TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Florida’s 2018 midterm election is one of the most important in years. The governor’s office and all three Cabinet seats are on the ballot; Republican Gov. Rick Scott is challenging three-term Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson; several congressional seats will be competitive; and Floridians will vote on several proposed constitutional amendments. The following are items of political interest from the past week:
GILLUM’S RUNNING MATE COMES UNDER FIRE
The campaign of Republican Ron DeSantis is going after Democrat Andrew Gillum over comments made by his running mate nearly two decades ago.
Some voters this week got text messages that noted inflammatory comments made by lieutenant governor nominee Chris King back in 1999. King, who narrowly lost a student election at Harvard University at the time, blamed the school’s newspaper for his loss. He said at the time that he was “nailed to the cross” and that “most of the editorial staff that was so hard on me, the vast majority were Jewish.”
The text messages said that the comments “raise serious concerns about Gillum’s ever-mounting ties to blatant anti-Semitism.”
King, who is a liberal Christian, previously apologized for the comments when they surfaced ahead of the August primary for governor. King came in fifth in the election won by Gillum.
The Gillum campaign sharply criticized the text messages as a “smear tactic” by the DeSantis campaign.
“Ron DeSantis is running one of the most divisive and toxic campaigns in Florida history,” said Johanna Cervone, a spokeswoman for Gillum. “These type of abusive tactics are straight out of the Trump playbook and will not go unanswered.”
DeSantis, during a campaign stop Friday in Doral, defended reminding voters of King’s comments.
“I think the comments are what they are, right?” DeSantis said.
The text messages sent out by the campaign came a few days after DeSantis faulted Gillum for his support of groups such as The Dream Defenders and said that “I can find anti-Semites around him.”
The activist organization, which did a month-long sit-in of the Florida Capitol back in 2013, has been sharply critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and has called for a boycott of Israel. Gillum has said he does not support a boycott of Israel.
CANDIDATES DING EACH OTHER WITH DUELING WEBSITES
The two candidates running for Florida’s chief financial officer lashed out at each other this week.
Republican and current CFO Jimmy Patronis launched a website called RingsCriminalRing.com that purports to highlight Democrat Jeremy Ring’s “shady” campaign donations. The site also delves into an investigation that showed a researcher paid by the Florida Democratic Party accessed Patronis’s driving records online. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which looked into the incident, concluded that no crime had occurred because the information was not used for fraudulent purposes.
Katie Strickland, a spokeswoman for the Patronis campaign, maintained that Ring’s “connections to criminal and scandalous donors yet again reveals his stunning lack of judgment.”
It only took a few days for the Ring campaign to launch a rival website called JimmyPatronis.info that bashed some of Patronis campaign donors for their past legal run-ins.
The site also includes a digital ad highlighting an incident where Patronis reimbursed the state for using a state-owned SUV while on private business. Patronis did not reimburse the state until he was questioned about his car use by a reporter. Patronis got a ticket while driving the SUV because he had an accident while traveling to his political consultant’s office to pick up thank-you cards.
CLINTON TO CAMPAIGN FOR GILLUM
Hillary Clinton may have lost Florida in the 2016 presidential election, but she’s coming back to the state to help campaign for Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.
Gillum’s campaign announced that Clinton will join Gillum on Oct. 23 in South Florida. The announcement did not specify exactly where the two would be campaigning.
Clinton made several visits to the Sunshine State ahead of the 2016 election, but the Democratic nominee lost the state to President Donald Trump by nearly 113,000 votes. Clinton, however, still got more votes than President Barack Obama did when he carried Florida in his two elections.
GILLUM CAMPAIGN STAFFER FIRED
Gillum’s campaign has fired a staffer after offensive tweets dating back to 2012 and 2013 surfaced early Saturday.
The tweets purportedly posted by Manny Orozco-Ballestas depicted messages degrading to women and body-shaming. Screenshots of the deleted tweets were posted by conservative blogger Jacob Engels, who also has contributed to the right-wing conspiracy theory website Infowars and is an ally of Trump associate Roger Stone.
“The type of language this young man used on social media before his employment with our campaign is unacceptable and he will no longer be working with the campaign,” Gillum campaign spokesman Joshua Karp said in a statement to the Miami Herald .
Orozco-Ballestas became the campaign’s youth director roughly two weeks ago. Engles previously criticized him for a photo posted on Instagram last summer, in which Orozco-Ballestas wore a shirt making an explicit reference about President Donald Trump’s voters.
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Associated Press reporter Ellis Rua contributed to this story from Doral.
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