Rena Frazier not interested in Ross Spano’s pledge to run a clean campaign in their HD 59 race

Earlier this week, Dover Republican Ross Spano reached out to his Democratic challenger in the House District 59 race, Brandon Democrat Rena Frazier, requesting she sign a pledge he had drawn up calling for the two to promise to run a clean campaign in the last month of the election.

Frazier didn’t respond, and in an email sent to FloridaPolitics, calls the pledge a political game that she’s not interested in playing.

“While my opponent may be used to political games, which I’m quite certain this is a political game that voters will see through, I’m interested in real solutions,” she says. “Holding Tallahassee politicians accountable for having pandered to lobbyists instead of addressing our local needs is a critical part of getting honest about our problems. I’ll be fighting to put families back in control and they need to know the truth. That’s a clean campaign as far as I’m concerned. If my opponent believes that highlighting his voting record would be regarded as negative campaigning, perhaps he should re-examine his motivation for those votes.”

In response, Spano says,”Over the past four months, my team and I have knocked on over 22,000 doors. As I’ve talked to voters in my district, I’ve heard over and over again how tired they are of negative campaigns. I believe that the voters in District 59 deserve better than name-calling and mudslinging. They deserve a robust discussion of issues that affect their lives. These issues, like creating jobs, providing a quality education for every child, and reducing the tax burden on families are too important to ignore in favor of clever one-liners and partisan rhetoric. Earlier this week, I asked my opponent to sign a clean campaign pledge, and clearly she wasn’t interested. Her lack of meaningful experience and knowledge of the issues facing residents of this district will collapse under the weight of thorough examination. Perhaps, Mrs. Frazier would know the issues of District 59 better if she spent more time with voters, looking for solutions, and less time studying partisan talking points.”

Spano also took to his Facebook page on Friday to say that Frazier’s lack of response to his request meant “I have a sneaky suspicion I’m about to get hit with a negative ad.”

Spano is running for his third term in HD 59, which encompasses Riverview, Brandon, and Valrico. It’s considered a swing district, and while he won easily over Donna Lee Fore in 2014, he defeated Democrat Gail Gottlieb by only two percentage points in 2012.

That’s the election in which the Republican Party of Florida (on behalf of Spano) sent out a mailer against Gottlieb in the last week of the race that featured photos of bomb-throwing terrorists and threatening demonstrators with the banner: “Gail Gottlieb — Way Too Liberal, Way Too Extreme, Not One of Us” and the tag: “Gail Gottlieb is trying to bring her radical chaos to Eastern Hillsborough County.”