Adam Hasner Hits George LeMieux for Charlie Crist Connections

On Thursday, the team behind former state House Majority Leader Adam Hasner, who is running in the Republican primary to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in 2012, launched a new video ad against GOP rival former U.S. Sen. George LeMieux. The ad links LeMieux to the man who appointed him to the U.S. Senate -- former Gov. Charlie Crist. LeMieux had been a close associate and former chief of staff to Crist who left the Republicans during the 2010 U.S. Senate race.

"George LeMieux only spent 16 months in the U.S. Senate, but he's already mastered the Washington art of political deception," said Douglass Mayer, a spokesman for Hasner. "George LeMieux is campaigning around Florida downplaying his ties to Charlie Crist and distorting the truth about the nearly two decades he spent at Crist's side advocating for liberal policies within the Republican Party. But the video doesn't lie. He should come clean about the true amount of time he spent working for Charlie Crist, and his key role in pushing for felons' voting rights, extreme global warming legislation, and other liberal policies that are contrary to his reinvented image as a 'true blue conservative.'"