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The Sunday before election day: a time for prayer, for noisy get-out-the-vote rallies and for some campaign workers to grumble about money owed by their billionaire candidate.
Florida's crazy primary season, featuring two super-loaded newcomers running for governor and U.S. Senate, is almost over. But before the endless stream of negative TV ads temporarily slows, let's pause to review the candidates in action Sunday.
• • •
Bill McCollum heard a fitting sermon about negative attacks at First Baptist Church in Jacksonville.
"Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth," Pastor Mac Brunson urged the packed megachurch, quoting Ephesians 4:29. "Be nice!"
Coincidence? Probably. But a month ago, when McCollum's Republican gubernatorial rival Rick Scott visited, Brunson lectured on the sin of lying.
McCollum awoke to a full-page newspaper advertisement linking him to Jim Greer, the indicted former state Republican Party leader who helped launch McCollum's campaign.
But McCollum didn't let it dent his momentum. Later, at a small rally, he exuberantly declared he is going to win the primary and touted the endorsement of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who campaigned with him.
"In these troubled times we face, you need a governor with the right principles and the right experience," said Huckabee, who now lives in the Panhandle and voted for McCollum.
McCollum dismissed the Greer attack as false and then bashed Scott for defrauding the federal government as chief executive officer of a major hospital chain and for the $50 million he has put into slick ads.
"All I'm doing is telling people what I've told people all along: There's a difference between Rick Scott and me," McCollum said of the admonition against negative attacks from the pulpit.
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Was Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Greene the main attraction for about 50 people who came to an upscale soul food restaurant in Miami Gardens? Or was it the free fried chicken and meatballs? The school supplies giveaway?
For a bunch of folks, it was a bit of all of the above — but many were there to get paid. The campaign had offered them $50 a day to canvass neighborhoods, wave signs and make phone calls, and they had been told to come to the restaurant to get their money.
"He's giving us the runaround," said 22-year-old Sabrina Height, who said she was owed $200. "To tell you the truth, I don't even know why I voted for him."
Greene spokesman Luis Vizcaino insisted that everyone who worked on the campaign would be paid. "They're here for a back-to-school event,'' he said of the people leaving the restaurant.
"To all the kids here today: believe in yourselves,'' said Greene. "There's nothing that you can't accomplish." Asked about the negative tone of his primary fight against rival Kendrick Meek, Greene said he never had a personal issue with Meek.
"The problem I have with him is his failure to get results,'' he said. "I'm glad he's forgiven me but he started this negative campaign and I only responded."
• • •
Before a flock of 6,000, Rick Scott got a chance to address El Rey Jesus church in Kendall — but he didn't turn the other cheek in the bare-knuckle Republican primary for governor.
"My opponent came here two or three weeks ago and was very disrespectful," Scott said as Associate Pastor John Laffite translated in Spanish. "He was not honest with your leadership about his beliefs."
At issue: McCollum's shifting positions on an Arizona-style immigration law. McCollum at one point said he didn't support it and described it as "far out." Then, after polls revealed the law's popularity and after the law was changed to prevent racial profiling, McCollum said he backed it. But the attorney general didn't tell prominent supporters in Miami-Dade County that he planned to go a step further and back what he said was a stricter measure in Florida.
Among those blindsided: Pastor Guillermo Maldonado of El Rey Jesus. So Maldonado said he offered Scott a chance to address his congregation.
"My commitment to you," Scott said, "is I will always be respectful of the diversity of this state and of this country and I will always make sure that I will have input from this community when I am governor."
Scott didn't mention that he, too, favors an Arizona-style immigration law. He didn't say "immigration" at all. So all the crowd heard was that McCollum was disrespectful and dishonest about his beliefs. The brief hit on McCollum caught the attorney general's supporters by surprise. Anthony Verdugo, with the Christian Family Coalition, was listening in the crowd and left after Scott spoke. He told reporters that it was "highly inappropriate" to use houses of worship to swipe at political opponents.
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Close to 400 supporters of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek dodged heavy downpours in Tampa for an evening get-out-the-vote rally co-headlined with gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink.
Meek avoided talking about Greene at all, instead offering a red-meat Democratic stump speech about opposing offshore oil drilling and supporting a woman's right to have an abortion.
"We're going to bring energy to the November ballot," Meek said at the West Tampa Convention Center. "I want you to make sure we have the right team in place heading to November."
Earlier, campaigning at predominantly black churches in Miami-Dade, Meek told how the chaplain of the Tampa Police Department asked if he believed in the power of forgiveness.
"I know a lot has been said and a lot has been done in this primary election season,'' Meek told hundreds of worshipers at the Fountain in Miami Gardens. "My faith drives me to forgive everything that's been said so we can think clearly, so we can lead on behalf of this state."
Does forgiveness come any easier when polls show him regaining his front-runner status? "Hard work, paying off,'' Meek said.
Times political editor Adam C. Smith and Times Staff Writer Aaron Sharockman contributed to this report.
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