership FL/UofF). Now, they’ve accepted an alternate date at Univision and we’re seeing if it will work,” Hughes said in an e-mail.
The upshot is that the duo may take part in a verbal duel on Oct. 28 sponsored by Univision.
Democratic Senate nominee Kendrick Meek’s campaign says rumors the third-place candidate might drop out are “ridiculous.” Meek felt the need to respond after The Wall Street Journal said unnamed Republican leaders are “fretting” about the possibility of a deal in which Meek would withdraw and allow indie Charlie Crist to consolidate support against Republican frontrunner Marco Rubio.
Meek “laughed out loud” at the rumor, his campaign said. Read the full statement after the jump…
WEST PALM BEACH – Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott spoke to a bipartisan crowd here today and presented himself as a Ronald Reagan conservative who would cut spending, slash taxes and ease regulation.
One of his themes: It’s just too hard for entrepeneurs to start and expand businesses in Florida.
“We are 45th out of 50 states in regulation,” Scott said. “We’ve gone down the path of California in regard to regulation.”
Scott also criticized the Obama stimulus package as a job killer that will saddle taxpayers with higher taxes.
“We will not grow our economy if we keep raising our taxes, spending more money, running defecits, raising fees, regulating the living daylights out of everything,” Scott said.
The former head of hospital chain Columbia/HCA who has never run for office, Scott said President Obama’s health reform sparked him to spend millions of his own money in the race for governor.
“President Obama had the opportunity to really improve health care,” Scott said. “But unfortunately, his focus was that government can do it better.”
A proposed constitutional amendment that would water down class size limits will remain on the ballot, the Florida Supreme Court ruled today.
Lawmakers placed the measure, Amendment 8, on the ballot to give school districts more flexibility meeting the constitutional restrictions on class sizes approved by voters in 2002. The proposal would keep class size limits at the school average level rather than require each class to comply with the limits.
The Florida teachers’ union argued that the measure is really intended to decrease the amount of money lawmakers must spend on public education.
Democrat Kendrick Meek would rather have no endorsement from the Sierra Club than share it with independent U.S. Senate candidate Charlie Crist.
Calling the co-endorsement from one of the state’s leading environmental groups “an insult to Florida’s environmental community,” Meek said today he won’t accept it.
“I cannot in good conscience accept an endorsement from an organization that would stand with a governor who has consistently put developers, oil companies and the special interests first,” he said in a statement. “I choose to stand with the environmental community and everyday Floridians who want clean energy jobs, clean water, and clean beaches.”
NEW SMYRNA BEACH — U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, the former Charlie Crist campaign “maestro” and chief of staff who was appointed to his seat by Gov. Crist last year, is riding the campaign bus of Crist rival Marco Rubio today.
LeMieux, 41, introduced the 39-year-old Rubio at a midday appearance as “the brightest star of our generation in politics — and not just in Florida, nationwide.”
Before LeMieux introduced Rubio, he was introduced by congressional candidate Sandy Adams who told the crowd of about 150 and said she hopes LeMieux runs for Senate in 2012 when Democrat Bill Nelson is up for reelection. After the event, several individuals approached LeMieux and voiced similar sentiments.
“That’s very kind,” LeMieux told one man.
“A lot of nice folks have encouraged me to run in the future and that’s something certainly I’m going to think about,” LeMieux said in an interview. “I like to say that my wife Meike has the veto pen. So we’re going to have to have one of those family meetings in the coming months and decide what the future holds.”
Republican Marco Rubio probably boosted no-party rival Charlie Crist’s Democratic cred on Tuesday by trotting out former Gov. Jeb Bush to decry Crist’s new Social Security attack ad.
On Thursday, Rubio will launch a TV ad responding broadly to Crist’s criticisms in a Reaganesque “There-you-go-again” tone.
