For the first time in this brief campaign for the late Bill Young's congressional seat, candidates David Jolly, Alex Sink and Libertarian candidate Lucas Overby debated .
All three had strong and weak moments during the 55-minute forum held on the Seminole campus of St. Petersburg College and televised by Bay News 9 and CSPAN3. But one thing became clear: While Jolly is the smoother candidate, his agenda is solidly conservative — perhaps more conservative than where the pulse of CD13 lies.
Unlike Jolly and Overby, Sink is a new resident of the district, having moved to Pinellas County when she opted to enter the race in October. When the candidates were allowed to ask a question of each other, Jolly asked if she had had conversations about the move with Democratic party officials in Washington, as he has consistently called her out as a carpetbagger who answers to D.C. and not Pinellas.
Sink said she consulted with Pinellas County Democratic Party members and elected officials in the area. "Those are the people I relied on," she replied, without directly answering Jolly. She also skirted a question from Tampa Bay Times Assistant Political Editor Amy Hollyfield about whether she would continue to live in Feather Sound if she were to lose next month's special election. "I'm not going to lose" was her answer. (Bay News 9 anchor Al Reuschel and Times Political Editor Adam C. Smith were the other panelists.)
[jump]When asked about the Affordable Care Act, Sink said it had not been perfect "by any stretch of the imagination." Jolly then interjected over the moderators, calling on her to specify her problems with the law. Sink answered, criticizing the Obama administration for taking away the government's ability to negotiate over drug prices, as is the case with Medicare. She also said that she would repeal the tax on medical devices.
One of Sink's strongest responses was her defense of Social Security and Medicare, saying it "offended" her when Jolly referred to those social programs as entitlement programs. "I’ve been paying into Social Security and Medicare for 40 years," she responded. "It’s a benefit that I earned."
But the former state CFO found herself flummoxed a little later when Overby asked her the difference between welfare and an entitlement. She recovered somewhat shakily to say that welfare was giving somebody something that they may not have earned.
If you didn't know it before tonight's debate, David Jolly confirmed that his beliefs are rock-solid conservative. He's against same-sex marriage (calling it a states' rights issue), medical marijuana, Roe v. Wade (as is Overby) and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. That's where Lucas Overby sided with Sink, saying that he didn't understand why Republicans who think that Obamacare is bad legislation want to repeal it, while saying that while they don't like the current immigration system, they want to keep it.
(Interestingly on medical marijuana, Sink said she supported medical marijuana but not if it allowed for "pot shops on every corner of Florida," which would probably never be the case.)
Jolly was asked several times by Adam Smith about the Paul Ryan-created House budget unveiled a couple of years ago that included eliminating Medicaid and making it into a block grant for the states and privatizing Social Security. While praising Ryan for creating a budget that balances out, he insisted that he disagreed with Ryan on doing anything that would hurt seniors.
After the debate the DCCC seized on Jolly's remarks that Social Security was not a guaranteed benefit for everyone (meaning mostly young people), while Republicans jumped on Sink for saying she didn't believe in a balanced budget amendment, a long-discussed proposal that will likely never become a reality.