Rick Scott and his wife Ann voted at a church near their Naples home this morning then hopped on a private plane for some last minute campaigning in Jacksonville and Tampa.

Under cloudy skies as a light drizzle fell, Scott said he was confident of a victory over Democrat Alex Sink despite polls showing the race is a dead heat.

“We’re going to win,” Scott told reporters standing outside St. Ann Catholic church as a light drizzle fell. “This race is about jobs. We need jobs. I’m going to do everything I can to get this state back to work.”

Scott’s mother Esther, elevated to celebrity status after starring in several of her son’s television campaign ads, sat in an SUV as the Scotts cast their ballots.

Esther Scott can’t vote for her because she lives in Kansas City, Mo.

“I’m going to change that law,” she joked.

Scott will finish up the night in Ft. Lauderdale.

Democratic candidate for chief financial officer Loranne Ausley introduced a new television ad Tuesday that rips her opponent, Republican Jeff Atwater, for what it calls “pay to play contracts” issued under his watch as Senate president.

The ad depicts an actor playing Atwater in the office of the Senate president welcoming a series of visitors who each hand him an envelope and shake hands enthusiastically. A voice over enumerates instances of what the Ausley campaign considers questionable spending decisions in which Atwater participated.

Those instances include $48 million spent on a new 1st District Court of Appeals courthouse in Tallahassee, which has been attacked for its luxurious details and is derisively called “the Taj Mahal.”

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GOP congressional hopeful Curt Price, one of three candidates in the Feb. 2 Republican primary for the congressional District 19 seat, will begin airing his first TV spot on cable Friday, his campaign says.

With Price, Joe Budd and Ed Lynch all running on conservative platforms, Price highlights his biography as “son of a shoe salesman,” former cop and small business owner who has “lived the American dream” and who pledges to vote against any bill that expands government.

Check out some of the other District 19 candidate ads here and here.

Republican congressional hopeful Joe Budd moved to Florida after a business failure left him $600,000 in debt. That information comes not from an opponent’s attack ad but from Budd himself in his first 30-second spot before the Feb. 2 special GOP primary.

Budd, who often brings up the the business setback on the campaign trail, says he does so to highlight character issues and to let voters know he understands tough economic times.

“Instead of filing bankruptcy, I worked hard and sacrificed to pay it off,” he says in the ad. “…I understand your fears and concerns, having lived through them myself.”

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