The three candidates vying for Florida’s open Senate seat met in their first primetime debate last night. According to reports from the event, confirmed frontrunner and Republican nominee Marco Rubio was the target, with Democratic nominee Kendrick Meek and independent candidate Charlie Crist trying to curb Rubio’s surging poll momentum.
Their preferred method? Push Rubio as far to the right as they could, thus leaving him out in the cold among the Sunshine State’s swingy moderate electorate.
“You want to take us back to Dick Cheney days,” Meek sniped at Rubio, according to the Washington Post.
“You haven’t been drinking the Kool-Aid, my friend, you’ve been drinking too much tea - and it’s wrong,” Crist said.
For his part, Rubio stuck to the conservative outsider rhetoric that has gotten him this far, reports from the ground in Florida say. He ripped both this opponents for supporting the stimulus bill last year and tried to paint them both as politics as usual.
“If you like the way things are going in Washington, if you support the direction Washington is taking America, then I’m probably not your candidate,” he said, according to the Palm Beach Post. “There are two other people running for U.S. Senate who support the direction Washington is going.”
The debate was sponsored by ABC and moderated by the network’s George Stephanopoulos. In her wrap up of the debate, ABC News political director Amy Walter wrote that despite their repeated attempts, neither man running against Rubio was able to do any real damage.
“Rubio was able to consistently turn the debate back to a choice between someone who’ll ‘stand up to’ what’s happening in Washington, DC versus those who support what’s happening there,” she wrote.
Unless Crist and Meek are able to put a dent in that message, polls suggest Rubio will walk away with the race. The TPM Poll Average shows Rubio drawing 42.7% support. Crist 29.3% and Meek 21.9%.
The trendlines show voters are warming to Rubio’s message, despite Crist and Meek’s claims that he’s too far to the right for Florida voters.
Watch the whole debate in three parts, via WFTV in Florida:
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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