Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Candidate highlights gun control in TV ad
Governor candidate Chris King started airing a new TV ad Wednesday highlighting gun control, as he and the party’s other candidates continue to highlight an issue they hope motivates primary voters.
King’s ad, titled “Stand Up,” is running in five of Florida’s 10 television markets, the campaign said. It is being shown in the West Palm Beach market, but not in Florida’s most expensive place to advertise on TV: the Miami-Fort Lauderdale television market.
The ad faults Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Legislature for failure to act after the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in which 49 people were killed.
He hints, but doesn’t state outright, that the Feb. 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in which 17 people were killed and 17 injured might have been averted if they’d acted. “Then tragedy hit Parkland. But this time, a movement of young people refuses to accept the unacceptable,” King says in the spot.
Unlike the other three Democratic candidates, the Winter Park businessman has never held elected office. He says he’s the one who can “shake up the old politics.”
He pledged to “stand up to the NRA,” ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines and require universal background checks for gun purchasers.
Polling shows those positions are favored by many Floridians, especially Democrats, who King and the other candidates need to appeal to before the Aug. 28 primary.
Philip Levine, one of the other candidates for the Democratic nomination, has spent heavily on television advertising, including a gun control spot that the campaign began airing statewide in March.
On Wednesday his campaign said it was launching a new digital ad on gun control. In “How Much More,” Levine promises improved background checks and an assault-weapons ban.
And he includes the promise, required of Democratic candidates in 2018, to “stand up to the NRA.”
The other two candidates, Andrew Gillum and Gwen Graham, haven’t yet advertised on television.
Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, was an outspoken supporter of gun controls and opponent of the National Rifle Association long before the Stoneman Douglas massacre and before he began running for governor.
A Gillum video shows him talking about guns in a debate on Feb. 13, the day before the Stoneman Douglas massacre.
Graham, a former member of Congress, has said she’d suspend sales of the AR-15, the weapon used by the Stoneman Douglas shooter, if she’s elected governor. She said she’d ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and implement universal background checks.