RSS Feed of the blog

Contributors:

Reporter William March has covered state and national politics since 1994. Email

Reporter Mike Salinero has covered Hillsborough County government for The Tampa Tribune since 2007. Email

Reporter Lindsay Peterson has been a general assignment reporter at the Tampa Tribune since 2005, focusing on higher education since 2009. Email

TBO RNC 2012 Section

Florida Political Blogs:

• State Of Sunshine
• Pushing Rope
• Interstate4Jamming
• News Service of Florida
• FLA Politics
• Sayfie Review/

News Blog Search

Advanced Search

Most Recent Entries

• How come the poll results don’t match?
• Q Poll: Mack has long lead in primary, ties Nelson in general matchup
• Mack campaign retracts Fortuno endorsement quotes
• Coburn backs LeMieux, answering Mack’s Fortuno
• Q Poll: Romney has significant lead in Florida
• Storm The Swarm: SOCCENT deputy chief asks for technology to stop threat of Iranian small boats
• Nelson disses Obama on Castro daughter
• Hoyer to campaign with Ehrlich
• Mack dumbest speaker in Congress?  It’s complicated
• Guetzloe sentenced for not filing tax returns
• Mack asks feds to investigate LeMieux appointment
• Pentagon Reports Deaths of 7 Troops This Week in Support of Operation Enduring Freedom
• Mack demands investigation of LeMieux appointment
• Ross backs Mack
• LeMieux wins East Hillsborough GOP straw poll

More

• Breaking News
• Command Post Tampa
• Fact Finders - Databay Blog
• Guestbook: Remembering The Fallen Soldiers
• Fresh Squeezed Politics
• RNC 2012: The Road to Tampa
• Political Safari

Monthly Archives

• May 2012
• April 2012
• March 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011

Crist jab at Rubio has historical resonance

Posted Mar 9, 2010 by William March

Updated Mar 9, 2010 at 07:33 PM

“Marco Rubio: A Miami lobbyist-politician. He thinks he’s special. Do you?”

That’s the closing line on the latest news release from the Charlie Crist campaign, jabbing at Marco Rubio.

It comes in response to the Rubio campaign’s leak to a news outlet of a memo by its pollster bashing Crist. The memo, reportedly, says Crist is now so far behind in the Senate primary his only chance is “a relentlessly brutal negative campaign.” Even that wouldn’t work, the pollster contends, because it would destroy Crist’s nice guy image.

But here’s an interesting historical footnote.

In 1994, there was a brutal Republican primary for governor of Florida.

Two candidates, Tom Gallagher, then state insurance commissioner, and Jim Smith, then state attorney general, got blasted in a negative ad by the eventual winner, who declared himself a political outsider and called them entrenched, big-government bureaucrats. Sort of like Rubio’s doing to Crist today.

Who was that political outsider? Marco Rubio’s patron and mentor, Jeb Bush.

Gallagher and Smith, in a highly unusual move, teamed up to produce their own ad bashing Bush for having been involved in questionable business deals, sometimes with unsavory characters.

The kicker line on their ad: “Jeb Bush. He thinks he’s special. Do you?”

Just a coincidence, said Crist campaign spokeswoman Amanda Hennebert.