UPDATE: Alex Sink’s campaign spokeswoman Kyra Jennings calls Scott’s ad a lie.

“This is just one more deceptive ad from Rick Scott. The facts are that this is a company Alex Sink flat-out did not run and even the lawyer from the suit mentioned in Scott’s ad said today that Alex Sink was not involved in any way. But obviously Rick Scott has a very hard time telling the truth and can’t be trusted,” Jennings said in an e-mail.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott released a new attack ad today slamming Democrat opponent Alex Sink for $6.75 million in fines her former bank was forced to pay the federal government for selling risky investments, mostly to seniors.

NationsBank and its securities division was also forced to repay $30 million to customers duped into buying the investments. Sink was head of NationsBank’s Florida operations.

Scott’s ad comes after Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, and Democrats have run ads for weeks raising questions about Scott’s role in $1.7 billion fines levied by the federal government against his hospital chain for fraud.

UPDATE: A spokesman for Rick Scott’s campaign responded to Alex Sink’s rant about her GOP opponent Scott’s attack ads, paid for by the Republican Party of Florida.

As far as her accusation that Scott is scaring pensioners, Kildea wrote: “She is trying to draw attention away from the facts (as reported in the St Pete. Times)”

Chief Financial Officer and Democrat governor hopeful Alex Sink went on a rant in response to questions about her GOP opponent Rick Scott’s attack ads accusing her of benefiting from a no-bid contract that went to her former employer and being responsible for the state pension fund’s $23 billion loss three years ago.

“You know that’s ridiculous,” Sink, a trustee along with Gov. Charlie Crist and Attorney General Bill McCollum of Florida’s State Board of Administration, which handles pension funds for state and municipal workers.

“The whole market almost collapsed. Everybody’s 401K took a dive. And the good news is that independent authorities call the Florida pension fund one of the strongest investment pension funds in the country.
We are one of the strongest public pension funds in the country. He is out there scaring our retirees into thinking that their pensions are at risk. He’s irresponsible and shouldn’t be doing it.”

Sink was even more incensed over an ad accusing her of voting to give former employer Bank of America a no-bid contract when she may have held stock in the company. The Republican Party of Florida paid for both of the television ads.

(more…)

“Bud” Chiles will officially drop out of the governor’s race tomorrow and is throwing his support behind the Democratic nominee, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink.

Chiles – the son of Florida’s last Democrat governor, the late Lawton Chiles for whom he was named -could have been a spoiler in the governor’s race for Democrats who feared the independent candidate could be the Ralph Nader of Florida elections by pulling votes away from Sink. Many Democrats blamed Al Gore’s 2000 election loss to President George W. Bush on Green Party candidate Nader. Gore lost by 537 votes; Nader received 97,421.