One of the ways the primary races for outgoing U.S. Senator Marco Rubio's seat could shake out would be a general election pitting U.S. Reps David Jolly (R-Indian Shores) and U.S. Rep Patrick Murphy (D-Jupiter).While both are relatively faithful to their respective party platforms, both are pretty moderate compared to the other Senate hopefuls each will face in the August 2016 primary. Murphy even used to be a Republican.
In an interview shortly after he announced he's running for the seat, Jolly said if he faces Murphy in the general the following November, it would probably go down in history as the most civil Senate race in recent memory.
“Patrick Murphy and I are friends,” he said.
But even if he and Murphy were to face each other and managed to keep their campaigns impossibly cordial and drenched with integrity throughout the run-up to November, may-the-best-man-win style, outside groups and their millions definitely would not, instead going for the throat with barely-if-at-all-true attack ads.
In 2014, Jolly experienced firsthand the wrath of outside groups and their millions leading up to the special election in which he faced Democrat Alex Sink and Libertarian Lucas Overby. Conservative and liberal groups alike poured gobs of money into digital and broadcast ad campaigns, not to mention polling and consulting.
While the outside aid may have helped Jolly — he went from a relative unknown just a few months prior to prevailing against Sink by nearly two points — they also seemed to drown out the messages of the candidates themselves with over-the-top, often inaccurate mudslinging from either side.
“It's one of the great challenges of our generation,” Jolly said. “It's not something I look forward to going into 2016.”
He said he'd like to see reforms to currently legal electioneering practices, though he's not really sure how to go about it.
“We can do better than the current system,” he said, “I don't know that we have a clear solution yet [...]”
Proving his point, shortly after officially launching his campaign, conservative and liberal PACS alike fired off statements attacking Jolly for either being too liberal or a Washington insider.
Jolly's primary includes Congressman Ron. DeSantis and Lieutenant Governor Carlos Lopez-Cantera and could further include former Attorney General Bill McCollum and Congressman Jeff Miller.
The Democratic field for the seat, meanwhile, includes Murphy, Congressman Alan Grayson and newcomer Pam Keith.
Yeah, we're not looking forward to all that expensive noise, either.