Jacob Ogles
A new ad from Republican Rick Scott’s U.S. Senate campaign nicks incumbent Bill Nelson for working a three-day work week and missing national security meetings.
“It’s time to retire ‘No Show’ Nelson and give him the rest of the week off,” a narrator says at the ads closing.
Specifically, the ad takes Nelson to task for missing national security meetings 45 percent of the time, missing out on information about the Islamic State, Russia and North Korea.
It’s similar to a claim with an ad released by Scott’s campaign last week. At that time, Nelson officials dismissed the claim as “another false attack” by a “phony politician.”
Nelson “attended about 80 percent of the Armed Services meetings this year and 86 percent last year,” Nelson spokesman Ryan Brown said then.
But the Scott team says anyone wondering about Nelson’s work ethic can simply check out the energy he brings to the campaign trail.
He’s in the fight for his political life, campaign officials suggest, but remains the only one who doesn’t see it. With just five weeks to go, Nelson’s operation gets dismissed as “lackluster.”
Nelson for his part could be found this weekend at a Pinellas County gala alongside other statewide Democrats running for office.
Scott, meanwhile, have been traversing the state of Florida on a bus tour campaigning with surrogates like Gov. Jeb Bush.
The RealClearPolitics polling aggregate finds the race tight but with a lead for scot of under 1 percent, with conservative outlet Rasmussen ironically the only major outlet putting Nelson up by a point.
Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both peg the race a startup and FiveThirtyEight last week ranked Nelson the most vulnerable Democratic senator on the 2018 ballot.
