The Florida Democratic Party is running a television ad blasting GOP candidate for governor Bill McCollum.

The TV spot was released the same day the the Republican Governors Association let loose a television campaign slamming Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the presumptive Democratic nominee for governor.

The FDP ad blames McCollum for costing taxpayers billions of dollars during his two decades in Congress.

The RGA ad roasts Sink for earning millions of dollars as NationsBank’s Florida chief in 1998 while giving pink slips to thousands of bank workers during the financial institution’s buy-out of Barnett Bank.

The Democrats’ ad skewers McCollum for voting for Congressional pay hikes four times, for his $75,000-a-year Congressional pension taxpayers are now footing and for voting five times to increase the national debt that skyrocketed to $4.7 trillion while the Republican was in office.

“Bill McCollum. Just another Washington politician Florida can’t afford,” the 30-second commercial ends.

McCollum’s campaign dismissed the Sink ad in much the same way her campaign responded to the RGA ad earlier today. Both sides accused the other of being “misleading” and “desperate.”

“This is a weak, misleading ad from a candidate and party desperate to salvage a message-less, issue-less campaign that has been roundly derided by even their strongest supporters. Alex Sink needs to stop complaining and start explaining. She eliminated thousands of Florida jobs will taking millions in salary and bonuses. The Republican Governors Association raises serious questions and Alex Sink will have to answer to Florida voters in November,” McCollum campaign Kristy Campbell wrote in a press release.

The Republican Governors Association hammered Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the state’s presumptive Democratic candidate for governor and former banker.

The ad is the RGA’s first TV campaign for the 2010 election season and shows that the Florida governor’s race will be one of the premier gubernatorial battles in the country.

Attorney General Bill McCollum is facing off against long-shot state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, in a GOP primary.

The ad charges that Sink did away with thousands of jobs while president of Florida’s NationsBank operations while earning $8 million in salary and bonuses, capitalizing on the current animosity toward bankers who took billions of dollars in federal bail-out money, spent much of it on executive bonuses and did little to ease the nation’s credit crunch.

The RGA also launched a new website – alexsinksflorida.com – featuring the video, which ends “Alex Sink. Not one of us. One of them.”

Sink was head of NationsBank in Florida when the financial institution acquired Barnett Bank, in 1998, for $62 billion. The merger resulted in the loss of 6,000 jobs, many of them in Florida, according to the ad.