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GOP opponents come out swinging
By JIM ROSS, Times Staff Writer The District 5 congressional race took a contentious turn Tuesday when state Sen. Ginny Brown-Waite of Brooksville lashed out at Don Gessner, her opponent in the Republican primary. The candidates will square off Sept. 10, with the winner facing longtime incumbent Karen Thurman in November. Brown-Waite and Gessner have spent the past months trying to convince GOP voters that they are best equipped to defeat the Democrat from Dunnellon. But in a news release issued Tuesday afternoon, Brown-Waite said Gessner, a semiretired businessman from Lecanto, is trying to make his case by "maliciously distorting" her Senate voting record. "Our voters deserve an honest election and straightforward campaign," Brown-Waite said in the release. Instead, Gessner is feeding GOP voters "misstatements, distortions, half-truths and lies," she said. Gessner's campaign said the information it circulates is factual and based on Brown-Waite's votes. "I stand behind the statements made by my campaign," Gessner said in prepared remarks Tuesday. The congressional district includes all of Citrus, Hernando and Sumter counties, east and central Pasco County, and all or part of four other counties. In campaign literature and public appearances, Gessner has accused his opponent of trying to "gut" major parts of Gov. Jeb Bush's A+ education plan and of supporting taxes and big government. The education accusations concern two votes Brown-Waite registered in 1999, when the Legislature was hammering out the A+ plan. In one instance, she supported a measure that would have granted vouchers only to students who get the worst test scores at failing schools. The final version of the plan called for all students at such schools to receive vouchers. Separately, Brown-Waite backed a move that would have required private schools that accept vouchers to meet a host of regulations. Brown-Waite supported the final plan. In the news release, she said the measure that would have restricted the type of students who would have received vouchers would have strengthened the bill. As for a services tax, the Gessner campaign alludes to Brown-Waite's position on Senate President John McKay's tax reform plan. She supported McKay but later opposed his second tax proposal, which would have removed more than 12 sales tax exemptions for one year. In the news release, Brown-Waite said she actually has fought to decrease taxes by cutting the intangibles tax, reducing property taxes, enacting the tax-free holiday and supporting a ballot initiative that would have reduced sales taxes from 6 percent to 4.5 percent.
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From today's Hernando Times Letters |
