With an expected tight Senate race in Florida this November, incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson and his newly announced challenger, GOP Gov. Rick Scott, on Monday carved out campaign themes, each touting their on-the-job experience.
In separate interviews on Fox News' "The Daily Briefing With Dana Perino," Scott said he was aiming to "fix" Washington, D.C. — while Nelson pointed to his seniority in the upper chamber, and his fights to protect Florida's tourism and military training operations in the state.
The daggers came out as well.
"The problem with D.C. right now is their ideas are tired," he said in a veiled reference to the three-term Nelson. "Their ideas are old. It's just having [an] anti-getting something done attitude.
"We have to send people to Washington who are not politicians, who are not good talkers. They're just good doers.
"I think this election will be about how do we fix Washington, how do we change Washington," he added. "I think the voters will think we need to send somebody to Washington that has a background of getting something done… we need a better national economy…we've got to hold people accountable in D.C."
During his interview, Nelson declared he intends to "run like there's no tomorrow."
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"Now, in the case of Rick Scott, he'll say and do anything to try to get elected," Nelson added. "And that's gonna contrast with me and my record because I have always thought if you try to do the right thing, the politics will take care of itself."
He also taunted Nelson for avoiding an association with President Donald Trump.
"He's not mentioning Trump at all," Nelson said. "He's trying to keep his distance, because he knows … there's some problems in Washington at 1600 Pennsylvania."
As for policies, Scott vowed to roll them out over the coming months, but said his first one he's unveiled at his announcement: congressional term limits.
"We've got to get rid of the concept of career politicians," he said. "We have to have term limits on Congress, no different than what we have on most of our governors, our president, and state in our House and Senate.
"We have to get away from this concept that somebody will be here forever. So we get new ideas, new energy."
Asked what his major accomplishment in Congress has been, Nelson said, "Well, go to the beach. Look out there. You won't find any oil rigs."
"You won't find any oil rigs particularly on the Gulf Coast that protects the largest testing and training area of the United States military in the world as well as our $60 billion a year tourism industry.
"Go to the east coast. Look at Cape Canaveral. Look at a revived space program, NASA and a commercial space program."
He also dismissed Scott's term-limit policy as being favorable to Florida.
"The fact is Mark Zuckerberg came to see me because I am now the ranking Democrat [on the cybersecurity committee]," he said. "And if we get the majority, I will be the chairman. It takes time to work up through the seniority system. So I would think that that's particularly important to Florida."
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