Sink, Scott escalate attacks

ORLANDO -- The campaign to become Florida's next governor turned into a war of words this week over who had a role in shady business practices that led to fraud charges at the former companies of Democrat Alex Sink and Republican Rick Scott.

Sink unleashed a new round of attacks Tuesday against Scott, marshaling police, sheriffs and state attorneys in two new television ads. One questioned Scott's decision to plead the Fifth Amendment 75 times in a lawsuit involving one of his companies. The other, featuring the law enforcement officials, accuses him of running attack ads that are ``totally false'' -- a claim that disregards portions of Scott's ads that are accurate.

Scott's campaign fired back by announcing Tuesday that it will be releasing two new attack ads against Sink. One claims that as president of NationsBank Florida she was responsible for questionable sales practices conducted by a separate securities company that reported to NationsBank Corp. The other ad revives two misleading claims that Sink was responsible for state pension fund losses.

Both ads opened what will be a marathon month of punch and counter-punch as both candidates attempt to mar their opponents over the television airwaves and the Internet. Recent polls show Sink trailing Scott in a close contest.

One of Sink's ads features two sheriffs, a Republican and a Democrat, a state attorney from each party and police detectives who sat that Scott knew, or should have known, about the Medicare fraud that was going within his hospital chain. Although his company, Columbia/HCA Corp. agreed to pay a $1.7 billion federal fine, Scott left the company before the fraud charges were filed and was never charged with fraud.

``Scott claims he didn't know the company he led was systematically defrauding Medicare,'' said William Cervone, the state attorney from Alachua County and a Republican.

In another ad, Martin County Sheriff Robert Crowder stands in a courtroom and says: ``Take it from law enforcement: Rick Scott's ads attacking Alex Sink are totally false.''

But independent fact-checkers, including PolitiFact Florida, have found that while many elements of Scott's ads are misleading, they are not ``totally'' false.

In Scott's attack ad, the campaign accuses Sink of failing to know about shady investments made by the securities subsidiary, NationsBank Securities. That company was accused of deceptive sales practices and agreed to settle a class action suit by paying investors $11.5 million and paying a $6.75 million civil fine in 2001.

But documents show that NationsBank Florida and Sink were not a party to the suit; the securities subdivision was a separate entity.

Meanwhile, Sink also announced Tuesday that she would forgo about $4 million in taxpayer-paid public finance dollars after months of wavering on the issue.

Scott, who successfully sued the state to remove the campaign spending limits, never agreed to the limits and is not entitled to public dollars. He has self-financed much of his $52 million campaign.

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