“We all know what he’s doing,” Rubio says over a soft piano background. “Charlie Crist is losing, so he switched sides. Just to win votes he flip-flopped on everything from the stimulus to Obamacare. And when that failed, he started falsely attacking. Don’t fall for it…”
Note the wording is broad enough to encompass whatever new criticisms Crist might throw at Rubio during tonight’s Senate debate in Orlando.
ORLANDO — Republican Senate nominee Marco Rubio’s campaign says it raised more than $5 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 30 and entered the final month of the campaign with $5.5 million available to spend.
That tops the record-setting $4.5 million quarter Rubio posted from April 1 through June 30. The Rubio camp, which has raised $16 million overall, says it has more than 95,000 donors.
Rubio had $4.5 million cash on hand on June 30, so his new balance means he spent about $4 million in the last quarter.
No-partyite Charlie Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek haven’t announced money-raising figures yet. Crist had $8.2 million cash on hand as of June 30.
GOP governor hopeful Rick Scott released another attack ad slamming Democrat opponent Alex Sink, continuing his negative ad campaign against the chief financial officer.
Scott’s same strategy helped him defeat Attorney General Bill McCollum in the August GOP primary. Scott spent $50 million of his own money in the primary campaign, most of it on ads attacking McCollum.
Sink and the other Florida Cabinet members signed off on the contract based on the recommendations of the state Division of Bond Finance, she said, her investments are in a blind trust so she did not have a conflict of interest on the vote.
GOP attorney general candidate Pam Bondi and her Democrat opponent Dan Gelber both spent years as prosecutors, but they’re as different as night and day, the name of her new television ad.
Bondi, a political newcomer who spent two decades as a Tampa prosecutor, contrasts her positions on taxes and federal health care reforms in the new ad, running in select markets.
Bondi’s ad was created by GOP consultant Adam Goodman’s company, The Victory Group, and debuted in the West Palm Beach media market.
Senate President Jeff Atwater, the GOP chief financial officer candidate, released his first statewide television ad less than a month before the Nov. 2 election.
Atwater, in a polo shirt, stands before a chalkboard in the “Chalk Talk” ad, instructing viewers about how he supports lower taxes, smaller government and less red tape to help grow Florida’s economy.
Atwater’s positive ad makes no mention of his opponent, former state Rep. Loranne Ausley. The Tallahassee Democrat has attacked the North Palm Beach banker for his role in the legislature’s spending on a $110 million private prison that cost at least 70 prison workers their jobs and a $38 million luxury appeals court. And she hammered him for not hiring an auditing firm to scrutinize lobbyist expenditure and compensation reports.
Atwater hit back with a reminder that Ausley sponsored a bill that would have watered-down the gift ban that prohibits lawmakers from accepting gifts from lobbyists. Her bill would have allowed lawmakers to wine and dine at official functions as long as the value of the food or drinks was less than $20.
Tampa attorney Jonathan Alpert takes full credit for turning the feds onto a NationsBank securities fraud in the 1990s, a case that led to a class action settlement and a $6.75 million fine for the bank.
But Alpert says Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink had no role in the scheme, which led investors to believe they were buying no-risk savings accounts rather than mutual funds and stocks that could and did lose value. In a phone interview this afternoon, Alpert blasted Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott for campaign ads blaming Sink for the fines.
“Those orders came down from (NationsBank’s headquarters in) Charlotte, not from her,” Alpert said. “It’s not a legitimate issue, because she didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink met with The Palm Beach Post’s editorial board this morning and criticized the state lawsuit against federal health reform, urged streamlining state government and pushed her plan to spend more on pre-K classes.
A summary of Sink’s comments:
Attorney General Bill McCollum’s suit against President Obama’s health plan: “I think it was done as a purely political ploy,” Sink said. She said the “meager resources” of the AG’s office should be put to better use.
Rick Scott’s proposed $1 billion in cuts to the state prison budget: “That seems highly unlikely and very unrealistic to me,” Sink said.
WEST PALM BEACH – Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott spoke to a bipartisan crowd here today and presented himself as a Ronald Reagan conservative who would cut spending, slash taxes and ease regulation.
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