Florida issues were the sideshow Thursday as the Republican presidential candidates scuffled in Central Florida in the opening act of this weekend’s Presidency 5 event.
Issues affecting the Sunshine State more heavily than other parts of the nation — including an ongoing feud over Social Security between the two front-runners, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — did crop up during the debate. But the nods to Florida were few and far between in a debate that focused heavily on national issues.
Perry did take a good-natured shot at his fellow governor, Florida’s Rick Scott, when talking about Texas’ job creation rate. Scott has often said he wants to overtake Texas, which has in recent years ranked first in some surveys of job creation.
“We plan on keeping it that way, Rick,” Perry said as Scott watched the debate.
But at one point, Perry seemed to cross wires with some of his Florida supporters in the Legislature, and one of the state’s conservative icons, when he suggested that support for the federal “Race to the Top” program was not conservative. The program has served as the centerpiece for President Barack Obama’s education policy.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush, a hero among Florida’s conservatives, has also spoken glowingly of the program, telling ABC News in 2009 that Obama “is on the right track” with his education policies.
And some of Perry’s highest profile supporters, including House Speaker Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, and House Majority Leader Carlos Lopez-Cantera, R-Miami, were in leadership positions when the Republicans pushed legislation through the Legislature that lined up with Race to the Top. They were in their current jobs when the bill passed and was signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott earlier this year.
Perry didn’t elaborate much on his answer during the debate, but Cannon and Lopez-Cantera said afterward that the answer was not incompatible with their views on the program — even though Cannon said “Yes” when asked point-blank whether someone who supported Race to the Top could be conservative.
Cannon said Perry’s problems with Race to the Top revolve around the strings that could be attached the program — much like the joint state-federal Medicaid health-care program for low-income Floridians, which Republicans blame for helping to drive the state’s recent budget problems.
“I think Race to the Top reflects following Florida’s lead,” Cannon said. “Merit pay is desirable whether Race to the Top exists or not. That was one additional benefit to it, but we’ve been pursuing merit pay long before the federal government offered more federal spending as bait.”
And Lopez-Cantera said that Republicans often pointed to Race to the Top in an effort to draw Democratic support for the proposal.
“What we were trying to tell our friends in the back row was that the president of the United States had gotten on board with our policies, because we had pushed them before he did,” Lopez-Cantera said.
Senate President Mike Haridopolos, a Merritt Island Republican who hasn’t chosen sides in the race yet, said he would also like to see increased flexibility, but demurred when asked whether support for the program is compatible with being conservative.
“There are a lot of litmus tests that some folks try to put in,” he said. “Remember, people from Florida sent that money up to Washington. What we’d like to see is reduce those strings, and I think we’d all be better off.”
Aside from the Race to the Top question, the issue of Social Security continued to crop up, with Florida and its heavy population of retirees shaping up as a potentially decisive battlefield between Romney and Perry. Romney again hammered away at Perry over comments suggesting the program was “a Ponzi scheme” and potentially unconstitutional.
Perry said people who are currently on Social Security “don’t have anything on earth to worry about,” which prompted Romney to highlight Perry’s earlier statements on the program’s constitutionality, including excerpts from Perry’s recent book Fed Up.
“You better find that Rick Perry and get him to stop saying that,” Romney said.
Democrats on the sidelines of the debate, noting that Romney has favored allowing workers to invest a portion of their Social Security funds, said they relished the prospect of fighting either candidate about the future of the bedrock Democratic program.
“I hope we’re not about to turn the security of American seniors back to Wall Street, and at the same time argue for deregulating Wall Street,” said Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith.
“No matter which candidate they nominate, they all support privatizing Social Security and ending Medicare as we know it,” said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat who chairs the national party.
The debate also took place hours after a new poll by Quinnipiac University showed Obama’s approval ratings in the state at just 39 percent, against 57 percent disapproval. The poll showed Romney ahead of the president and Perry and Obama in a statistical dead heat. Smith said he wasn’t concerned.
“Once they choose their candidates and it’s a one-on-one comparison of who we’re fighting for and what we’re fighting about, this president will be re-elected,” he said.
By Brandon Larrabee
