The final days of campaigning for former Hillsborough prosecutor Pam Bondi and state Sen. Dan Gelber to be the next attorney general likely wont be very polite.
This week, the Democratic Party released a two-minute web advertisement chronicling how Pam Bondi tried to keep a Saint Bernard she adopted after Hurricane Katrina instead of giving it back to its family in Louisiana, which contacted her when they found out where the dog was. The ad featured the family matriarch saying her grandson had dreams about how Bondi came back to take his dog.
Bondi also launched her own campaign missile, airing a new television ad that criticizes the Democratic nominee for voting for a 2001 measure called the Scarlet Letter law because it required women who were placing a child up for adoption to publish their sexual histories if they could not identify the childs father. The law was repealed two years after it was passed.
With five days to go before the election, Bondi is leading Gelber in the polls and in money. A poll released last week by the Massachusetts-based Suffolk University had Bondi up 38 to 30 percent, with independent Jim Lewis getting 7 percent.
How accurate the polls are, though, is a looming question. The attorney generals race gets considerably less attention than the gubernatorial or U.S. Senate contests. In the primary, polls indicated that Gelber and Bondi were in close races with primary opponents, but both won easily.
Gelber defeated fellow state Sen. Dave Aronberg by 19 percent. Bondi topped Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp 38to 33 percent. Former Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Holly Benson came in third with 29 percent.
The most important day for us is Election Day, said Gelber campaign manager Christian Ulvert, noting the discrepancies in the polling for the primary compared to the outcome.
The two candidates are ideological opposites. While Bondi wants the federal health-care overhaul struck down in the courts, Gelber wants the state to withdraw from its lawsuit challenging the law, which was brought by current Attorney General Bill McCollum.
Bondi wants an Arizona-style immigration law; Gelber says that type of law invites mischief, meaning potential racial profiling.
They have similar backgrounds as prosecutors, but this is Bondis first foray into politics.
Bondi, a University of Florida and Stetson Law School graduate, has worked as a Hillsborough County prosecutor for 18 years, stepping down recently when she decided to run for attorney general. She has said repeatedly that she has no intention of seeking another elected office.
Gelber, whose father Seymour was mayor of Miami Beach and a judge, has spent a large part of his adult life in public service or politics in some form. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in South Florida and special counsel to former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, as the staff director for Nunn's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation. In that role, he led the Senate investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing. Gelber was elected to the Florida House in 2000 -- among his first tasks as a House member was to consider whether lawmakers should try to influence the deadlocked 2000 presidential election by appointing its own slate of electoral college voters. Gelber rose to minority leader in the House, and then was elected to the Senate in 2008.
Both candidates are all over the state in the next few days. Bondi is embarking on a bus tour that starts Friday in Doral and concludes in her home base of Hillsborough County on Sunday.
Were going to keep campaigning positively and letting voters know why Pam is the clear choice to be Floridas next attorney general, said campaign spokeswoman Sandi Copes.
Gelber will be all across the state in the next few days as well, said Ulvert, though a specific schedule has not yet been released. He is also touting endorsements from the majority of the states newspapers.
Its extremely obvious to Floridians as these newspaper come out and roll out the case for this race, Dan Gelber is clearly better qualified, Ulvert said. Those are the words of editorial boards.
