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Rick Scott and Bill Nelson discussed their cases and accused the other of making a false statement in their first debate in the US Senate, Florida, repeating the attacks already perpetrated in the minds of voters by the through waves of 30-second commercials.
Democrats hoping to regain control of the Senate rely on Nelson, the outgoing Democrat, to win a fourth term. But state Republicans are driven by the hopes of Scott, a former health sector leader who oversaw relative economic prosperity for eight years as governor and has invested millions of dollars of his personal fortune in his campaign .
Scott described Nelson, 76, as a career politician with few convincing results. Nelson said Scott, 65, was out of touch with Floridians about the biggest problems of the day.
Click here to read this story in Spanish.
The debate was recorded in English at Telemundo51 in Miramar and will be broadcast on the Telemundo stations at 19:00. On October 2nd, NBC6 in Miami will make the debate available in English on its website.
There was a lot to check.
Immigration
Nelson turned the focus of the immigration debate into an attack on President Donald Trump, noting that many immigrant children remained separated from their families because of the Trump government's "zero tolerance" policy.
Nelson claimed that Scott "was silent" on the issue – but that is not accurate. Scott spoke out against separations and blamed Congress. Scott, however, did not publicly condemn Trump, even though the separations resulted from the policy of his administration.
Two days before Trump's June 20 decree to end family separations, Scott said in a statement that he "was not in favor of family separation" and that legislators Had failed to secure the borders ", which caused this chaos". Scott followed a day later with a letter dated June 19 to the Secretary of Health and Social Services, who had custody of the children, reiterating these points.
Scott then described Nelson as having voted for "opening the borders".
Nelson did not say that he was for the opening of the borders. Scott refers to Nelson's support for the "Keep Families Together" law, which all Senate Democrats co-sponsored. The bill would prohibit children from being separated from their parents within 100 miles of the US border, with the exception of situations such as abuse or neglect.
The taxes
Scott reiterated a discredited attack that Nelson had voted more than 300 times in favor of an increase in taxes.
It's wrong. The total 300 times includes non-binding resolutions, which can not change the tax law. It also includes several votes on a single bill. The complaint also neglects the fact that Nelson sometimes voted for a tax cut.
Nelson disputed Scott's claims about an improved economy, saying that 44 percent of Florida families "are not making enough money to make ends meet."
The statistic comes from an analysis conducted in 2017 by United Way of Florida. The report found that more than 4 in 10 households in Florida "could not provide for their basic needs such as housing, child care, food, health care and transportation in 2015". This figure of 44% includes not only 14.5% of households earning less than the federal poverty line, but also 29.5% of Florida households considered as working poor.
Health care
Nelson criticized Scott's efforts to block key parts of the 2010 Health Care Act, the Affordable Care Act. Nelson said that 800,000 Floridians did not have health insurance because Scott "was not promoting Medicaid's expansion to the Legislature."
Scott turned around on the issue during his eight years as governor.
Scott had initially stated that Florida would not develop Medicaid, citing long-term costs to the state. But Scott changed direction in February 2013, saying he was supportive of Medicaid's expansion as "not a step forward in compassion and common sense."
However, this was not one of his legislative priorities and the Legislature eventually refused an extension. He also did not promote this idea during his re-election campaign in 2014.
In 2015, he seemed to oppose the increase in comments he had made about the state's money-related problems with a separate federal health program called the low-income pool.
When the reporters asked Scott to clarify if that meant he was no longer supporting the expansion of Medicaid, he said: "I like the program we have now."
Guns: notes of the NRA
Fred Guttenberg, 14-year-old father of Jaime, who was killed in the shooting of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, was present at the candidates' debate. The moderator asked if assault rifles like the one used during the Parkland attack should be available for purchase. Nelson cited his support for thorough background checks and criticized Scott's good marks from the National Rifle Association.
"My opponent has an A-plus rating with the NRA, and he has passed more NRA-backed laws than any other governor in that state's history," Nelson said.
Scott received an A-plus with the support of the NRA Political Victory Fund during his re-election campaign in 2014.
In a memo from June 2014, Marion Hammer, NRA lobbyist in Florida, congratulated Scott on signing five gun-friendly bills, saying Scott "has now signed more pro-gun bills." to fire – more than any other governor in the history of Florida. "
This year could bring a different note. Scott signed a law on gun restrictions after the Parkland shooting, which took the age of 18 to 21 years to buy a firearm in Florida, which added a period of Waiting for three days. The NRA quickly retaliated with a lawsuit.
Guns: background check
Scott put pressure on Nelson again, saying Nelson had voted against a law to "help our state use the national background check".
The attack is misleading. Scott was referring to a 2013 vote on an amendment to the 2013 Safe Schools and Safe Schools Act, the bipartisan proposal following a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
On April 17, 2013, the Senate passed two amendments to the Safe Schools Act. Both failed. One, sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin, D -W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., Was a compromise intended to replace the stricter wording of the Safe Schools Act. The other was a last minute substitution amendment of the Republicans Sense. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ted Cruz of Texas who had been introduced on the day of the vote.
Voting generally went according to the parties, with Nelson voting in favor of Manchin's amendment with the Democrats and against the substitution amendment widely supported by the Republicans.
The purpose of the Manchin amendment was to ensure that everyone who is prohibited from buying a firearm is listed in the National Criminal Background Check System and has a consistent background check process in place . The objective of the Manchin-Toomey legislation was to extend background checks to include sales in gun shows. The measurement failed 54-46.
