The Florida governor’s race has seen some strange ads this election season. In particular, the recent ad from the College Republican National Committee that compared incumbent Gov. Rick Scott and challenger Charlie Crist to wedding dresses set a new standard for bizarre political advertising. Scott’s “Flippin’ Amazing!” attack ad against Crist also made waves for its strange — albeit amusing — brand of humor.
Now another ad from Scott’s campaign has many Floridians scratching their heads. The ad doesn’t contain any ostentatious formalwear or clever catchphrases. Instead, the TV spot contains a strangely hypocritical argument coming directly from the governor himself.
The ad, which Scott’s campaign is trying to brand as a new, positive message, begins with the governor looking into the camera and saying:
“After all these attack ads, Charlie Crist wants you to hate me. I guess that’s all he’s got.”
Leaving aside the fact that this supposedly “positive” ad is really just an attack against Crist for running a negative campaign, Scott’s entire message is incredibly hypocritical.
According to Marc Caputo of the Miami Herald, in the last nine weeks, “likely voters in Florida have at least glimpsed 2.1 million ads bashing Crist and 1.7 million ads bashing Scott.”
This means Scott’s campaign has run more than 26 percent more negative ads than Crist’s.
Scott’s ads have not only been overwhelmingly negative but also factually misleading or simply false.
Earlier this year, Scott’s campaign ran an ad featuring a Fort Lauderdale investor named Dean Kretschmar who claimed to have been “swindled” and “bankrupted” by Ponzi-schemer and former Crist donor Scott Rothstein.
Media investigations revealed that Kretschmar’s lawyer, William R. Scherer, is a donor to Scott’s campaign. Not only that, Kretschmar wasn’t even actually bankrupted; he recouped the majority of the $8 million he invested in Rothstein’s scheme.
The implication of the ad, that Crist was somehow involved in Rothstein’s illegal financial maneuvering, is completely bogus, as Scott himself later acknowledged.
The proliferation of negative advertising is one of the biggest problems with the modern American political system. Rather than engaging in honest debate about public policy issues and proposing solutions, politicians seek to drag each other into the mud with petty, often false, personal attacks. And rather than selecting a candidate who best represents their interests and values, voters end up choosing between the lesser of two evils.
Scott’s half-hearted attempt to turn the governor’s race in a positive direction would be mildly praiseworthy if he were not so hypocritical.
If Scott wants to attack Crist for running negative ads, he should take his own advice and stop the negativity coming from his campaign. Right now, he’s throwing some very hefty stones from a very flimsy glass house.
[A version of this story ran on page 10 on 10/9/2014]
