ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida’s race for U.S. Senate is a high-stakes political slugfest with terms like “socialist” and “lying and cheating” being hurled on television and more than $100 million being spent in the pivotal contest.
Which party controls Capitol Hill hangs in the balance with far-reaching implications for issues spanning from abortion to the economy.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican, is defending his 11 years in office and touting his work to protect businesses during the pandemic and expand a child tax credit for working families. He is promising that Republicans will get inflation under control by ramping up energy production and cutting government spending.
He’s facing a challenge from U.S. Rep. Val Demings, a Democrat and former Orlando police chief who is campaigning as a strong backer of law enforcement and defender of abortion rights.
The candidates
Both Demings and Rubio rose from humble origins to the top tiers of their respective political parties.
Rubio, 51, the son of Cuban immigrants, started his political career as a West Miami city commissioner in 1998. He moved next to the Florida Legislature and climbed to House speaker from 2006 to 2008.
William Snyder, sheriff of Martin County, served with Rubio in the House and knew then the young politician was destined for higher office. He recalled Rubio’s openness, commitment to his family and powerful speaking ability.
“He always struck me as being a good leader who really has a passion for what the American spirit is,” said Snyder, a Republican. “He is a decent, moral man.”
Rubio was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010 at age 39. His political star power grew so big he ran for president in 2016, losing to Donald Trump in the GOP primary.
As he campaigns for reelection, Rubio is trumpeting endorsements from 55 of Florida’s 67 sheriffs, along with the Florida Police Benevolent Association and other law enforcement groups.
Demings, too, wowed her peers, landing on President Joe Biden’s shortlist of possible vice presidential picks in 2020.
U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel lobbied for Demings to be vice president. The West Palm Beach Democrat said she was impressed by her colleague’s life trajectory, working her way up to police chief and then to Congress as a Black woman in a Southern state.
The daughter of a maid and janitor, Demings, 65, grew up in a two-room home in Jacksonville with six older siblings. She started as a police officer in Orlando in the early 1980s and served as the city’s first female police chief from 2007 until 2011. She won election to the U.S. House in 2016.
Frankel recalled barricading herself in a room in the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots and wishing she was with Demings, a former cop who rides a Harley-Davidson motorcycle in her free time.
“If I am going into a foxhole, I am taking two people with me — my son, who is a Marine war veteran, and Val Demings,” Frankel said.
Demings was in the House gallery when the rioters breached the Capitol. In an interview with The Associated Press, she recalled telling a colleague sheltering with her in the gallery: “Just remember, we’re on the right side of history. If we all die today, another group will come in and certify those ballots.”
War of words
Both Demings and Rubio are attacking each other’s records and fitness for office. In their only debate, Demings accused Rubio of “lying” and “cheating.”
Rubio countered that Demings supported a “crazy” and “socialist” liberal budget proposal.
Demings bristled at those terms. Rubio shot back, “I don’t know what word you would prefer. Socialist, Marxist. Crazy. I don’t know. I’m open to suggestions.”
Throughout the campaign. Rubio has tried to tie Demings to the far-left’s defund the police movement. Demings has fought back against that characterization, highlighting that Rubio criticized the FBI for serving a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
“Yeah, he’s a crime fighter if it is convenient,” Demings told the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel editorial boards. “But he said the FBI was a Marxist dictatorship and that the former president is keeping highly classified confidential documents in his basement was just a storage issue.”
Demings gave her assessment of Rubio’s time in elected office.
“Look, you’ve had 24 years total of Marco Rubio,” she said. “How’s that worked out for you? We have property insurance that’s crumbling and an affordable housing crisis.”
Rubio declined to appear before the editorial boards. In a statement, campaign spokeswoman Elizabeth Gregory said Demings and the Democrats are responsible for “skyrocketing inflation, out-of-control crime, and a crisis at the border letting drugs flow into our communities.”
“There’s a clear contrast in this race between Marco Rubio, who repeatedly delivers results for the people of Florida, and Val Demings, a Pelosi puppet who votes for Biden’s agenda 100% of the time and would be a rubber stamp for Democrats’ radical agenda in the Senate,” she said.
Their records
Demings is calling Rubio an absentee senator who has missed key votes.
Rubio’s attendance record is much worse than his peers, according to GovTrack, a nonpartisan group that compiles congressional data. He’s missed about 9% of votes during his career, compared with the Senate average of 2%.
Many of those missed votes came when Rubio ran for president in 2016, but he continued to miss votes after that. From July through September of this year, he missed 5.5% of roll-call votes, according to GovTrack.
Demings has missed 0.8% of votes since she joined the U.S. House in 2017, better than the average of 2%. Unlike the Senate, the House allows remote voting as part of its pandemic protocols.
