Race for Murphy congressional seat turns nasty

By JIM TURNER
THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA

THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, October 24, 2016.......... One of the most closely watched congressional races in the nation has become an intense and expensive venture, with the outcome possibly hinging on a number of incendiary remarks exchanged during a videotaped editorial-board interview.

Republican groups have flooded the Treasure Coast and northern Palm Beach County district with ads, spending nearly $6 million to support U.S. Army veteran Brian Mast, as the GOP seeks to capture from Democrats an open seat in a Republican-leaning region.

The money has tried to counter $5.8 million --- $3.2 million since the Aug. 30 primary elections --- that Democratic candidate Randy Perkins has spent on his own campaign. Perkins, who has a home in Delray Beach, made his fortune in disaster relief.

Also in the race is Carla Spalding, a U.S. Navy veteran and former nurse at the Veterans Regional Medical Center in West Palm Beach who is running without party affiliation.

The candidates in Congressional District 18 are seeking to replace U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, a Jupiter Democrat running for the U.S. Senate. The region has previously been represented by U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, a Republican who now serves in Congressional District 17, Democrat Tim Mahoney and Republican Mark Foley.

During the past month, Mast's campaign started to run positive ads, highlighting Mast's 12-year military career, in which he lost his legs in a 2010 bomb blast in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, outside Republican groups, which during the Democratic primary dug into Perkins' life and career, continued to serve as the attack-ad wing of the effort to capture the swing seat.

Perkins and Mast clashed last month during a videotaped endorsement interview with the Treasure Coast Newspapers editorial board in Stuart.

"You're not a big government guy, right?" Perkins fired at Mast minutes into the interview. "So how did the GI Bill work out for you? That's big government."

Mast, who grew up in Michigan, used the GI Bill to complete his undergraduate degree from Harvard Extension School, an online degree-granting arm of the Cambridge, Mass. university. Perkins has tried to score points by noting that Mast has often listed his education as simply Harvard University.

Perkins also challenged Mast to be critical of the ads by outside groups.

"You'll let the (National Republican Congressional Committee) do your dirty work for you, but you're not man enough to stand behind your own ads," Perkins said.

Local TV stations pulled a National Republican Congressional Committee ad after Perkins' lawyers threatened to sue for running "false, misleading and deceptive" information.

But while Republicans pounced on Perkins' comments during the editorial interview, Mast wasn't passive. Mast called Perkins "very thin skinned."

The two had to be reined in multiple times.

Spalding, who avoided the verbal salvos during the interview, calmly cut in and said it was why, "I'm choosing not to be a Democrat or a Republican."

Eve Samples, the opinion and audience engagement editor for Treasure Coast Newspapers who conducted the interview, wrote after the session that in seven years on the editorial board she'd never seen such behavior, characterizing the clash as "all the civility of a steel cage death match."

The National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC designed to maintain the Republican House majority, have spread snippets from the editorial board interview across social media and in attack ads.

"Taunting a double amputee veteran?" one ad stated. "Randy Perkins. His idea of service is serving himself."

Perkins, whose general election spending has mostly been focused on attacking Mast, defeated attorney Jonathan Chane in the primary.

Perkins, during a debate last week in Palm Beach Gardens, said he didn't mean to disparage the service of veterans.

Mast later in the debate said he thought Perkins was trying to make a joke, but indicated the comment was a sign of the Democrat's character.

"I don't think that's the kind of person who can go up there (Washington) and work across the aisle,” Mast said.

Mast, 36, who moved to Hutchinson Island in St. Lucie County last year and recently purchased a Palm City home in the same county, topped a field of six in the Republican primary, including former state Rep. Carl Domino and Rebecca Negron, the wife of incoming Florida Senate President Joe Negron.

Mast has made national security a focus, saying Congress will be his "next battlefield." He expresses opposition to creating a pathway to citizenship for people in the country illegally, is open to increasing the retirement age to bolster Social Security and supports replacing the Affordable Care Act with an expansion of health savings accounts.

Perkins, 52, founded AshBritt Environmental Inc., a major national disaster-recovery company, after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

Perkins supports a pathway to citizenship, would look at increasing employer and employee contributions to Social Security while immediately pushing to increase benefits by 2 percent to 3 percent a year, and said the federal government needs to work with insurance companies and small businesses to improve the Affordable Care Act.

Perkins, who has tried to link Mast to Trump and former U.S. Rep. Allen West, a tea party favorite who was defeated by Murphy in 2012, has criticized Mast for accepting sugar growers' money, a hot-button issue in the district.

Some residents view sugar farms south of Lake Okeechobee as a source of the toxins that travel from Lake Okeechobee into area rivers.

Joe Negron, the incoming state Senate president, has floated a proposal to push his fellow state lawmakers to buy 60,000 acres of farmland south of the lake to shift the flow of the water.

Mast backs Negron's plan. Perkins doesn't see Negron's proposal getting much legislative support and says a wider approach is needed that includes seeking more federal funding to bulk up a dike around the lake and seeking to reduce water runoff that comes from Central Florida into the lake.

The two both oppose the private All Aboard Florida Brightline passenger rail service, which is planned to run from Miami to Orlando on tracks on the east side of the congressional district.