Bill Nelson isn't very happy about the unlimited money that poured into the Florida gubernatorial race, particularly by individuals like Rick Scott, who wrote himself a check for $12. 8 million of his own money in the last week of the campaign. And he says that's why Scott could remain competitive with Charlie Crist up until the last hours of the campaign."Charlie's had to do with less money - he's had to counter that with a ground game, and I think we'll see the results of that tonight."
The senior Florida U.S. Senator fielded questions with Congresswoman Kathy Castor in a press availability outside the Vinoy Hotel in St. Petersburg, the site of the Crist headquarters for Election Night.
CL then asked Nelson about Tom Steyer, the California hedge fund billionaire and environmentalist who has poured more than $12 million into TV advertising and get-out-the-vote effort to help Crist.
"It has thwarted the whole political system," Nelson said. "When outside money comes in and just take my race two years ago (against former Fort Myers area Congressman Connie Mack IV). I had $25 million of attack ads spent against me and all of them were untrue. And thank goodness that I could raise the money to tell what the truth was and rebut those attacks. And what happens is it becomes a big money chase, is what a campaign becomes. And this is where we've got to go back and change this U.S. Supreme Court ruling. And there's an easy way to do it. And we missed by one vote in the U.S. Congress three years ago, and that is, make everybody who puts the money into a TV advertisement disclose their identity, and then a lot of those guys wouldn't be putting money in."
Nelson said we should go back to the old fashioned way, minus outside money coming in, it would be a better political environment and not "distort the system."
"What this has become is just tear your opponent down, and not with the truth, but untruths," he added.
Castor said it was crucial that Floridians not get disaffected by the volume of negative advertising. "They've had a lot of influence in Tallahassee. It's up to every single person."
Speaking an hour and a half before the polls were going to close in the Eastern time zone part of the state, Nelson said "I think what you'll see is the ground game that has been put together is the first time in a non-presidential election that will bear the results that it is. You're already seeing in the early votes, huge number of extra Democratic votes and then when you look at that 450,00 independent votes that voted early, look at how their breaking in the polls, and their breaking for Crist, so I expect a big victory tonight not only for Charlie and his wife, but for Florida as well."
When asked what they thought about working with a Republican Senate and House, Castor said she was hopeful that Democratic Party principles like raising the minimum wage and getting equal pay for women could still be adopted, though that hardly seems likely.