Like Manchin-Toomey, the amendment proposed by the Republican garnered the majority of votes (52-48), but not the 60 needed to avoid a filibuster.
The Grassley amendment would have prompted states to submit their relevant mental health records to the national system of instant criminal background checks and forced the federal courts to do so. He also allegedly allocated funds to pursue violations of the background check requirement. But it has not expanded the requirement to cover all new firearms sales, such as at gun shows and the Internet.
Nelson voted for the Safe Schools Act, with most Democrats. Most Republicans opposed the measure, which ultimately failed.
Education
The candidates presented two very different stories about the financing of public education in Florida.
Nelson said, "He (Scott) saved the education.He cut $ 1.3 billion in education the first year."
Scott responded by saying, "You have record funding for kindergarten to grade 12 education."
Who is right?
Well neither.
Nelson's claim that Scott would cut $ 1.3 billion to Scott forgets that in each of the next seven years with Scott as governor, the education budget was increasing.
Similarly, Scott's assessment of record funding is only partially accurate. Florida's funding for kindergarten to grade 12 education has not kept pace with the pre-recession period. Increases in the current K-12 budget are strictly for school safety and mental health.
Elections and voting
Although the concern that a foreign government may attempt to influence the 2018 election is of national concern, this makes special sense in Florida, where Nelson alarmed the piracy of Russians in local voting systems.
Scott criticized Nelson for shouting at the wolf with minimal evidence, before describing his own work to open access to the vote.
"We have the largest number of days of advance voting in the history of the state," Scott said.
Scott cites an increase in the number of advance votes that he ratified as a law in 2013. But this conceals the decision of Scott and the legislature to reduce the number of anticipated votes before the 2012 elections.
In 2011, the Legislature passed a comprehensive election law that reduced the number of advance voting days from 14 to 8. The state also got rid of early voting on the Sunday before election day.
After lengthy balloting at some November 2012 polls in Florida, which put Florida back at the heart of national jokes, the Legislature reorganized the state's early election law to give supervisors more flexibility in scheduling. The bill provides for a minimum of eight days of advance voting and a maximum of 14 days.
In hours, the state currently authorizes a total of 168 hours. It's a record.
Environment
Nelson and Scott regard each other as neglecting Florida's environment.
Nelson, said Scott, "has exhausted funding for water management districts.It even abolished the Department of Community Affairs, which was the growth management agency."
The budgets of Florida's five water management districts have been reduced by more than $ 700 million annually in Scott's first term. The governor has the last word on the budgets of the water management districts.
However, since 2012, district budgets have started to increase again. The overall budget of the five districts is no less than $ 700 million in Scott's previous budget.
In 2011, Scott and the Legislative Assembly abolished the Department of Community Affairs, which for decades revised the development plans of cities and counties. Scott preferred a simpler process that would promote economic development.
Scott pointed at Nelson for the ongoing algae problem, saying Nelson had done nothing for decades.
"The problem of algae is 100% related to the fact that Senator Nelson did an advertising campaign in 1990, said that he was going to attack algae." And now, how many more years later, he never did anything to repair the Okeechobee Dam, which is a 100% federal project. "
In 1990, as a governorship candidate, Nelson aired an ad in which he announced that he "will fight to put an end to the poisoning of lakes and streams of water. Okeechobee Lake is dying because of the massive spill of pollutants. " Nelson lost a Democratic primary against Lawton Chiles, who beat incumbent Republican Bob Martinez.
The Miami Herald explained this month of July that efforts to redirect the polluted waters of Lake Okeechobee and clean up the Everglades have been a tedious one-generation exercise, covering state and federal governments on both sides.
This summer, the Corps of Army Engineers approved the project a $ 1.4 billion tank funded by the state and the federal government to store water at south of Lake Okeechobee to avoid releasing polluted water from the lake.
The Herald wrote that Nelson "can not name many victories at the federal level." Since his election to the Senate in 2000, Nelson has been grappling with the dual support of slow federal support and enthusiasm from the legislature of Florida. "
Scott has also been criticized for his actions, including the signing of a bill repealing a law requiring septic tanks to be subject to regular inspections.
A few words about us
If you watch the debate, you will hear the candidates refer to PolitiFact and our race information checks. Neither did it perfectly.
Nelson criticized Scott for his Action-Truth rating, stating that an independent investigator felt Scott's television commercials were "all wrong, or else Pants on Fire, fake". We do not rate ads – we evaluate applications. And these are not the only odds he's got.
Scott, for example, won the Mostly True title for a claim in an advertisement saying that Nelson had missed 45% of national security hearings.
Scott's defense of his campaign messages was no better. Scott called PolitiFact a "member of the Democratic Party".
It's wrong. We are independent journalists who decide on the verification of the facts, the moment when it must be verified and the note to be given once our reports are completed. We were launched as a Tampa Bay Times project in 2007 and won the Pulitzer Prize for our coverage of the 2008 presidential election. And in 2018, we moved from the Times to the Poynter Institute for media studies, a non-profit institution dedicated to the training of journalists.
We have a detailed history of how we are funded, our ethics policy, and our reporting process that may be worth reading. We rely solely on registered sources, provide a list of all sources with which we speak, as well as each article we write, and each fact check is verified by a panel of three editors who decide which grade to award specific claim. re analyze.
This process served Scott well, but not very well.
Since 2010, 33% of the Florida Governor's claims verified by us have been rated True or Most True, while 22% have rated Faux or Pants on fire.
Keep track of all our fact checks of the race here. Hear something of the race that needs a fact check? E-mail [email protected]
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