Pharmacist (and registered Republican) Tarzina Khondaker speaks with Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in St. Petersburg on Oct. 3, 2024. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)
With a month to go before Election Day, it looks increasingly like Florida voters won’t have the opportunity to size up the two major candidates for the U.S. Senate seat in a televised debate.
Nursing a steady lead in the polls, GOP incumbent Rick Scott seems content to deprive his Democratic rival, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, of the oxygen and exposure her candidacy would get in a setting viewable by voters up and down the state.
But she isn’t ready to concede that possibility just yet.
“We have 33 days,” she told the Phoenix Thursday night in St. Petersburg. “The media needs to put [on the] pressure. It’s his responsibility and his duty to be in front of Floridians, telling them why he thinks he deserves another term.
“Other senators in other states are holding debates. It’s completely disrespectful and I think a dereliction of duty and completely abandoning his responsibility to answer to the people that put him in that seat to begin with. The reason that he doesn’t want to debate is that he’s scared because he knows what he wants to do completely misaligns with the values of Floridians.”
This battle has seen vitriolic language by both sides over the past year. While Scott aides declined to respond to Mucarsel-Powell’s comments, they icily attacked former Barack Obama’s endorsement of the Democrat on Friday by labelling their press release reacting to the news: “Funder of Iranian Terror Attacks Endorses DMP.”
“Barack Obama and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell are two peas in a pod,” said Team Scott spokesman Will Hampson in that statement.
“Neither has seen a dictator in the world that they didn’t want to send cash to. Debbie and Obama led the charge to ease sanctions on Cuba and have allowed dictators like [Venezuelan president Nicolas] Maduro to act without consequences. But worst of all, Obama sent billions to Iran which allowed them to attack Israel.”
In regards to President Joe Biden’s decision in June to relax financial sanctions against Cuba, Mucarsel-Powell issued a statement:
“In the fight against the brutal [Cuban President Miguel] Diaz-Canel communist dictatorship, it’s important for the United States to support legitimate private enterprises and small businesses while maintaining strong sanctions against the human rights abusing regime and their allies,” she said. “The Biden Administration must monitor the situation closely and ensure this isn’t being abused and put Cuba back on the list of countries not cooperating with anti-terrorism efforts.”
‘Socialist’
Among the labels that the Scott camp has tossed Mucarsel-Powell’s way is “socialist,” a toxic message aimed (in particular) at the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan voters in South Florida who escaped such governments in migrating to the U.S.
An Ecuadorian native who left her homeland with her mother and three sisters when she was 14, Mucarsel-Powell says she takes particular offense to that charge.
“He’s insulting the legacy of my mother. Okay, that’s exactly what he’s doing,” she said. “He’s insulting Latinos who have had to flee dictatorships, confusing them with lies, because he knows that it’s a traumatic event to leave your home country.”
“One of the reasons why my mother brought me here is because when you see what a military dictatorship looks like — I was very young when that happened — you don’t want to live in a place like that,” Mucarsel-Powell added.
“And he is using that trauma to confuse when he is the one propping up Russia when he votes against our allies. And he’s the one that’s siding with the former president who says that Venezuela is safer than the United States. He is against any sort of legal pathways for immigrants. … He has no heart, no compassion. He could care less. All he wants is that seat for his own self gain. And I think we’re all tired of that.”
‘Disaster’
Following Hurricane Helene’s devastation in Florida, Mucarsel-Powell has been airing a television ad called “Disaster” that accuses Scott of making the state’s property insurance crisis worse.
The Scott campaign released its own TV ad Friday in response to that ad, blasting her again as a socialist. “Just one term and voters threw her out,” the narrator begins. “Why? She votes like a socialist and makes things up.”
The ad features several Florida sheriffs who have endorsed Scott and praise him for showing up whenever there’s been a hurricane, either as governor or senator.
Republican supporter
The Democratic Senate candidate appeared at the Pinellas County Democratic Party headquarters in St. Petersburg early Thursday evening and was greeted by a handful of local party activists — and one registered Republican who said she had visited the headquarters the previous day and learned that Mucarsel-Powell would be in attendance.
Tarzina Khondaker is a South Tampa resident who runs a pharmacy in St. Petersburg. Originally from New York, she said she voted for Donald Trump in 2016 but switched her vote to Joe Biden 2020. She remains a registered Republican because she wants to be able to continue to vote in GOP primary elections — but says she’s voting for Kamala Harris and Mucarsel-Powell next month.
Given the chance to speak one-on-one with the Democratic candidate, Khondaker offered advice about how to speak to voters, many of whom, she said, don’t have any idea who Murcarsel-Powell is.
“I think if you put it in layman’s terms. They need simple words,” Khondaker explained. “Instead of climate change, you need to show them a demonstration. Because they see climate change and they’ve heard it so many times, it goes right through their head,” she added, as Mucarsel-Powell stood nodding along.
Meanwhile, Scott is scheduled to attend a campaign event Saturday morning in Tampa hosted by Turning Point Action, the political arm of the conservative Turning Point USA group.