Four Democratic
1st debate includes personal attacks, education, gun limits
candidates for governor square off in their first debate.
The four Democrats vying to replace Rick Scott as governor faced off in an hourlong debate Wednesday in Tampa during the first head-to-head matchup before the August primary election.
During the debate hosted by Tampa Fox affiliate WTVT, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum and Winter Park entrepreneur Chris King repeatedly took shots at former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, a Tallahassee lawyer, for her voting record while in Congress. Meanwhile, Philip Levine boasted of Democratic credibility racked up during his eight-year tenure as Miami Beach mayor.
Gillum attacked Graham, who earned a reputation as a moderate Democrat during her stint in Congress from 2015 to 2017, for failing to support President Barack Obama enough.
“We sent a Democrat to Congress to defend the president … to move a more progressive agenda,” Gillum said. “Her votes … 54 percent of the time against Obama was not what I wanted from my member of Congress.”
Graham shot back that, when she met with Obama, the president “put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Gwen, I am so proud of you.’ ”
After repeatedly defending herself against attacks from King and Gillum that she characterized as “just wrong,” Graham sighed.
“I seem to be the one,” said Graham, the daughter of Bob Graham, who served as both U.S. senator and Florida governor. “It’s Gwen and the men.”
Levine, meanwhile, stumbled when asked by moderator Craig Patrick to name the outgoing Florida House minority leader and his or her biggest accomplishments.
“Being a minority anything is very, very challenging,” said Levine, who has largely funded his own campaign and has spent upward of $6 million on television ads thus far.
When pressed about whether he knew who the outgoing leader was, Levine said: “Yeah. McGhee.”
Rep. Kionne McGhee, a Miami Democrat, will take over as leader after the November elections; the House’s current minority leader is Janet Cruz.
When Patrick pointed that out, Levine said: “Oh, Janet.
Yeah.”
Levine’s gaffe was even more striking because the debate took place on Cruz’s home turf in Tampa, and the Democratic leader just announced a bid to run against Republican Sen. Dana Young in what will be one of the state’s most hotly contested Senate races. Democratic contender Bob Buesing just dropped out of the race to make room for Cruz.
Levine also could not answer exactly how much the state spends on public education. “I know it’s right in the billions,” he said. When asked if he could “narrow that down,” Levine said: “There’s no question we absolutely need to spend more going forward.”
But later, the former mayor scored one of the debate’s best one-liners, also on the education issue.
“Stop the testing. Start investing,” Levine said. “And stop investing in someone else’s business, charter schools.”
Graham also attempted to stand out on education, one of the issues most important to Democratic-base voters. She pointed to problems in school funding.
“This is going to be my number one priority,” she said. “There is no magic number. It’s whatever I determine after taking a look at the whole budget.”
Gun restrictions — including proposed bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, commonly used in mass shootings during the past few years — have become one of the main issues for state and national Democrats since the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland that left 14 students and three faculty members dead.
Douglas High students who survived the shooting spree attributed to 19-year-old suspect
Nikolas Cruz have led a nationwide effort to impose stricter gun regulations.
The Democratic gubernatorial candidates seeking to replace Scott have increasingly tried to one-up each other about their gunregulations support, with Gillum boasting that his city defied a statewide law requiring local governments to do away with gun ordinances that are stricter than those imposed in Florida law.
Levine, meanwhile, helped organize a rally in Tallahassee in which hundreds of protesters urged state lawmakers to pass stricter gun laws, and he bragged Wednesday that, when he was mayor, his city approved a “nonbinding resolution” condemning assault weapons.
But the Fox channel moderator gave the gun issue short shrift Wednesday, asking only how the candidates would define “assault weapons.”
Most of the candidates responded that the definition would rely on how many rounds per minute — 40 or more — a gun can fire.
But King attacked Graham for failing to propose an assault-weapons ban following the attack on Orlando’s Pulse nightclub two years ago that left 49 club patrons, many of them gay and Hispanic, dead.
King also tried to set himself apart from his opponents. “I’m the candidate that is the outsider with new ideas and fresh vision,” he said, calling himself “the first candidate in a generation that said I will not take a dime from the sugar industry.” “That takes courage,” he added. Gillum was the only candidate to support recreational use of marijuana, saying the position is rooted in the “overcriminalization of young people of communities of color” for the use of a plant. Florida voters in 2016 broadly legalized medical marijuana.
“We’ve got to end this prison-industrial complex that is being built all around a plant that … provides more redemptive use than it does harmful,” said Gillum, who is black.