Rubio has attacked Demings’ effectiveness as a lawmaker, saying she has only gotten two of her bills passed. Those measures named post offices in Orlando and Windermere, according to GovTrack.
Conversely, Rubio has passed 33 bills during his 11-year career in which he was a primary sponsor. That includes legislation aimed at increasing accountability in the Department of Veterans Affairs, addressing toxic algal blooms in Florida and combating invasive species. He served as a chief architect of the Paycheck Protection Program, which provided loans to businesses shuttered by the pandemic.
Demings’ work in Washington has gone beyond voting on bills. She was tapped to serve as one of seven impeachment managers during Trump’s trial in the Senate, becoming the first Black woman to serve in that role.
Rubio has also been selected for important roles, serving as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Inflation
Voters have consistently ranked the economy as their top issue, and the candidates have clashed over what is responsible for rising costs.
Republicans say they would increase domestic energy production and rein in government spending if they are in charge, Rubio said.
Demings has campaigned on her support of the Inflation Reduction Act, which allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices for seniors and extends federal health insurance subsidies for 13 million low- and moderate-income Americans. That legislation also includes $370 billion for promoting green energy and curbing greenhouse emissions.
It is forecast to reduce the federal budget deficit by about $238 billion over the next 10 years with tax increases primarily on large corporations. The legislation will have a “negligible” effect on inflation this year and the next, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Demings has also called for price-gouging legislation to lower fuel costs and fining producers for deliberately not using existing drilling sites.
Democrats have said inflation is a global issue caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine — not by Biden.
Abortion
Demings has made abortion a centerpiece of her campaign, seeking to portray Rubio as an extremist who favors a total abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest.
“He said it over and over and over again. He supports a total ban with no exceptions,” Demings said. ”And now he’s certainly trying to modify his answer, because it’s become such a hot issue in this race.”
Demings said she supports legal abortion up to fetal viability as determined by a doctor. She hasn’t defined what she thinks that is, but the medical community generally considers viability to be at about 24 weeks of pregnancy.
During the debate, Rubio said he is “100% pro-life,” but he didn’t specifically say whether he would vote for a total ban on abortion, adding that it would never get through Congress. He is a co-sponsor of a proposed nationwide 15-week abortion ban that includes exceptions for rape and incest.
He said Demings is the candidate with an extreme position on abortion.
“I have shown a willingness to work with people to save unborn innocent human life,” Rubio said. “She opposes any limitation of any kind.”
Demings called that characterization a lie during their debate.
Rubio further explained his position in an interview with CBS Miami’s Jim DeFede.
“I do not believe that the dignity and the worth of human life is tied to the circumstances of their conception, but I recognize that’s not a majority position,” Rubio said. “Therefore, I have always said I support bills that have exceptions.”
Guns
Mass shootings at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub and Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School continue to reverberate in the race.
Demings has accused Rubio of “doing nothing” to stop the problem of mass shootings, opposing gun legislation that could have saved lives.
“Our primary responsibility is the safety of Floridians, and senator, in 24 years in elected office, you have not yet risen to that occasion,” Demings said.
Shortly after the 2018 Parkland shooting, Rubio said during a CNN town hall he supported increasing the minimum age to buy a rifle from 18 to 21. That’s a position he no longer holds, saying he doesn’t think it would make a difference.
“if they’re intent on killing as they are, they have found multiple ways to get a hold of weapons and cause mass destruction,” Rubio said.
State lawmakers in Florida increased the minimum age to 21 to buy a rifle after the Parkland shootings, but efforts to raise the minimum age at the federal level have failed.
Upset in the making?
Demings has hauled in an impressive amount of campaign cash, sparking optimism among Democrats that she could pull off an upset in a state that has been trending Republican.
Demings has raised nearly $65 million compared with Rubio’s $44 million through September, according to the latest campaign finance figures.
Rubio has slightly more cash on hand heading into the final stretch of the race. He also has a 7.5 percentage-point lead in an average of the polls, according to RealClearPolitics.
The candidates and outside groups have spent more than $102 million, making it the No. 8th most expensive contest in the country, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
Other Senate races, such as Georgia’s and Pennsylvania’s, have captured more national attention, but Florida is a key state Republicans need to win if they want to take control. The chamber has a partisan split of 50-50 with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking vote.
Biden’s unpopularity in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ dominance in state politics, Rubio’s statewide name recognition and inflation have meant an uphill battle for Demings, said Sean D. Foreman, a political scientist at Barry University in Miami-Dade County.
“All indications are the Republicans are going to sweep from top to bottom, and it’s hard to see a ticket-splitting scenario where people vote for DeSantis and Demings enough for her to win,” Foreman said.
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