Word: speakers
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...election opponent Marco Rubio on Sunday with a nagging reminder of the deep hole his campaign has fallen into. Some voter polls in recent weeks showed Rubio leading Crist by 30 points or more; a more credible Mason-Dixon survey released on Friday still had the former Florida house speaker ahead of the governor by 11 points, 48-37, in a race many have labeled a critical battle between moderates and conservatives for the Republican Party's soul as it tries to rebound from its disastrous 2008 election losses. On Friday, new figures put recession-battered Florida's unemployment...
...televised nationally by Fox News, Crist came out swinging. He alluded early and often to mounting accusations that his rival has a history of using political donations for less-than-transparent purposes. Investigations by the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times have found that while a state legislator and speaker, Rubio made thousands of dollars in personal purchases with a GOP-issued American Express card that was supposed to be used only for election-related costs (he says he has paid it all back). Among other apparent breaches, Rubio also failed to disclose $34,000 in expenses...
...Crist backers say the revelations fly in the face of Rubio's image as a pristine, fiscally conservative political outsider - and the narrowing of Rubio's lead apparent in the Mason-Dixon survey does suggest the reports are blunting his surprising surge. "Speaker Rubio," Crist charged in the Sunday-morning debate, "views public service as a way to enhance his personal enrichment." Noting Rubio has yet to disclose his tax returns, Crist even asked if his rival had been "doctoring the books...
...began pandering to his party's right wing last year when his primary poll numbers headed south, has at least stopped trying to back away from his support for the stimulus, which according to estimates has created some 87,000 jobs in Florida. "If we had taken the speaker's approach," Crist said, "we would have had 87,000 more people unemployed." The governor also dispelled speculation that he might drop out of the Aug. 24 primary election and run for the Senate as an independent...
...costs for driver's licenses and annual motor-vehicle-tag renewals, not a popular proposition during a recession in a state where public transportation is thin and almost everyone drives. (Granted, the car-fee hike theoretically could be used to enhance public transit.) Rubio, meanwhile, touted his effort as speaker to eliminate property taxes and replace that lost revenue with increased sales taxes - an especially regressive idea in a low-wage state like Florida...